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One method to do away with some blubber and unwind after a horrendous week in the office is to get away from the unbearable urban jungle and take a walk in the countryside.
So last Sunday I did just that with a friend. It was late morning, a good time to avoid hunters. It was a bright and warm day, so thankfully there were few migrating birds, fewer shots and hardly any of these pitiable hunters.
So off to Kuncizzjoni and along the Victoria lines, trying very hard not to look at the crumbling walls and the mounds of rubble.
All over Malta and Gozo, the countryside is marked with RTO or riservato – reserved for hunters, land that is surely most of the time leased by people with no title to the land or simply squatted upon. Ramblers have learnt to ignore the signs and just walk on. Even remote archaeological sites have RTO daubed on them.
This time it was not the agonising hunter screaming and shouting, but an American. Yes, an American in Kuncizzjoni.
Now I have nothing against Americans, but to be stopped by a yank declaring to be a Mr Cummins warning you, in no uncertain terms, that he’ll be reporting us to the police is simply unbearable.
I informed Mr Cummins we were just walking in the countryside, bothering nobody and that we would be on our way. When he insisted of acting like a Texas ranger, I asked him: “how can I be sure you are the owner?”
He replied in an unbearable drawl: “How do I know if you are not here to steal?”
I looked around and saw nothing but garigue, rocks and shrivelled wild plants. “Steal?! Steal what?”
“I am going to have a farm here,” he replied. I just thought that this was the right moment to sing Old Macdonald eeh-aah-eeh-aah-ooo. Cummins claimed he would have olive trees but how he would be growing olive trees on rocks beats me, but then with the Americans in Iraq and the Americans on the moon and Americans everywhere, everything is possible.
I turned round to walk off, when he insisted that I give him my details.
I provided him with my Christian name and surname and my ID number too. “My name is Saviour…”
“What is that name?”
“Saviour, just like in the Bible,” I retorted (the Americans have this thing with the Bible, they think they invented God apart from French fries).
“Aren’t you going to wait for the police?” he screamed. I giggled and just turned away: “They know where to find me if they want me.”
And we continued our walk along the Victoria lines. “Just the right thing to unwind for the weekend,” I told my friend. And we laughed.
Well if it isn’t Mr Cummins, it has got to be the hunters. A news story refers to the resignation of Joe Sultana, Malta’s most reputable ornithologist and a former Ornis Committee chairman and until Wednesday night, the advisor to the Ornis Committee.
The untold story is that Joe Sultana has had it with double standards. When some 40 troglodyte hunters dressed in camouflage fatigues looking like some South American paramilitaries protested in front of Castille that they were being harassed, the police under clear instructions from guess who, issued a memo instructing their officers to turn a blind eye to certain hunting infringements.
If Charles Darwin was around he would have asked the 40 or so ‘gorillas’ to stand in as examples for his Ape to Man theory. Officers in the police corps are clearly demoralised.
The Prime Minister’s new way of doing politics is definitely leaving results. It makes you want to swallow a valium and look the other way. Perhaps Gonzi should write a novel about the success of his new politics and call it The New Way of Succumbing to Lobby Groups.
The Police Commissioner, one of the more impressive elements in our executive, this very week reacted noisily to a BirdLife Malta statement. BirdLife said the police were sitting on their arses and John Rizzo did not like that. For someone who has his front door torched and who lives directly in front of a police station I could perhaps add: what’s new?
It was very clear that John Rizzo’s statement was written by someone with a political office. I don’t know anyone who could possibly possess the ability to write good English at the police HQ.
I have never known a worse situation in bird hunting. In my 30 odd years of bird watching, this has been the worst. The European Commission is clearly in no rush to put pressure on the government, a perfect case of the sleeping beauty. And with no pressure from local MEPs who have little or no interest in raising the issue of hunting, the Commission is destined to keep up its sloth’s pace.
Neither is the local EU delegation headed by the ‘energetic’ Joanna Drake at Ta’ Xbiex in any hurry to get involved in the matter. Despite all their staff and free time, they cannot even get themselves to answer a question. Try phoning the delegation after 2pm on a Friday. They are all out.
The hunters that shoot down these magnificent birds are complaining they are being harassed, and Lino Farrugia has the gall to say this and everyone looks on. He knows that in September anyone who hunts is primarily interested in gunning down a protected bird, rather than shooting turtle doves.
Lino is a nice kind of guy, so nice that he issued a press release with the identification tags of police officers who apprehended hunters for carrying out their noble duty of killing birds, but neither John Rizzo or George Pullicino or the PM’s office or Tonio Borg felt the need to react.
Lino Farrugia is the man who made a fool of himself at the European Parliament elections but still manages to get his way with the politicians. In 1998 he even got Lawrence Gonzi to sign a piece of paper that he would not change the hunting laws.
Needless to say Gonzi’s foresight stopped just short of election day.
Another Gonzi-like figure is Roderick Galdes, Labour’s man at MEPA. He talks like a politician, that is mincing his words when it comes to difficult topics such as hunting. The environment spokesman for the MLP is obviously very cautious over what to say about hunting.
So once again, hunting remains a taboo issue for politicians scared to lose out on their voting base. What chickens. Next time you hear Lawrence Gonzi talk about the European dream, take a long rusty needle and pierce it directly into your buttocks. Alternatively, just do what I am going to do on election day, take a day trip to Siracusa and stuff yourself with a sumptuous meal.
Austin Gatt’s defence of John Camilleri’s appointment as editorial board chief at Malta’s state television is to be expected. Camilleri’s appointment is no surprise. Since he departed from his post as private secretary from Eddie Fenech Adami’s side, he has occupied an amazing variety of political posts that not even the Guinness Book of Records can fathom.
He is not an incompetent man. But neither is my grand-aunt who’s 12 feet under.
Austin, as we affectionately call him, justified John’s appointment by reminding us that Dominic Fenech, also on the editorial board, was once the Labour Party’s secretary general. How very funny, Austin.
What Austin didn’t say is that Dominic Fenech, a very good friend of Lino Spiteri, is no longer in the good books of New Labour. And that is why he is still at PBS.
The joke this week is Molly’s statement that great progress has been had in Iraq since the invasion.
US ambassador Bordonaro obviously has a job to do, but no one, not even the marines, will believe anyone’s story that Iraq is a better place. Saddam was a bastard, but so was Pinochet and all the other dictators. But then the Americans did not invade Chile (well, the CIA did actually, to install this murderer); they invaded Iraq and see what tension and a mess we have in that region.
And now to Chris Grech’s statement on our back page. The Dhalia real estate chief argues that the addition of so much more land to the building zones has only favoured speculators and will not lead to a stabilisation of prices, but a rise.
Now, can all those apologists for the government and George Pullicino come up with a nasty response to the man who surely is someone who knows something about real estate?
And please stop all this bull**** about Vote George, Get Lorry. Replace it with: “Forget George, Vote Roderick and then what?”
The Pope has declared that he plans to do away with limbo. I am devastated. I have no chance. I always dreamt of a place in the grey zone. I now know that my future is in hell. See you there, George!
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