[Daphne – You’re wasting your time if you’re expecting FAA to do that. Most of them live in Sliema flats, and they operate their HQ out of a flat on ‘the Sliema front.’ I didn’t say he was dealing in coke, Gerald, though I could have made plenty of remarks about 24-year-olds who don’t have to work for their living or buy their own home growing up to preach about l-gholi tal-hajja. What exactly would Joseph Muscat know about it?]

Victor Scerri’s application was no exception either but both FAA and the MEPA auditor seem to have singled him out for pillorying.

Incidentally, it is not true what Astrid said on The Times website that Scerri was not attacked personally. During the Baħrija protest (they were 300, like the Spartans), there were posters ridiculing him and with his photo.

I would like to know if the MEPA auditor is going to investigate and report on all cases where the DCC went against MEPA policies.

Leanne: Actually, things DIDN’T work in the period you mention. That was the time the government that got in by a fluke pulled the plug on Malta’s EU application with no alternative policy except the crackpot idea of turning Malta into a Switzerland in the Mediterranean, withdrew from the Partnership for Peace at the time when the real Switzerland (not the one in the Mediterranean) signed up, and VAT was removed only to be replaced with a system so complex and convoluted that not even those who invented could make it work. Around that time, HRH the Leader of the Opposition (today’s version) ponced around acting important on the third rate ‘news’ channel “financed” by the party he now leads.

So what is happening now? That same person – the one with a gift for hindsight, rather than foresight – is now set to become Prime Minister. His major achievement so far is to make his predecessor look good. Now work out why the issue you believe is ‘invented’ is relevant today.

[Daphne – I’m not inventing them. They’re there in black and white on the MEPA website. And you can’t have failed to notice that the man in question is a future prime minister and present leader of the opposition. Had he robbed a bank 11 years ago, you would no doubt think this to be of consequence.]

[Daphne – No. I merely live in a permanent state of irritation that so many people expect so little from Labour and so much from the Nationalist Party. To the average person, I suspect you are one of them, whatever the Labour Party does is the equivalent of Samuel Johnson’s remark about a dog walking on its hind legs: http://www.samueljohnson.com/dogwalk.html%5D

My point was that Joseph Muscat’s application was not an exception; you seem to agree with this. Before reaching the kind of conclusions put forward by Daphne, it would have been better had she seen the bigger picture. Probably, straightforward applications are indeed processed rapidly. An application for a dish antenna can be tricky due to its visual impact.

[Daphne – Because of course, a dish on the roof has more visual impact than the whole house on which it sits, I imagine.]

Pierre, I have checked a number of applications, as you said, and the picture that emerges is of extreme differences in processing times. The construction of a villa (00365/98) took one month to be processed and that of classrooms in a government school two months (0368/98) but then the replacement of a canopy took all of two months (0369/98) and a simple shop sign more than three months (00366/98). As you can see from the numbers, all these applications refer to the early months of 1998 and were validated within days of each other. Such inconsistencies can however be found in other periods of 1997-1998 as well.

Joseph Muscat’s application for demolition and construction of a medium site took a month to be approved, having been validated on 22 January. The next day, somebody else validated an application for the installation of an antenna dish but this time it took 6 months to be processed and eventually refused (0364/98).

I won’t adopt the FAA method and make nasty allegations but you will admit that the situation was not as limpid as you suggest; calling it confusing would be a euphemism. You should have followed your own advice and looked at a bigger sample.

[Daphne – But that’s just the trouble, isn’t it? We set much lower standards for the Labour Party, and are then pleased when its people don’t behave abominably, as though that is all we can hope for.]

So according to you, no strings have been pulled in the post Mintoff and KMB era. Really?

[Daphne – Yes, of course strings have been pulled in the post Mintoff and KMB era. We’re discussing one such possible case here, aren’t we?]