I just wish The People would stop speaking for five damned minutes

Published: July 30, 2009 at 10:21pm
"Nobody's asked ME what I think."

Nobody's asked ME what I think.

This comment is beneath the story ‘FAA sees indifference to people’s wishes’ on timesofmalta.com.

Joe Fenech
We need to pull down buildings not more add more cluttering!! Give Valletta a majestic entrance! All those arcades should be demolished and fill the place with trees, jet fountains, then merge Freedom square into Kastilja square. Gonzi, I can draw it for you on a piece of paper and send it to you if you can’t visualise it!

What can I say?

With wishes like these, thank God for indifference.

I don’t know how Astrid Vella, George Debono, Helen “Caruana Galizia” Tomkins, Karen Zammit Manduca et frigging al are not embarrassed to be associated with the wishes of The People, or to assume representation of them.

In their place, I would just crawl under a rock at this point.

This individual doesn’t even know there’s St James Cavalier behind the arcades.




19 Comments Comment

  1. lawrence says:

    Unbelievable! grumble, grumble grumble! Maltese people are never happy at all – that’s the idea people get when they hear certain comments. Whenever the bishop says something, then Malta is over populated with thousands of ‘theologians’. When the prime minister speaks, we have thousands of ‘economists’ and now….thousands of ‘architects’. Mhux ta b’xejn nibqghu lura!

  2. maryanne says:

    Yes we should let The People decide on major national projects. We will get more of what we have in our various towns and villages – a lot of projects decided by those who have an utter lack of taste and who treat the outdoors as if they were refurbishing their homes and gardens.

    • DVella says:

      Yes Maryanne . . . and get a load of nostalgic revivalist crap with balavostri, saljaruti bil-lavur and all the bells and whistles . . . kollox barokk hux bhal tal-kavallieri . . .

  3. M says:

    He knows about St James … he just asked to have it pulled down.

  4. Antoine Vella says:

    FAA don’t need ‘Joe Fenech’ to embarrass them, they’re already doing a good job of it on their own. From the “dar barokka” to the Piano brief it’s one blunder after another.

  5. B says:

    “Ms Ellul Bonici listed by name the people and companies who gave her donations to finance her campaign. These included the Polidano Group that donated €6,000”

    @Daphne

    Well well, it seems that Labour’s disapproval of PN’s good relationship with Polidano was not driven by a sense of justice but because they wanted their own fair share.

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090731/local/ep-candidates-declare-election-expenses

    • tony pace says:

      Hey B, didn’t you get it? For fear of D being sued for libel, (incidentally Daphne, can you be sued for libel if a commenter posts a statement on your site?) let me just say that IN MY OPINION Polidano’s contribution to Ms Ellul Bonici was probably part of a deal with the PL to stop them giving him so much flak about his cowboy tactics, e.g the St.Paul’s Bay By-pass saga is one of them. He should never have been allowed to get away with it.

  6. Twanny says:

    That kind of comment is embarrassing, yes – but no more embarassing than people like Antoine Vella who think that criticising Piano is akin to breaking the First Commandment.

    • Antoine Vella says:

      At home I have a shrine dedicated to St Piano. I suggest you do the same for St Astrid, Twanny or, if you can’t manage a shrine, at least put up a baroque totem pole in the garden. She’d like that.

      • Twanny says:

        I haven’t said a word about Astrid Vella, while you have been idolising Piano all over the place.

  7. Tal-Muzew says:

    I received an email yesterday saying:

    Se jkollna dahla tal-Belt Valletta bla bieb u teatru bla saqaf!

  8. mark attard says:

    Hold on. We are not saying pull down St James Cavalier anywhere. This is your twisting interpretation. Please note that the local plan approved by Mr Pullicino states that Freedom Square should be left for parking. So Mr Gonzi gave Mr piano the wrong brief.

    [Daphne – Forgive me if I come across as rude, but you (plural, given that you talk of yourself as We) are beginning to sound quite bonkers. I did not say that FAA, on whose behalf you seem to speak, are agitating for the removal of St James Cavalier. I said that this is the kind of thing The People wish for, and you embarrass yourselves by calling for their wishes to be respected. There is no such thing, you see, as a commonly-shared wish. The nutters are The People, too.

    As for your reference to the local plan, please get a grip. If your determination not to have a parliament – why, because you’re secret anarchists or soviets? – has now come down to preferring a dusty parking area at the entrance to the capital instead of a stunning Piano building, you all need to go on a really long holiday. And ‘Mr’ Gonzi is the prime minister – but I imagine you can’t even bring yourself to say it.]

    • Antoine Vella says:

      Mark, you’re quite wrong about the Grand Harbour Local Plan and the Freedom Sqr parking. When talking about Freedom Sqr the Plan mentions “the discordant proportions of the existing large open space, IMPROPERLY USED AS A CAR PARK . . ” (my blocks). It says that the present space “does not take account of the axis presented by Republic Street” and that “the square should, through building and/or landscaping between the square and Republic Street be reduced in size to respect more the human scale.” (GHLP, Policy GV27)

      What you are probably referring to is the Valletta Parking Strategy Map (GHLP Fig 9) which shows Freedom Sqr not as a proposed but an EXISTING parking area. It also indicates Freedom and Palace (St George’s) squares as “sites for operational parking”, which, as Policy GV12 explains, means underground car parks. The same policy states that “no parking will therefore be allowed in Palace and Freedom Squares once the underground parking is operational.”(GHLP, Area Policies Document pg 15)

      In Palace Sqr the idea of underground parking had to be abandoned because of the presence of historical tunnels (did you or FAA object to this deviation from the Local Plan?). Under Freedom Sqr there is at least one tunnel, possibly more, so presumably an underground car park is impractical there as well, for the same reasons.

      Apologies to the readers of this blog for being so pedantically legalistic but, quite frankly I’m fed up of those who think they are oh, so clever in catching the PM in contravention of some misquoted policy, law or convention. My impression is that such people insist on giving us their unasked-for opinion, even on the most technical subjects, without having done their homework and having at least read through the documents they are quoting.

      Even had Mark Attard been right, however, Local Plans – like all regulations – are subject to periodic reviews if it is deemed to be in the public interest.

  9. David S says:

    …and my comment on timesofmalta.com wasn’t uploaded – just because I said that it appears that if Astrid just wants to be in the limelight, she should stick to Eurovision song contests, as clearly she is out of her depth with her FAA.

    [Daphne – Yes, I can’t understand what parameters they use. They allow George Debono and James Tyrell to insult people, but when I posted a comment asking James Tyrell whether there aren’t any problems in northern Ireland for him to be getting on with, that was apparently deemed unnecessary.]

    • Luca Bianchi says:

      Yeah, the same with me. Why is it that timesofmalta.com tends not to publish comments against Astrid Vella? I’ve posted several, all deleted.

  10. David S says:

    Come to think of it, The Times was right not to upload my comment – can you imagine Astrid singing :))

  11. Disgusted says:

    The more I read this blog, the more I convinced I become that the so-called ‘democratic credentials’ of some people only apply to when they spew their venom and not to those who may have an opinion which may be different from theirs.

    Oh well, I suppose that it’s OK for developers to engage spin doctors for their projects but it’s not OK for members of the public to object.

    [Daphne – If you were democratic, you would use your name as I do instead of calling yourself Disgusted while hurling insults minn wara l-persjana. What are you afraid of, exactly? That I’ll let down your car-tyres, set fire to your front door or throw a glass of wine at you next time I see you at a party? If reading this blog is so upsetting for you, you have a choice: don’t log on. It was a free country the last time I looked. It’s all right for developers to engage PR consultants (not spin doctors – that’s a term used exclusively for politics) and it’s OK for members of the public to object to the development. It’s also OK for everyone to criticise and make fun of everyone else. Welcome to democracy, whoever you are. I suspect you have a very limited understanding of what it entails over and above a vote every five years.]

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