The engineers who designed the tunnels were from Taiwan not South Korea.

Mr. Fang (Chef de Mission,) Mr. Li (bridge engineer) and Mr. Su (tunnel engineer) – if memory serves me right. It was so long ago.

They are not stolen with a specific purpose in mind, but because they are there, perceived as ‘doing nothing in the shed’, and available for the taking.

Our dustbins and those of our neighbours are chained to a wall on a main road, but they were stolen several times even so by people (Maltese, because a couple of them were caught in the act) who actually thought it worth their while to spend time hacking away at the rubber and leave with a damaged bin. That’s the sort of thing only a Maltese does. It’s the mentality.

When the government first started turning roundabouts into mini-gardens, all the plants would be stolen overnight. Do you remember that? I most certainly do.

Mentalita tal-ghaks.

Oh, and the police said that in all likelihood it was one of the private guards – so yes, Maltese.

The sheds are guarded round the clock by members of the armed forces/police and between 4am and 7am by private guards, which is when the theft took place.

The tunnels and bridges were built by South Koreans and finished under the Nationalist government in the 1960s. Tiling the tunnels was part of the state of the art Regional Road project. Mintoff just stopped the project half way.

I can confirm that – though first we should ask why the Mintoff government found it necessary to tile the interior of the tunnel in the first place.

I actually remember driving through with my parents and seeing men chipping them off.