Scientific studies – yes or no?
Published:
February 25, 2009 at 7:07pm
I’m getting a little bit confused. Are scientific studies necessary, or are they not necessary? First Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar tells us that they’re not, and now here’s the Ghadira Coalition, telling us that they are.
The Ghadira Coalition is a newly formed environmental lobby which is calling for scientific studies about the road project at Ghadira. It’s made up of Alternattiva Demokratika, Zminijietna – Voice of the Left (formerly the Communist Party), the Science Students’ Society, Moviment Graffitti, Friends of the Earth Malta, Inizjamed, the Labour Youth Forum, Greenhouse, the General Workers’ Union Youth Section, and some representatives of farmers.
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Aren’t Alternattiva Demokratika, Zminijietna – Voice of the Left, and Moviment Graffitti represented by the same individual?
I have nothing against scientific studies, of course, but this declaration is a bit superfluous. Nobody ever said that there would be no studies, and no project of this type has ever been undertaken without studies. Presumably, the organisations who make up this coalition do not subscribe to the slander published by FAA against EIA consultants.
What I find incongruous and irritating, however, is the line-up of organisations on that list. What does Inizjamed, for example, have to do with the whole issue? I’ve had a quick look at their website and they say that Inizjamed is “committed towards the regeneration of culture and artistic expression in the Maltese Islands and actively promotes a greater awareness of the cultures of the Mediterranean.” So where does the Għadira road come in?
The same can be said of the GWU youth section and the Science Students Society. We would never expect Din L-Art Ħelwa to comment about a collective agreement, so why does the GWU feel it has to say something about an environmental topic?
Il-Gizwiti kien jonqos ma dawn ta’ din il-coalition gdida.
Hmmm – seeing that list gives me the feeling that no matter what the government will propose it will be shot down.
U kif l-Federazzjoni kaccaturi nassaba konservazzjonisti ma’ ddahlux fil-Koalizzjoni? Bilhaqq …. Greenhouse hija xi ghaqda ta’ dawk li ghandhom kamra ghas-sajf hadra li qiegheda issebbah l-gholja ta’ l-Ghadira? Darba xi hadd kiteb li “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Il-GWU ghandha interess ghax ghandha ishma fid-Danish Village.
[Daphne – Does anyone know whether the ‘farmers’ representatives’ mentioned in the coalition are the Ghadqa Bdiewa Progressivi, led by that vociferous man who in the forefront of the battle against EU membership? If so, then this is not a new coalition at all, but same old, same old.]
I imagine the so-called farmers’ representatives are the farmers who have title to the land over which the road would pass.
Serious organisations like BirdLife and Nature Trust are also wary of this project but it is highly unlikely they would join a ‘coalition’ made up almost exclusively of political entities. AD know this and if they really wanted to be helpful they would remain in the background and allow the real environmental NGOs to do their job. AD’s attitude today is as cynically opportunistic as it was in Harry’s time and I think that, at this point, environmentalists are finding them more of a hindrance than anything else.
And why is it, Antoine Vella, that you think that you have the right to tell everybody and their collective cat that their opinion is irrelevant? You most obviously think that YOUR opinion, about anything under the sun, is very valid.
[Daphne – Suffering from Astrid disease, Moggy? There’s the world of difference between venturing an opinion on a blog – or writing an opinion column, as I do – and organising yourself into a lobby that claims to have authority and the right to decide for others.]
No one has the authority or the right to decide for others, but people have the right to form pressure groups, apply pressure and lobby. In the end, it’s the powers that be, or the relevant authorities, who/ which decide – just as the Archbishop and the Prime Minister decided not to go through with the Co-Cathedral plans. FAA may like to think that it was down to them that things fell through. In reality, the Archbishop seems not to have liked the proposal (and had already written in saying so), and the Prime Minister was forced to change tack after he allegedly faced a mini-revolution within his parliamentary group.
[Daphne – Actually, plenty of people and institutions have the authority and the right to decide for others: schools, examination boards, governments, courts of justice, the Song for Europe committee, parents of young children, the police, prison wardens, parole boards -shall I go on? Just to make things clear: I don’t object to lobby groups. Why on earth would somebody like me do so? No, what I object to is imprecision, misinformation, and playing dirty to get your way. Oh, and pulling out all the stops to by-pass the institutional planning process, on the basis that you have no faith in it. That’s exactly what Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici used to say about the law courts, and what Mintoff used to say about the university. The fact that you and others might feel comfortable with Astrid and so might be oblivious to this slippage into mob mentality does not change the fact that it is no different to the prevalent attitude in the 1970s and 1980s. After all, lots of people felt comfortable with the aristocracy of the workers, didn’t they? These are just different people, but the attitude remains the same.]
Who says I’m comfortable with Astrid? All I’ve ever said was that it was not the FAA that got anything done in this case, but that the decision (in the end) came from the PM for reasons of his own (and of his party’s), which had nothing to do with the yapping of the well-meaning pressure group. The fact that the Archbishop seems to have been dead against the idea must also have carried some weight (probably quite a lot).
Re your first sentence: I totally agree, and that is why I said that it is the powers that be or the various authorities which should finally take the decision. In this case, it was the PM and the Archbishop, who appoints half the members of the foundation which oversees things at the Cathedral.
Astrid? I don’t even know her properly. Met her once, a long time ago , when FAA was still a twinkle in her eye.
[Daphne – That’s just the point: the prime minister and the archbishop are NOT the powers that be. They are in representation of the OWNERS of the site – the state and the Catholic Church – and not the DECISION-MAKERS ON PLANNING. How hard is this to understand. They did not take a decision on whether the project could go ahead. They withdrew THEIR OWN project because of the chaos created by people like Astrid and the FAA, which led to opportunistic parliamentarians seeking advantage for themselves by using this issue. In other words, it was the equivalent of you applying to the MEPA for a swimming-pool permit and then deciding that you don’t want that swimming-pool after all because your neighbours were threatening to throw petrol into it every night if you inconvenienced them with excavation works.]
I don’t relish the so-called “slippage into mob mentality”, although I do appreciate it when people are allowed to express their opinion, with the latter being given its due weight. There is a difference, you know, between this and mob rule.
In reality, what happened in this case was not mob rule. If all members of Gonzi’s parliamentary group had been prepared to vote for the project, there is no way that things would have come to this point.
[Daphne – Then the appropriate stance for you to take would have been to say: “Give it a rest, Astrid. Let the project go through the planning process, and after that, we’ll talk.” Instead, you’re glad that the project was stopped BEFORE the planning stage. Parliament is NOT the forum for project approvals. The MEPA is. How far we’ve come, and what a long way we still have to go. You know, Malta is a typical example of what happens when you impose a democratic system on people who are strangers to it, rather than letting them develop it in their own time, out of their own culture. I’m beginning to think that left to our own devices, we would not have developed into a democracy at all. Anarchy and dictatorships seem to be our contradictory preferences.]
Daphne comments: “You know, Malta is a typical example of what happens when you impose a democratic system on people who are strangers to it, rather than letting them develop it in their own time, out of their own culture. I’m beginning to think that left to our own devices, we would not have developed into a democracy at all. Anarchy and dictatorships seem to be our contradictory preferences”.
Leo Said remarks: Madonna, int domt ma ndunajt!
Daphne, please stop insinuating that I cannot understand the mechanics of what’s (or rather was) going on here! Yes, the Prime Minister and the Archbishop represent the owners of the site, which was being managed by a foundation/council. One of the owners seems not to have been in agreement with what the foundation was proposing from the word go – and the second is “top dog” of a whole group of people making up the Government of Malta, a few of whom (for their diverse various reasons) were not in agreement.
The Prime Minister is also the Minister responsible for MEPA, as far as I know. MEPA is an authority in which the public, in general, have little faith, for various reasons – many based on personal experience, and others, based on what they have seen acted out very much in public. No, this was not simply a case similar to my (theoretically) withdrawing an application for a swimming pool. It was much, much more complicated than that.
Re your second reply – yes, sometimes I wish things were not stalled in their infancy, if only to know the truth about things – who was wrong and who right. But then, is one ever guaranteed really getting to know the truth here?
[Daphne – I’m not insinuating anything because I don’t even know – or care, really – who you are. I am merely appalled that someone who studied and practised science for many years can take so long to begin to understand that maybe it wasn’t such a great thing that the process was stalled before we got to know the ins and outs of it. By the process of the EIA alone, we could have learned a great deal about matters as yet not investigated. For that alone, it would have been worth the exercise, for the general public if not for the foundation. I am quite sure that you, like me, would have preferred to have access – even just for the knowledge it contains – to a thumping great EIA, rather than having to content ourselves with the nonsensical haranguing of a heritage expert called Francesca Meilaq who thinks the tapestries were made at Les Gobelins, and that an underground museum has the exact same environmental conditions as the tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Forget the actual museum; we’ve missed out on a lot of valuable research there.]
Oh, and besides, I’m sure you will know that said planning application has not yet been withdrawn.
[Daphne – Of course, the Labour spokesman on the MEPA, who sits on the MEPA board as Labour’s official representative, and who would have voted on the project (presumably against), announced it in a press release. Now you would imagine that when you sit on a board, you don’t go about town announcing details relevant to the organisation on a unilateral basis, because you would get fired or earn the displeasure of your fellow board members. But political party representatives appear to believe they are exempt from the normal codes of behaviour. Incidentally, the fact that the application has not been withdrawn is not significant. I imagine that the three monsinjuri, Richard Cachia Caruana, Paul Attard and Philip Farrugia Randon had better things to do over the last few days than rush to withdraw an application for a dead-duck project. If it were me, I wouldn’t bother to withdraw it. It’s not as though you have to pay a fee for every day it’s pending.]
Moggy, did you read in my comment that any person’s opinion is irrelevant? I said that AD should make up their minds whether they are an environmental NGO or a political party. In the latter case they should behave like a party and let the real NGOs get on with their job. I know from experience that genuine NGO volunteers dislike being taken in tow by politicians.
Greenhouse is an environmental group of university students; the rest are gatecrashers. Don’t you find it strange that a poetry society – or a trade union for that matter – should be concerned with scientific studies about a road? People can belong to different societies you know: a poet and a trade unionist who are also interested in environmental matters can join an appropriate NGO and work for the environment within that organisation. The identity of an NGOs is determined by, among other things, its field of work and if it behaves erratically, being a bit of this and a bit of that, it loses character and credibility. The Għadira Coalition is not a lobby group, it’s a potpourri.
[Daphne – I am merely appalled that someone who studied and practised science for many years can take so long to begin to understand that maybe it wasn’t such a great thing that the process was stalled before we got to know the ins and outs of it.]
I’m not “beginning” to understand anything. I’ve never discussed the EIA until now. No, it would have done no harm. However, I’d still be trembling in my boots if any (such deep) excavation did take place so close to St. John’s.
[Daphne – OK, Moggy. So are you now trembling in your boots at the thought of a deep excavation in front of the Grandmaster’s Palace? Because it’s going to happen, and minus any screaming or ‘geological reports’ from FAA. Surely you can see that the two cases are identical, given that the geological conditions beneath St John’s are the same as those beneath St George’s, and the Grandmaster’s Palace is just as wonderful a building – bar the Mattia Preti ceiling – as the cathedral? Sorry, but I just don’t buy into a scenario where what is ‘extremely risky and dangerous’ for the cathedral is not similarly risky and dangerous for the palace. Is it all right to risk the palace, then?]
Daphne, look at my last comment. I am amazed at the inconsistency of it all. In my opinion it is risky for both.