It irritates me when I reflect on the number of journalists around and even more students graduating every year from university in communication studies, and yet it seems they are not up to the job.

I think they would learn more about journalistic skills by following this blog than sitting idly for three years on those uncomfortable university seats.

No wonder that to many people the journalistic approach this blog takes is seen as vile or outlandish – they don’t know any better.

They haven’t got a clue what journalism entails even though they might look at foreign news, as their perception is that when it’s Italian, it’s just the Italian way of nosing around in private affairs of everybody.

When it is the British way, it is only as that seen in the likes of The Star or The Sun newspapers, and I don’t rule out that most of the Maltese think that those are the only English newspapers and treat them as such as they are more interested in page three.

When are we going to have some real journalists out there?

Are we really living in a dictatorship that journalists feel threatened in doing their job?

They vent on that instead. It’s quite curious.

Also, calls to mobile cost them money, whereas posting obscenities on the internet is free.

I need my number to be public because that’s how I receive some information. It’s not everybody who has an email connection.

Maybe it will give Kurt Sansone something to write about too.

Plans and policies will be decided by the Executive Council, who will be appointed by the Minister.

If a developer has an application which is not according to current policy, he could ‘convince’ the Council to amend a plan such that his proposed development will become compliant.

If he foresees difficulties in convincing a majority (three out of five members) of the Council, he could try to convince the Executive Chairman to have the Council delegate the decision to a particular Council member (see (ii) below). The developer would then ‘work’ on that Council member.

There are many features in the new legislation which will facilitate abuse. These are some of them:

(i) All decisions of the Executive Council are held behind closed doors. (Schedule 3). Nobody will know how the decision is taken or even who took the decision.

(ii) The Council can delegate a decision to the Executive Chairperson or to any of its members (Schedule 3).

(iii) Clause 52 establishes that, where there are multiple plans and policies applicable to a development application, it is the higher order plans take precedence over lower order. So if there is a development brief for a site (normally prepared by technical people), certain provision of the development brief can be superseded by amending a higher order plan (like local plan or policy
guidance documents). Higher order plans can easily be amended in the manner described above.

(iv) Heritage Advisory Committee has been removed, thus reducing scrutiny of decisions taken on development applications (by the Planning Board).

(v) Removal of security of tenure of members of the Executive Council.

With the new legislation, abuse in development applications will become an art form thanks to Labour and its cronies.

http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2015-07-29/local-news/MEPA-demerger-to-elevate-environmental-status-increase-planning-application-efficiency-6736139676

Thanks to Daphne, none of you need be fooled again.