‘…In any event, We can either be complacent and sit back and watch what little of our countryside is left be destroyed, or we can support Din L-Art Helwa. Become a member, volunteer time, donate money, or all three….’

Hear hear.

And that’s where Simon Busuttil needs to leave his mark, shift the PN to a mindset independent of localised interests.

Public opinion has moved on.

When you consider that they are up against the all powerful and rich construction lobby who has a lot of incentive to put their tremendous resources to fight their corner, it is a dire situation.

Din L-Art Helwa has been consistent in its endevours to save the environment regardless of who is the government of the day. Under a PN administration they fought and won the Ta Cenc battle amongst others. I suppose we can expect that one to raise its ugly head again.

Now they are running a “Save the Countryside” campaign. (for those on facebook go to the facebook page of the same name and like and share it)

Gvern li jisma. Issa naraw.

In any event, We can either be complacent and sit back and watch what little of our countryside is left be destroyed, or we can support Din L-Art Helwa. Become a member, volunteer time, donate money, or all three. We each need to do what we can before it really is too late.

This government doesn’t even have the courtesy to reply to such requests, much less listen to NGOs’ suggestions.

NGOs should be reminded that before and during the election campaign they were too busy criticizing and pointing out the previous governments errors, while they completely missed analyzing Labour’s hollow promises, and Joey’s speeches (in code) like the one he delivered in Gozo, promising ‘to approve controversial projects’ if he was elected to govern. This promise is being delivered, no doubt.

The deafening silence from some quarters, which usually are quite vocal, about those three proposed hotels in ODZs, is very telling indeed and proof that even at the cliff’s edge, they still have tolerance for more lies by Joey and his fellow clowns.

“Dr Caruana Dingli believes that the rural policy is likely to have a significant impact on the amount of new buildings, including the conversion and expansion of existing structures, in the countryside.”

She is right. The new policy will wreck havoc on the countryside. There will be countless developments purporting to be agro-tourism, which will in time become countryside villas.

The new policy has been exempted from the Strategic Environment Assessment on the basis of a screening document which falsely claims that the impact of the new policy document will not be significant. The new policy takes a very relaxed approach to tourism-related development ODZ and therefore it is inevitable that the impact on the countryside will be significant.

http://www.mepa.org.mt/LpDocumentDetails?syskey=1670

The new policy should be subject to an SEA. The screening document is a joke and as such MEPA is in breach of EU’s Directive on Strategic Environment Assessment.

Who vetted the screening document? Surely there must be a case for a formal complaint to the EU. This makes a mockery of national and EU legislation.

Can’t journalists spell correctly anymore?

It’s a disgrace.

[Daphne – ‘Of’ is correct.]

The implication, which everyone unwittingly took be the case, being that the border between the two would be that which defines ODZ and that which isn’t. That somehow, what was slowly gathering momentum to conservation, identity, genius loci and all that which breeds community, wasn’t about to be vandalised.

Somehow ODZ is now an obstacle to economic development, planning something for the MDA to define and any rules restricting blatant speculation, that’s moving in with an excavator and leaving open scars down your street for sale, a legacy of that nasty GonziPN.

The last one Musumeci’s, the second Chetcuti’s and the first Silvio Parnis’s.

I can still remember the FAA, yeah right, putting up the mildest of objections to Muscat’s land grab, put aside the moment the word board was thrown at her. She was the one who’d take the case to Solomon himself.

Of these charlatans, shall the republic renew itself. An entropic lukewarm soup if there ever was one.

Enjoy.