Do you come here often?

Rhodri Marsden from the UK is currently in Malta and blogging about it:

Two companies have an exceedingly firm grip on the Maltese. HSBC attempt to sponsor everything in sight – including windscreen-sized bits of card that you shove inside your car to stop the sun roasting the front seats – and when you've succumbed, and finally opened your account with the former Midland Bank, Rothmans are on hand to persuade you to invest heavily in hundreds of packets of fags. In a walk around the largely deserted capital city of Valletta last night, the most eye-catching attraction was am enormous, luminous, inflatable tent in the main square, provided by the EU, plastered with images of cigarettes snapped into two and erected in an attempt to wean the Maltese off their beloved Rothmans. It was massive. People wandered by, en route to a stall selling Rothmans. Brussels is going to have to try a bit harder.

Before reaching Valletta we went on another unpredictable drive across the island. On the first day here I bought a 1:45000 scale map (if I've got that the wrong way round, I'd like to reassure you that the map is not 45,000 times as big as Malta) which I've been trying to use to guide us around. But so rabid is the road building over here that it bears little relation to reality, with major arterial routes in and out of, er, Ghajn Tuffieha snaking through enormous areas of dusty rubble, with nothing to guide us through save for a solitary parked-up pick-up truck with 3 men inside, swigging beer and grinning. After not inconsiderable cursing, we finally ended up in Bugibba. A waiter, on hearing we were British (although he could easily have predicted that, with several pasty fat men in England football shirts wandering around the resort for 9 months of the year) reminded us that it was election day in the UK, before shaking his head, sadly. "I've been looking at the news just now," he said. "Oh ,right... and?" "Well, you know, they are only exit polls, you know, but still," he said, continuing to shake his head. "Right, and what's the news?" "Well, it's not good, you know," he said, still shaking his head. Jenny's patience boiled over slightly. "TELL US!" she said in a high pitched voice. "Oh, Labour are ahead." We both breathed a sigh of relief. "Thanks."...

Qormi anytime