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In the Northwest of France, in a place called Brittany, the annual rainfall is around 900mm. Wherever you look, the landscape takes the spectre of a luxuriant green. And when it rains it does not drizzle, it pours.
So it was ‘surprise, surprise’ when the local boring version of The Times in this part of rural France reported the threat of golf courses to Brittany’s water supply, and I raced for my dictionary to read on.
Here in a region better known as Bretagne, with its countless rivulets, rivers, lakes and a maritime climate, a newspaper report talks about the concerns of using up water to keep a golf course turf green. They describe it as a serious environmental crisis.
In Malta the annual rainfall is more like 250mm a year.
This is a nation where most farmers make use of illegal boreholes, pumping up water from the water table without restraint and more interestingly, puncture water pipe works to allow expensively produced water to flood their fields. This is the country where the price of water is still heavily subsidised and where washing a car with buckets of freshwater is no problem at all.
This is a country that uses up 25 per cent of its fuel oil-based power station output for running energy-hungry desalination plants. And this is also the country where the government cannot add sums and replace the red numbers with black ones. And yet, the government seems unperturbed.
The future of a golf course has nothing to do with tree hugging activities. It has a lot to do with that scarce commodity they now call common sense.
Here in the arid, hot Mediterranean where you can fry an egg on your car bonnet, it had to be an environment minister to announce a golf course. George Pullicino, who portrays himself as the Christian-democrat with a social and environmental conscience, is this minister. His press events for his turtle watching and return to the wild have done little to enhance his environmental credentials in the eyes of the local environmentalists.
In the rush to protest over Xaghra l-Hamra, ‘the extremists’ as this 18-year-old government would prefer to label them, have asked for the locality to be declared an EU Natura 2000 site.
Unknown to them, the would be golf areas are already Natura 2000 sites. You do not have to declare a site to be a Natura 2000 site. If the habitat and its flora and fauna tally with a description in the annexes of Natura 2000 then George is legally obliged to protect them. And protect he must.
It does not stop here. The directives are more draconian than one can imagine. For example, if at Mizieb the heartland off Mellieha and the self declared enclave of the Maltese hunter, it is proven beyond doubt that the Aleppo trees on the promontory are the resting ground of a protected EU bird, then automatically the whole Mizieb area becomes a no hunting zone.
Pullicino can run roughshod over the spirit of the EU directives, but he will be playing with fire.
More sinister is his or MEPA’s decision to withhold parts of the Maltese countryside from the status of Special Areas of Protection. A case in point is the fact that only bits and parts of Ta’ Cenc are being selected now, so late in the day.
Why did this not happen before? All Dingli cliffs and the environs around it were selected as an SPA, then why not Ta’ Cenc?
Nevertheless, if we go by the track record of this 18-year-old government then it is highly probable that George will shoot down all the niceties in the EU directives and do it his way. He will be no different from the many politicians in Europe who have great difficulty living up to the high European standards.
George has another headache. How can he reconcile his position as Agriculture minister and defend the scandalous expropriation of agricultural land at Xaghra l-Hamra?
What is strange is Labour’s complete silence on the matter.
Harry Vassallo & Co will have to do some proper homework on this one and a little more modesty on Harry’s part would do wonders to attract many of the disheartened Nationalists who have seemingly temporarily abandoned their 18-year-old government.
There are other factors which should not be forgotten. The selection of the two areas is not a coincidence. It is very much linked to the projects. As one good tourism specialist explained, it is not the golf that makes the money, but the real estate and the accommodation that the 30,000 golfers that were cooked up in a press conference will be using throughout their visit to the Maltese islands.
It is clear that those who have a direct interest in seeing golf next to their hotel complex are very happy people. Remarkably the old arguments are being resurrected “X’naghmel? Inwaqqaf il-progett ghal bicca haxixa” (“What? Stop my project for a weed?”).
Well, just in case Romwald of MTA fame utters another word about golf, he should be reminded that in France, the mighty railway company SNCF was obliged to reroute the multi-million euro TGV trains because of… a small habitat that served as the home of a dragonfly.
This is what the European Union can be all about.
As the handsomely salaried Cachia Caruanas, Busuttils and Drakes can easily confirm to their sceptic audience.
When it comes to the quality of life, retaining open spaces, asking hunters to put their guns down in Spring, putting a tight lid on habitat destruction, asking people to recycle, taxing pollution and waste, the politicians do little but talk!
It is the walk we are earnestly waiting for.
There has been much talk of a lame Labour opposition (LP). It is not so much the opposition that worries me but the lack of ideas by a self-starved socialist opposition. What follows are a number of questions that I would swim a mile to get an answer for. They are the questions many curious readers would love answers for:
How does the LP hope to keep the costs down at Mater Dei?
What are the LP’s plan for reducing the number of people working with government?
How will the LP turn Air Malta’s losses around without reducing the workforce?
Will the LP reappoint the divorce commission?
How will it make changes at PBS?
Will the LP retain Lou Bondi and Peppi Azzopardi at PBS?
Will it appoint directors on public companies according to their merits or their allegiance?
Will Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi be appointed Chairman of the board of fresh fruit and vegetables?
Will ambitious candidate Edward Zammit Lewis see his appointment on the Pesticides board? Will the unimpressive Gino Cauchi become Chairman of the Pixxina Nazzjonali?
Will Abramovich’s lawyer Jose Herrera after failing to get elected see his chance of being appointed ambassador to Moscow?
Will the diplomatic corps be political or civil service driven?
Will the LP keep the Brussels offices at Rue Archimedes or sell it?
What will the LP do different with detention centres?
Will the LP agree to a golf course at Ta’ Cenc and Xaghra l-Hamra?
How will the LP stop land speculation?
Will the LP ban spring hunting in accordance with the Birds Directive?
How will the LP attract Foreign Direct Investment to Malta?
Will the LP reduce taxes and which ones?
Will the LP reduce company tax from 35 per cent?
Will the LP change the income tax bands?
Will the LP impose VAT receipts on professionals such as doctors, architects and lawyers?
Will the LP differentiate between VAT for consumables and luxury products?
How will the LP fight the black economy?
Will the LP reform the warden system?
What will the LP change in the present tourism strategy?
How and when will the LP implement a pension reform?
Will the LP change the present record low national insurance contribution?
Needless to say I should send some of these questions to Alfred Sant’s secretariat. I do not expect an answer. But I have this funny feeling that many of these questions simply do not have answers.
In his homily last Monday at the Selmun chapel, an elderly priest lauded the Knights of Malta.
“They would have the gall and sense to keep the Turks out of Europe,” he told the astounded congregation.
Was it REM, who had that song, losing my religion!
saviourbalzan@newsworksltd.com
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