No, I don’t – I mean OUR TRACK RECORD. Just look at the canopy which has recently been erected over Hagar Qim and you’ll know what I mean. It’s atrocious – and I mean atrocious. Look at the centre which has been built in the vicinity. It’s unsightly. It dwarfs the temples and makes them look insignificant. Look at what happened to the horrible canopy with the first gust of wind – you definitely know what happened. Were experts and civil engineers involved? – I think so. Cringe.

[Daphne – I am so glad you brought that up. I raised the issue myself in response to another FAA supporter on this blog: where in God’s name was the FAA when that was built? And I answered my own question: the horizons of the FAA do not extend beyond issues which capture the imagination – such as it is – of ABC1 voters from Sliema and suchlike. They don’t care about the temples and barely know where they are. They can’t be romanticised with tales of infidels and Christians.]

People in the know are saying that the funds will not be lost. Again, we will have to wait and see who is right: they or you. [Daphne – On the contrary, people “in the know”, including one person whose job it is to work on such applications (and who posted a comment on this blog) have explained quite clearly that the funds will be lost UNLESS SOMEBODY SITS DOWN AND WORKS ON A PROJECT WHICH IS ACCEPTED BY THE APPROVING BODY. Devising and working on a project is a hugely expensive and time-consuming exercise in itself. So unless some government organisation gets off its butt and goes through all this again, it’s just not going to happen. I have to point out that the recent experience would have served to demoralise and demotivate. There’s not much incentive for slogging away at a proposal only to have it shot down like this – and on top of all that, to be exposed to demands for your resignation. Would you bother? I wouldn’t. Now you know why hardly anything gets done here and why so much capital is being taken out of the country to be invested elsewhere.]

I am hardly interested in what private investors do with their money (as long as it does not ruin what is left of our island). They can dig a hole from here to Catania for all I care. Good luck to them. [Daphne – You should take an interest because ultimately, it affects your own life and income, either positively or negatively.]

However, Daphne, you should be humble enough to admit that Lawrence Gonzi and his closest aides have once again painfully shown where their respect limits are.

Go ahead and bang (your head) – I’ve been doing some pretty hard banging (of heads) on this side of cyber-space too. I’m not saying that Valletta is the oldest and most beautiful city in the world, with the most beautiful cathedral, but it’s what we’ve got – and no one can deny that it is pretty magnificent!

As far as money goes, I’m not interested in it if it means the destruction of our heritage, which I am fiercely proud of. [Daphne – You’re not interested in money, but sad to say, it’s money that pays for the maintenance and restoration of heritage buildings. And that money must come from somewhere.] I am extremely appreciative of the beautiful things/ buildings found in other countries, but I am most interested in what we have here. No risk is small enough when it comes to St. John’s Co-Cathedral, and I won’t be changing my mind about this.

The EU funds which were ear-marked for the project, I have read elsewhere, will not be lost but can be used for other projects as long as they are linked to tourist industry. One will have to wait and see which version is the correct one. [Daphne – You don’t seem to understand how the process works. The funds are not handed over for ‘tourism’. An organisation must devise a project, research it, apply for the funds – a protracted and complicated process – and then, only if the project is found to be suitable and approved for funding are the funds allocated to it. If no projects are approved within the restricted time-frame, the money is lost.]

Finally, one supposes that the Midi Consortium was backed by a hefty insurance policy to compensate for any possible damage caused by the excavation which took place at Tigne Point. No amount of insurance money will compensate for damage done to a unique and irreplaceable cathedral. [Daphne – That is most emphatically not the point, and this is precisely why I keep on underlining the fact that lack of knowledge about how money works is a common factor among those who oppose this defunct project. When I brought up the excavation at Tigne, I wasn’t speaking about damage or insurance. I was speaking about the fact that when millions of euros in private capital are invested in an excavation project for a building, that excavation has to work – because the project is dependent on it – and insurance just isn’t the point here. If the project is designed to incorporate a vast underground area which is crucial to the feasibility of the project as a whole, then the developers would have been 100% certain that it was possible before going ahead with it. Private money does not get thrown about and wasted, and it’s invested on the basis of factual reports, not of opinions.]

Personally, I care more about what happens to Valletta then I would care about Manhatten or the millions coming from the EU where Malta happens to be a net contributer anyway. I know, I am terribly insular but terribly insular people also have voting rights and that include voting IVA for the EU for a greater say in issues of national importance.

[Daphne – Whether you ‘care’ about Manhattan or not is quite beside the point. This is the point: that if all of that was possible on reclaimed marshland, then so is an underground museum outside a cathedral.]

No civil engineer will ever give you a 100% guarantee that a five-storey excavation so close to such a precious building (in my opinion anyway) as St. John’s Co-Cathedral will definitely proceed without side-effects to the said building. Even if, in this case, it is just fissures in the structure of the building and damage to the many frescos in the Cathedral, it would still be an untold tragedy, and simply NOT WORTH THE RISK TAKEN. It needn’t be the whole building toppling to the ground. Accidents have happened – contractors, as far as I know, always work under the supervision of an architect/ civil engineer (or so the law demands), who is responsible for whatever happens, also during excavation. This means that even in cases were tragedy ensued, one presumes that civil engineers were involved. Re the Midi Project at Tigne Point: there was no precious 17th-century cathedral teetering on the edge of that “hole” – or so I believe.

[Daphne – One feels like banging one’s head against the wall at this point. Do you honestly imagine that Valletta is the oldest and most beautiful city on earth, with the most precious cathedral? Do you really imagine that there is no excavation to depths greater than five storeys in the other more ancient capitals of Europe – and I don’t mean on the outskirts or in the suburbs? Where are all you people living, if not in la-la land? Do you fondly believe that all structures above and below ground everywhere in the world are built on the back of a “100 per cent guarantee”? Here’s another common factor I’ve spotted among those of you who have been objecting to the project: you don’t understand money. Do the two go hand-in-hand, I wonder? Excavations of that nature cost millions – as we know from the funds that have just been lost. In fact, a significant proportion, from what I know of building, of the expenditure would have gone on excavation. There was no ‘”precious 17th century building” on Tigne peninsula, but there were several million euros of private investment backing involved, and with that kind of capital risk, you just don’t grab a JCB and start digging. This is so unbelievable.]