Astrid Vella is partly responsible for what has happened

Raging against the government’s crazy building policies now is pretty much pointless without the magic words “I very much regret helping bring this about.”

If Mrs Vella had been a rational person, she would understand the simple wisdom of the maxim that if you don’t want bad, corrupt or environmentally disastrous people to get into government, you don’t go out of your way to undermine their rivals, even if you don’t like them and they’re not perfect.

Lack of logical thinking is the bane of this island. This government is not something that just happened to Malta, like a Biblical plague of locusts send by God to punish us for being naughty. It was brought about by a whole stream of decisions taken by people over the last several years, and not just at the general election.

When Astrid Vella paraded herself on the Labour Party’s television station to protest about the Gonzi government’s decisions on building and the environment, the message she sent out – whether that was the message she wanted to send out or not is irrelevant – was that she supported the Labour Party, she prefered its environmental policies, she thought the Nationalist government was rubbish, and so should the rest of us. It’s as simple as that.

She was part of the Zeitgeist that trashed the Nationalists and brought Muscat and his gang of corrupt fixers and their voracious hangers-on to power.

And the least she could do is have the common decency to admit that she and her thoughtless behaviour are among the reasons why Malta now has far worse environmental threats than it ever did before.

In any strategy – military, corporate, electoral or personal – you consider the various outcomes, rather than acting in the moment without a care for the possible consequences. The outcome of deliberately undermining a government with marginally problematic environmental policies is getting yourself a government with majorly problematic environmental ‘policies’ that cause permanent damage.