Sunday, 7th February 2010
DOING GOOD
On Saturday, after the thuggish brawl that passes for a game of football when Everton and those other louts from Liverpool meet, and about thirty minutes into the bullying of Portsmouth by that other lot, the wife importuned me to go for a stroll.
We started out from Calypso's Cave, and with a view like that, you have to take a look at it. The view, I mean, because the cave itself is sealed off with coppers' tape and a crowd barrier. I'm not entirely sure it's not a crime scene, perhaps it's where the plot to dress up like nuns and priests next Saturday in Nadur is being hatched and the Rector has discovered it and despatched a platoon of Malta's finest to nip apostasy and irreverence in the bud.
Back to the view, it made me wonder whether the people who were kicking up such a fuss about the development that had been proposed for the hill side below the cave (leading down to the bars that do such a roaring trade in summer) had ever actually stood there and looked down.
I say (more properly, write) this because from the railings looking down, the buildings that are already there form an apparently continuous - and dilapidated and consequently displeasing to the eye - run of stone and concrete. I'm not saying that the buildings that there are should ever have been given a permit in the first place. The genius who allowed them to be built should be pilloried, presumably in memory, for all time, though the buildings have been there for pretty much as long as I can remember.
Consequently, I am unable, no doubt to the eternal chagrin of Labour's Babes, to blame the Mintoff Era for these excrescences, for all that I suspect, probably out of sheer spite, that they were built then.
But there they are and there they stand, it being highly doubtful that it's even conceivable that the land will ever be returned to what it should be. In the harsh reality of commercial dealing, no-one is going to pretty them up, either, unless there's some recompense at the end of it and I can imagine that the assorted ramblers and tree-huggers that seem to spend their time watching for a sight of a lesser-spotted bulldozer or listening for the sound of the speckled jack-hammer would kick up such a fuss if even a lawnmower were to be deployed that the game wouldn't be worth the candle.
So there's not much of a hope in hell that the crappy buildings that infest the landscape are ever going to be improved on. The options are not many, to be sure. One that occurs to me is that very strictly proscribed permits for a commercially viable development be given. The permits should be extremely strict and stringent controls on compliance with swingeing penalties imposed, leading to a finished product that is less hateful on the eye than the current disaster.
Alternatively, the site could be bought from the owners at its real commercial value, that is to say taking into account their reasonable expectation of profit as before the intervention of the nay-sayers.
What are the odds of any of the above happening? About the same as Arsenal winning the Premiership, I would imagine. I'm not naive enough to think that had development been allowed, there would not have been a clear and present danger that a larger blot on the landscape would have been perpetrated, but the fault here would lie with the enforcers.
And the fault for there being the mess that there is lies, to a slight extent, with the people who stopped the development in its tracks, for saying only "no" and not lobbying for a compromise which would have remedied the mess. Of course, they were well-meaning and as such I shouldn't really be dumping on them, but it's sad when such intelligent people don't think things all the way through.
There's a danger that the same thing, in a different context, is going to happen with the Nadur Carnival. From a truly unique experience, the whole thing is being transmogrified into a mainstream event, which means it will become as soul-less as the Valletta one, with jobsworths patrolling the defile' making sure that (their version of) good taste and decorum is preserved.
I mean, for the sake of all that's sacred, the Nadur Local Council is even boasting that it has drafted in extra cops to make sure that order is kept and the law observed. All we need are a few extra traffic wardens to hand out a few extra tickets are handed out (and maybe a couple of tow-trucks while they're at it) and a couple of exorcists and the game will be well and truly up.
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Comments
Continue building and ruin our heritage and countryside then let's see who you can sell that to.
Why would I buy Malta when there is Spain, Greece, Italy, France, Sardegna, Corsica, Ibiza .... are we really so full of ourselves?
Let me spell it out ... construction is dead. Whoever keeps saying its going to make a comeback is not reading the writing on the wall.
It is just as dead for us as it is for the Spanish, except that while we waste energy with this unsustainable sector they are finding better ways to carry out a lung transplant.
Go on, waste money building a parliament on stilts while Valletta crumbles, protect rents-for-life/votes while roofs collapse within the city, disregard the arts and stuff the ignorant population with a poor excuse of an open air theater, drag your feet to spend 300K to protect a 5000 year old structure while at the same time 50M are spent on a smoking bus ...
... disgusting and insulting
did you even bother to understand what ABC wrote?
It is dripping with sarcasm and what was writ builds its logic upon blaming the Mintoff era for what is and assumes that there is no other alternative but to let it be developed simply because there will be no financial reward otherwise for anybody.
I am disgusted by this logic that has become all but current. Who gives a toss who is to blame now?
No, the right thing to do is force the developer to return the site back to the way it was and force them/him to pay for it if they do not do so out of their own free will. Is there not one single person on this island with the backbone to do the right thing anymore?
I simply cannot believe that we are having this conversation in the first place unless of course ulterior motives exist to be saying such things.
I love reading Rudyard Kipling but sad to say his logic does give me a stomach ache.
"I say ... the buildings that are already there form an apparently continuous - and dilapidated and consequently displeasing to the eye ... I'm not saying that the buildings that there are should ever have been given a permit in the first place. The genius who allowed them to be built should be pilloried, ... no doubt to the eternal chagrin of Labour's Babes, to blame the Mintoff Era for these excrescences, ... probably out of sheer spite, that they were built then.
But there they are and there they stand, it being highly doubtful that it's even conceivable that the land will ever be returned to what it should be. In the harsh reality of commercial dealing, no-one is going to pretty them up, either, unless there's some recompense at the end of it and I can imagine that the assorted ramblers and tree-huggers that seem to spend their time watching for a sight of a lesser-spotted bulldozer or listening"
Dr Borg Cardona doesn't need me to defend him but, since I happen to agree with him, I would just like to point out that his mild criticism isn't levelled indiscriminately at all environmentalists but only at the less than reasonable and more than strident ones. In your less than objective and more than biased eyes this amounts to sitting back and ignoring the devastation to the environment.
It's your right and privilege to go through life feeling disgusted, however, so I won't insist that you cheer up.
I read your articles and blogs because I appreciate very much your english writing skills. However ever since your attack on NGOs a few blogs ago I find it very hard to accept that a man of your undoubted intelligence can not only sit back and ignore the devastation caused to our limited environment but also be flippant about it. It is irrelevant whether the blues or reds started it, fact is our countryside and heritage has been sacrifised in the name of creating unsustainable commercial activity. Yet like the rest you keep behaving like nothing should be done about it.
... And for the record I find such behaviour against NGOs insulting and no I do not enjoy myself.
So a lawyer of your calibre did not consider the option of forcing errant developers to return a site to its original state or the gov does it and send them the bill?
disgusting ...
Is it me being too alarmist or have we REALLY gone THIS mad...?
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/it-is-now-mathematically-impossible-to-pay-off-the-u-s-national-debt
yet...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2010/Feb/04/house_agrees_to__1_9_trillion_more_debt.html
.... and in the UK:
http://notayesmanseconomics.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/a-new-unconventional-monetary-policy-for-the-ukwhy-did-the-bank-of-england-not-tell-us-yesterday
???!!
Today's leader tells us that The Prime Minister ...must ...then seek to silence ill-motivated voices for good
when the need is felt to not only silence voices, but silence them for good, voices that may be back-benchers or carnival revellers, 'deamons' would have been unleashed who will decide what is ill-motivated and what is not...
now with a government committed to, iner alia, bring forward our eduction hand in hand with church authorities and the like, and still retaining the committed support of liberals, than no degree of the unilateral-silencing-of-voices-we-do-not-like should suprise us unduly.