Muncaster's postcard from Malta

Phil Muncaster is in Malta and 'can't stop thinking about work, IT, or indeed, Leyland buses'. From today's edition of IT Week:

..So it’s time for me to go away and relax. For the past week I've been lapping up the sun in Malta, that brave little rock of our once proud Empire, where men are men (in an 1980s poodle perm and designer stubble kinda way), the women are mostly out of my league, and the music is forever set to AOR.

Apart from being the first time I've been abroad and not had to feel embarrassed at being the descendant of colonial ruling class scum, it's also the first time work has made an unplanned, and fairly unwelcome appearance in my holiday. For if you peer past the 1980s replica footie shirts and Union Jacks, there is a lurking IT success story.

The Dubai Internet City, or Smart City, development has transformed a chunk of run-down industrial land in southern Malta into an oasis of ICT firms, or so the marketing spiel goes. Since 2000, Smart City has attracted such big names as Microsoft, Dell and Siemens to its lush green campus, no doubt persuaded by 100 percent tax exemption and the island's useful location as a natural bridge between Europe, the Middle East and Africa..

Well, I thought it was quite interesting, but at the time of writing I have been trying to do anything to avoid the cocky Portuguese football fans and the flag-waving, claxon-sounding Italian chavs (chavinos?) who seem to have invaded the island with the sole purpose of making all us English feel distinctly inferior - and we don't usually need any help in that.

Meanwhile, I have the consolation that though we have been beaten at footie (again), we have achieved glory in the past, typified by this island’s red telephone boxes, its old Leyland buses chugging reliably on, and the pubs on every street corner. Now, if only the locals had a winning football team they could lend us for the next World Cup...