How about introducing a caste system

I cannot understand how we can tolerate such a thing.

I remember being occasionally mistaken for a Brit while boarding the bus when I was younger, and being asked to pay more. 

But that was daylight robbery.

What is happening on the Arriva buses today is sanctioned robbery.

Is one supposed to present an ID card to prove their nationality?

Or is one expected to say something that confirms one’s nationality?

Perhaps, an ‘ostra’ or an expletive or some form of blasphemy will prove their true Maltese origin.

How is this is supposed to work when you buy a bus ticket from a ticketing machine?  The ticketing machine cannot decipher your nationality. What do you do, sing to the machine: dghajsa sejra ohra gejja!

I’m genuinely sorry… but honestly, someone should have informed Austin Gatt that becoming members of the European Union did not translate into membership a la carte. It meant being citizens of Europe.

Typically, we conveniently forget that when we travel to Europe we enjoy many of the rights of fellow Europeans.

This fact was one of the highlights of the ‘Iva ghall-Ewropa’ campaign. 

Absurd campaigners such as Simon Busuttil even went so far as to equate membership with the importance of passing through passport control and walking past – as if this were the justification for becoming fully fledged EU members.

If you happen to get hurt or sick in Europe, you enjoy health and medical treatment, as the Germans and French would.

In Malta, you still have some clinics who go on treating foreign tourists as special cases, and there are special tariffs for foreigners.

But back to Austin Gatt.

He is not my pet hate. But he has this remarkable ability of shooting himself in the foot.

He has not only screwed up public transport and made the whole project unattractive but he has allowed his henchmen – I am referring to potential PN candidate Manwel Delia – to bless the new tariff policies which are untenable in an EU framework. 

In his haste to differentiate between a resident and a non-resident, he introduced a tariff structure which benefits one over the other.

He cannot do this – at least, not in the way he has devised it.

It was of course seriously compromised by the very fact that the drivers are being asked to screen the nationality based on whether the commuter looks like a Maltese or not.

And Austin, along with his cousin Lou – the one who did not pass the boo test at the Santana concert – are highly unlikely to pass this particular test. 

With a little bit of imagination, you would think that Austin and his cousin – the one he does not talk to – hail from Andrha Pradesh.

I am sure they do not talk Telugu like the citizens of Pradesh but they definitely have their physical features and build.

But as we all know they aren’t Indians, but Gozitans, and were it not for the fact that their faces are recognisable, they could easily be confused with those people from down there.

If my statement is politically incorrect, then so be it.

For if it is the statement which irks readers of this column, I suggest they start worrying about the fact that this country is an embarrassment, when it comes to treating foreigners or Europeans as equals.

And that just talking about the way we treat white foreigners… as soon as they appear slightly dark skinned, we become intrinsically nastier.

And ‘nastier’ is understatement.

Our hang-ups about anything black manifest themselves in our silly commentaries and our mannerisms.

But treating foreigners with a different yardstick is also applied by all those institutions which operate here. The banks, the utility and telephone companies… practically everyone has a different benchmark.

It is perfectly alright if you are rich and loaded. If you are affluent you are welcome… you are even tolerated to such an extent that you can avail yourself of an advantageous tax rate. 

This is not only an unfair society, it is a classist society too. It is one that promotes the idea that, for example, the right type of education is not equal for all. 

And yes, it is this government again that has got it all wrong.

In an apparent effort to scuttle public education, the government continues to subsidise Catholic schools (leaving out private schools by the way), making Catholic schools not only more attractive in their set-up but better organised and prepared than State schools.

On the continent, public schools cater for everyone. In France, Italy and Germany, public schools remain a melting pot of all classes.

The sons and daughters of the carpenter and the banker meet in the same classroom.  Here, they simply do not.

In Malta, the first decision to impose class starts off at kindergarten.

And it continues throughout the other stages in ones’ life.

This approach to life, which is based on ‘us and them’ and is eulogized by the political leaders who, in sum total, practise what they never preach.

They talk of good public schools but still send their kids to private or Catholic schools. They talk of good health care, but still prefer private hospitals.

They praise the public transport system, and promise to use it.

But they all choose to drive with their private cars to work. And all of them – without exception – send their children to private schools.

This is a society which is constructed on the principle of an order based on a ‘caste’ system. Yes, a caste system.

So it’s no wonder that our Transport Minister could easily be a member of Thigala caste.

And if he doesn’t know what that is, he should dress as he usually dresses, and take the first bus that happens to come his way.