Author: George Mangion - Senior Partner PKF Malta
Published on The Malta Independent: 28th December 2021

This is a fantasy trip which takes us on a time machine travelling to Christmas in 2025. Our economy has nosedived having discovered a new wave replacing the Omicron virus which is different than previous mutations.  

Many front-line health workers may themselves be off work due to infection, putting further pressure on hospitals.  Again, nobody anticipated the extent of disease outbreaks, nor the resulting death toll caused by the Covid pandemic.

Diseases once considered restricted to developing countries reached plague levels in Europe perhaps due to the lack of enthusiasm for vaccinations among certain European cities.

The economy suffered as new EU rules restricting global minimum corporate tax to 15%, saw a number of top gaming companies expected to surrender their licenses.  Over 30 financial sector firms have also weighted anchor.  As a small consolation, a nascent sector of three new producers have been approved for the export of medicinal cannabis.  

Now, over 80,000 pot users have teamed up and formed a new political alliance of liberal voters including many millennials.  In Malta, the popularity of Christmas has waxed and waned since old times.  As private parties are restricted to 300 persons wearing masks amid frequent shutdowns - all these interfere with our social liberties.  In 2025, we feel that a lower glass ceiling is in place.

While Christmas celebrations were often elaborate in the past, enthusiasm is in decline. Some Christian leaders had become sceptical of pagan traditions that persisted in religious holidays and many families lack the resources to celebrate as they did in the past.  Only pensioners read Charles Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol as the rest are flummoxed with daily troubles.  Dickens felt strongly that Victorian Society ignored the poverty of its underclass. 

On the one hand, the rich enjoyed comfort and feasting at Christmas, and on the other hand we meet children forced to live in dreadful conditions.  The entire story is a social commentary about the plight of the poor while Dickens, himself, faced horrible poverty when his family was arrested and put into a debtor's prison.  

On reflection, have we removed inequality in our society in 2025?  Not entirely.  The 70,000 persons who are in the poverty trap still wait in the queue for the soup kitchen daily routine.  Other lower income families complain that inflation has raised its head, while end of year COLA relief is a joke and an insult.  

Cannabis has calmed avid users of CBD oils while most of the rest, reach out for deliverance inhaling THC oils laced with its hallucinating kicks.  Gone is the nostalgia and tradition we associate with Christmas in the past.  Over the years, many traditional attributes which endeared our lifestyle as a young nation have morphed into an ecosystem that focuses on the intrinsic value of time use and meaning of life.  Classic architecture in cities and villages have seen a metamorphism which saw traditional two storey houses being pulled down and replaced by soulless condominiums ten storeys high.  

Again, alternative building materials replace the use of the hitherto honey coloured indigenous stone.  On another aspect of domestic life, try to understand the increase in inequality faced by islanders.  This resulted in a change away from cheap labour (mostly third country nationals) with their replacement by automation resulting from higher investment in R&D.  Robots and mechanization carried favour with Castille boffins and grants are being offered to innovators flourishing in an expanded Life Sciences Park next to Mater Dei hospital.  

This knowledge factory is meant to attract talent and deliver innovation.  A change in automation over the years has enabled the community to achieve a higher standard of wellbeing, as less work leads to increased leisure time and flexibility over time use.  Our national leaders have been wise to make full use of automation thus reducing production cost and increase output for exports.  In reality, it means the rich add to their bounty and the poor sink deeper into the poverty hole.  Really and truly inequality reigns.  Regrettably, only the rich can afford to take advantage of friendly robots for tasks such as cleaning and organizing.  

Some of this technology can recognize human speech and respond to it to perform specific tasks around the house.  Smart phone apps running on 6G, can interact with one's home and gifted kids can handle the grocery list and book its delivery.  Moreover, homes of the super-rich living in stratospheric levels up in Mercury house have walls endowed with nanotechnology that can project outside views or using Metaverse project a real-time scenery from the beaches, giving the residents a holistic feel-good experience.  Walls display movies, collateral information, environmental information, data about public transportation and weather schedules. 

They provide information and entertainment but will also upgrade homes to a dynamic atmosphere by lighting scenarios matching to the time of day, the mood of the user, their health conditions. Homes can now generate a good part of their clean energy by PV panels.  Thanks to advances in communications, the Illuminati can enjoy an extravaganza of home entertainment systems which combine augmented reality, virtual reality with mediated reality movies.  

For the high heeled, they enjoy interactive home entertainment systems that intensify end-of-year festivities making it more attractive and sensual than ever before.  Changes in demographics continue to effect better life expectancy and combined with a lower birth rate this adds to the enigma of a larger number of older people at home.  

Naturally, this dictates a cautious approach how to plan our leisure time.  Again, it is not a rose garden - a grim situation in 2025 reflects doses of corruption, racism, avarice, job discrimination, plundering of national assets for the benefit of the privileged, widespread cronyism and nepotism.  In conclusion, it appears that islanders have not learned much from mistakes of the past and as a consequence, they must pay for sins of omission.

Author: George Mangion - Senior Partner PKF Malta
Published on The Malta Independent: 28th December 2021
Get in touch: info@pkfmalta.com