I always judge how workers are treated at their place of work from the state of cleanliness of their restrooms.

Where there is instability and uncertainty the voter turnout is higher. One has to keep in mind also that we have two opposing political TV stations and another two opposing radio stations. Need you have anything else to have a 97% turnout?

What amused me is the boomerang effect which Jason tal-fjuri created when he asked for the Cyprus ballot box.

Hehehe! Well yes, exactly what I thought. Therefore the whole concept cannot be really used as a yardstick, can it?

[Daphne – That it’s full of tourists from places like Malta.]

Last Saturday I was in the lavatories at the Playmobil factory with my six-year-old daughter, and we saw a grotesque grandmother-mother-child trio behaving suspiciously next to the paper-towel dispenser near the basins. It turned out that one of the women was ‘dispensing’ a great wad of paper-towels into her large bag.

Excuse me for digressing from the main topic but the point made about lavatories is quite fascinating. The state of the lavatories in Trafalgar Sqaure, which have a very hip design, is quite gross. So what does that say about London then?

[Daphne – That it’s full of tourists from places like Malta.]

Just a small correction. It’s not that Air Malta “gives free flights”; it’s just that the government, instead of the passenger, pay all the tax on the ticket. So a) the tickets are not free and b) Air Malta doesn’t lose any profits.

Which brings me to the point of this post: although I was deprived of tal-Muzew when I was young, I learned other things from my mother. One of her tenets was: you can judge the level of civilisation of a country from the state of its loos. As I grew older and more foolish, I developed some ideas of my own. For example: you can judge the level of civilisation of a country from the level of interest in politics. The higher the voter turnout on election day the lower the level. The less interest in politics the more the level of achievement.
When I was in the Netherlands (where I was given the vote – unsolicited) I had absolutely no idea what politics my colleagues and friends espoused, nor they of mine. It was just not a topic of conversation – not from any inhibition to discuss – but because of lack of any great interest. No matter who was elected the country carried on fine. No earthquakes occurred, and none were promised. There was no obsession with politics or with the vote.

This is just one of the multitude of differences between the Kingdom of The Netherlands and the Republic of Malta.

[Daphne – You’re spot on with your observation about politics/level of civilisation and voter turn-out/level of civilisation. It is precisely because we are so new to democracy that people are so interested and so keen to use their vote. That, and the fact that very many of us have experienced life under near-totalitarianism, when democracy broke down. It’s still too close for comfort, and given the fact that the Labour Party seems pathologically unable to reform and invariably chooses gross inadequates as leaders, it remains a major panic at every general election. The mistake that we sometimes make is to confuse cause and effect. It is not lack of political interest or low voter turn-out that make for a civilised and democratic country, but a civilised and democratic country that makes for lack of political interest and low voter turn-out. You’re can’t force the issue. We have to feel safe before we can stop bothering. And your mother was right about the lavatories.]