Astrid has pronounced herself

The woman just hasn’t got a frigging clue. After months of very public thanxir, xenati, statements, pronouncements and megaphone-hectoring about the Renzo Piano project (before she had even seen it), FAA’s Astrid Vella thinks all that she owes the people after her major scenes is silence.

Or worse: she thinks she can get away with this comment, posted beneath a letter on timesofmalta.com as Astrid Vella the private citizen, presumably because Astrid Vella the public person is the one holding the megaphone in front of a Super One camera.

timesofmalta.com Astrid Vella

Dear Mr Giglio, if you re-read your letter you will see that you yourself have answered the question of what’s wrong with Parliament at City Gate. For a start, having not just Parliament but even a museum of political history dominating the entrance to our capital simply perpetuates the notion that politics should dominate our lives, a peculiarly Maltese obsession which exists in no other country but which our politicians seek to encourage.

The other point is that, as you point out, all Valletta’s important monuments are concentrated between City Gate and the Palace. There is virtually nothing lower than that, and all of lower Valletta has been abandoned for the last century. A parliament in one of our under-used palaces like the Conference Centre or Auberge de Baviere, would at the same time save on millions in taxpayer money and use one of our few available resources, available empty palaces, as well as serving to regenerate a whole half a city and its residents. It would tie in with a new hotel at Evans Labs and the regeneration of St Elmo. Now that would be vision!

Sorry, Astrid, this just won’t do. As the Megaphone Bearer in Chief of Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar, you are in duty bound to pronounce yourself properly, in a statement, on the Valletta project.

These barely coherent remarks on an online comments-board are just not enough – though they really do reveal your mentality and your lack of understanding as to what your responsibilities are now that you have set yourself up as the arbiter of environmental rights and wrongs.

As to the museum of political history, I agree – but as for the rest of the mashed-potato thinking, the least said the better. Suffice it to say that this is somebody who poses as the people’s voice, but who hasn’t a clue that parliament house is called the House of Representatives precisely because the MPs who sit there do so in representation of the people.

I’m beginning to think that no one for whom Astrid voted is sitting in the house, which is why she feels so detached from parliament: she is unrepresented there, and this is her way of expressing her resentment.

I have another point to make: that there is a special place in hell reserved for those teachers who failed to make sure their pupils left school with the ability to think clearly, rationally and logically. Some people are born with the ability to do so, but the rest need to be taught.

If they are not taught, this is the result, and it’s frightening.