The green queen who doesn't want EIAs
You’d think that an environmentalist would be fighting for more and more environmental impact assessments. But guess what? I’ve found one who doesn’t want them. So instead of using environmental impact assessments, how are we going to assess the environmental impact of a project?
We’ll ask Astrid Vella of the FAA, and that man Joe Magro Conti who was with me at university, and who is suddenly an expert (but I’m not, of course, even though I knew a hell of a lot more than he did, which is why I was on the Dean’s List and he wasn’t – sorry, but I love this and have to rub it in again).
from www.timesofmalta.com
Astrid Vella (3 hours, 18 minutes ago)
@JoeMicallef – your demands would be very reasonable but for these factors:as we keep repeating the Cathedral is Grade 1 scheduled, meaning that by law no structural or aesthetic changes can be made. How can Church and State authorise an EIA for a project that proposes to break the law of the land? Or are our laws only applicable to some and not to others?Secondly, EIAs are paid for by developers. No recent EIA has cancelled a project or even ordered a change of site so what faith can one have in EIAs as truly independent assessment tools?
EIAs can also be inadequate re damage limitation in a case like St. John’s. As geologist Peter Gatt stated, no studies can presently identify rock cracks at a depth of 4 or 5 floors, so the EIA could give the go-ahead and subsequently we would still see cracks all the way up St John’s, or worse.
We know all about the fallibility of EIAs from cases like that of Fort Cambridge where the EIA claimed that the project would not cause grave problems of dust and vibration. Ask the residents who have been choked by dust and whose furniture has fallen off their cracked walls due to the strength of the vibrations.
Do you see what I mean about the insidious misinformation this woman spouts, trading on ignorance and gullibility? “The cathedral is Grade 1 scheduled, meaning that by law no structural or aesthetic changes can be made.” WRONG! An excavation beneath a square opposite a cathedral is not a structural change to a cathedral. Non-integral structures like the glass roof proposed for the churchyard do not fall within the category of prohibited changes. The churchyard goes not fall within the bracket of the cathedral structure, either, because it is post-war, and designed by De Giorgio & Mortimer.
“EIAs are paid for by developers.” Then who exactly should pay for them – the taxpayer? EIAs are always paid for by developers. Perhaps the FAA would like to start paying for them themselves. You can see how her mind works on this one though: if the developer pays, then the experts are ‘bought’. A long, long list of professionals has been dismissed in one fell swoop as corrupt.
“No recent EIA has cancelled a project or even ordered a change of site, so what faith can one have in EIAs as truly independent assessment tools?” That’s a rather astonishing non sequitur and example village-suspicion thinking, coming from somebody who’s been through tertiary education. It’s the kind of reasoning I find at the butcher’s counter, among those waiting for their meat to be wrapped. EIAs do not cancel projects. They are not persons. The planning board decides against projects, if an EIA recommends this. Several projects have been decided against on the basis of non-favourable EIAs. The obvious doesn’t occur to Mrs Vella: that there are far more projects with favourable EIAs than with non-favourable EIAs because….the majority of projects are good ones.
“EIAs can also be inadequate re damage limitation in a case like St. John’s. As geologist Peter Gatt stated, no studies can presently identify rock cracks at a depth of 4 or 5 floors, so the EIA could give the go-ahead and subsequently we would still see cracks all the way up St John’s, or worse.” Dumb and dumber: first Mrs Vella says that EIAs – for those not in the know, massive tomes compiled by a whole list of technical people – are useless for our purposes, then she waves around a single sheet of paper full of ‘maybes’ and ‘mays’ jotted down like an opinion-note by a man in a hurry to damage his professional credibility. No wonder they didn’t bring it out before now. It’s so damned embarrassing, but untrained people like Astrid don’t see it.
“Ask the residents who have been choked by dust and whose furniture has fallen off their cracked walls due to the strength of the vibrations.” These are the people who nearly landed us with Sant as prime minister in the last election. If somebody gives me jackhammer, I’d be happy to use it against their walls all day and all night.
4 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
If one goes through Claire Bonello’s column and subsequent comments she writes on The Times’ website, you quickly realise that the choice of words chosen is identical to FAA’s, word by word. Bonello together with Kurt Sansone (ex Malta Today/Illum, now working for The Times) were in charge of drafting a post-election report for AD.
[Daphne – Tell me about it. She’s an absolute hadra. She doesn’t seem to distinguish between ‘environmental’ campaigning and campaigning for AD. Apparently, it isn’t possible to be in favour of environmental issues unless you also support that dead-dog party. The amount of trouble she tried to cause in the 2003 election, the referendum and the 2008 election were quite unbelievable. I was talking and writing 22 hours a day to explain to people how a vote for AD rather than for the PN would result in a Labour government and no EU membership, while she ran around trying to convince them of the opposite, trading on ignorance, a lack of information as to how our system of proportional representation works, and inadequate arithmetical skills. When she realised that the message was getting through, she changed tack: so what if we have Sant as prime minister? How bad can it be? So what, indeed – anything to get their seat, those people, even if it meant foisting Sant on us.
And I’m glad you raised that point about Kurt Sansone and how he’s tangled up with Bonello in seeking to achieve advantage for AD. He used his position at Malta Today to those ends; I hope his editors at The Times are more alert to the possibility of agendas. In 2003, a friend who worked with him at Media Today called me in distress from the office asking me to explain why a vote for AD rather than for the PN would bring about a Labour government and the loss of EU membership. There was the sound of arguing in the background. I explained to her. Then Kurt came on the line, shouting and yelling, calling me a liar (as though I can’t do simple sums), and insulting me until I put the phone down. That was when I realised just how insidious and widespread their deceitful campaign was among ‘Sliema/Swieqi’ people, and how the only way to put an end to the nonsense propaganda was to have the prime minister explain the consequences of an AD-instead-of-PN vote at a giant pro-EU membership mass meeting at the Luxol Sports Ground, which he did, and it worked. People snapped out of it. Then in 2008 the problem cropped up again.
Now it’s perfectly plain that they’re still gunning for that coalition, because people like this put their own partisan interests before the stability of the government and peace in the country. They’re either using Astrid or she’s in on it with them. Either way, she’s a dangerous fool. What do they want? A situation like Italy, with governments breaking down every six months over a stupid vote? Coalition governments are one of the reason for declining voter turn-outs and people’s alienation from politics throughout Europe: their vote bears little relation to the result, so it becomes ‘pointless’. See the article ‘Malta has the highest free voter turn-out in the world’ in The Sunday Times yesterday. Business suffers the moment there is even a hint of instability, but the anti-capitalists and bozza-dwellers don’t give a thought to that. Sometimes I suspect it’s what they actually want.]
Read that Muppet, Mario Vella, on the subject. At least he’s right about the personal spite. What a country. So now projects are going to be decided on the basis of whether we’ve got it in for somebody or not, qisna Sqallin.
http://watersbroken.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/gonzi-uncertain-of-a-majority-in-parliament-abandons-rccs-project/
…and that’s the problem with PN PR. They let the misinformation to spread around for a substantial amount of time. They are very passive on this.
Why is AD so strong in Swieqi area? Did the PN take these voters for granted, assuming that the ‘educated’ voters in Swieqi would not be so gullible, and seek out the correct information for themselves?
[Daphne – The Sliema/Swieqi problem is another one entirely. It is quite clear from many of the comments on the petition that what made people sign it was not an opinion about the museum project, but a generalised grudge against the government, either because of support for another party, or because of nimbyism. The petition was used in the same way that local council elections and MEP elections are used, as a vehicle for protest against the government. AD is so strong in the Swieqi area for this reason and for others, which are too complicated to go into here. You have a situation where a superiority complex and a sense of entitlement are coupled with a feeling of insulation against the consequences of your actions (“so what if Alfred Sant is prime minister….”).
All of this is wrapped up in the idea that voting AD makes one cool and hip (liberal/environmentalist/gay rights). Malta is always 20 or 30 years behind western Europe in most things, and this is one of them. The difference is that the generation currently in their teens and 20s have unparalleled access to trends among their contemporaries in other parts of Europe, and so they are way more up-to-date than their parents are. The gap between people my age who don’t keep in touch, and people in their 20s, is widening at an enormous rate, which is why AD can’t keep up. Worse still, I’ve noticed that my contemporaries, people in their 40s, have somehow convinced themselves that they are still young and that they have not moved up one generation but still belong to the same generation as people in their 20s. This prevents them from seeing things clearly, and from correctly perceiving what they really seem like to people in their 20s. But most crucially, because they believe that they are the same generation as people in their 20s, they don’t bother to consult people in their 20s, fondly assuming that they think and behave the same way. The St John’s campaign was a classic example: Astrid Vella and the FAA addressed solely people their own age – look at the petition, the letters and the comments – and ignored the younger generation completely, as though they don’t count or have the same views. As a friend remarked yesterday, it’s like something from the film Tea With Mussolini – a bunch of posh old and ageing women campaigning to save a church painting from the depredations of the horrible Fascists http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=109105§ion=review
Most of the key executive movers in AD have no children and so are completely out of touch with the new generation of adults. The few who do have children are still cut off because they are too young to help keep them in touch with changes. I am very fortunate in that respect because I have a constant stream of feedback (and upbraiding). In this rapidly changing world, those without constant contact with younger generations are going to be isolated and left behind. You will notice that when older people become determined to master computers and the internet, it is generally because they have children and grandchildren who use both a great deal.
I was quite amused really in the last election, when I noticed that all the people thinking they were cool and hip in supporting AD were in their late 30s, 40s and 50s, when I knew through the results of published surveys and by talking to many people in their teens and 20s during the campaign that the hip thing to do was to support the Nationalist Party. It was so hip that young people from Labour backgrounds at colleges like MCAST were torn between what they were being told at home and what they wanted to do. I think we all know by now – though Jason Micallef was confused – what they eventually decided. The truth of the matter is that when a political grouping is taken over by fossilised ageing greens and posturing soccer moms from Swieqi, as has happened with AD, the contemporary young just flee. They don’t want to know. AD is now as irritating as a parent-teacher association, with similar people on board.]
Perhaps Claire Bonello’s cheek is still smarting from Charlie c-Caqnu’s slap on her cheek ? Is she the same one?
[Daphne – Yes.]