You’re overlooking the fact that that would have left locations with little or no service exactly as they were.

Dead sure that only the breadwinner (and not all) owned a car.

Have you forgotten that one had to have friends and wait his turn for a lousy Skoda ?

Look around you now, just about a car on the road for every adult, near to full penetration in mobile phones, more than one TV (and what TV’s) in every house, laptops, netbooks, e-pads etc, etc, etc.

Just read this, and you will see that there was a worldwide recession in the early 80s.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1980s_recession

[Daphne – I distinctly remember going through this with you some months ago, Albert. I don’t need to read Wikipedia for references to the 1980s recession. I have just explained to you briefly that the early years of the 1980s were recessionary, caused by the spike in oil prices (caused in turn by the turbulence in Iran). But the rest of the 1980s were legendary boom years, so much so that the attitudes of the time were encapsulated in this seminal film http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094291/ And how were we living in Malta in the mid-1980s? ]

Weevils in the flour – those were the days.

[Daphne – Oh yes, of course. I forgot to mention that it was winter, and that when we walked home to Sliema from Birkirkara we generally did so in the wind and rain. Or that when it started raining as we travelled in those army lorries, we were fully exposed to the downpour in the open ones and completely enclosed in the pitch darkness in those ones which are covered in canvas with a flap at the back that goes down against the rain. Thank you for bringing it up, as you also brought up the fact that this was yet another of Dom Mintoff’s December battles – the Scrooge who always sought to ruin Christmas and who tried every December to find something to do it with. The shops were in an especially bad way that year: nothing to sell, people with no money to buy, and no buses to get to them. Lovely. Viva l-Labour. You have a damned nerve, Albert, criticising the way things are now when you voted for that crock of shit and are still defending it today. Tell me, what went so bloody wrong in your childhood that you are unable to think clearly?]

Big deal! So was the situation all over Europe in those days. We are talking of a third of a century ago!

[Daphne – Our problems had NOTHING to do with the oil prices that caused the recession in Europe in 1980-1982, Albert, and you know it. They were entirely self-induced. So much so, that when the markets became bullish later on the 1980s – giving rise to the era of bling and shoulder pads and Porsches – we were still living in exactly the same sordid misery.]

The truth is that while today in, 2011, in deepest Eastern Europe (under rigid Communist governments in 1980) they have bus systems using the latest technology, which run on time and which satisfy the demand, here we have a service which…ok never mind.

[Daphne – Done a lot of travelling in eastern Europe, have you? I have, and I always took taxis, because you have to.]