Use of private property

Just two days after my letter on Spinola Palace garden appeared in The Times, a reply to my letter by Edgar Gatt was published in next to record time!

The correspondent was niggled because the MLP committee of St Julians had succeeded in preserving Spinola Palace and those gardens from the rape of property moguls!

His argument is those gardens were "private property". Hence, Mr Gatt would have agreed that Spinola Palace be buried by blocks of concrete, as so many historic and less historic but still beautiful old houses are being "buried" today. Sliema is the perfect example!

Mr Gatt labours under the wrong impression that owners of private property have a God-given right to do whatever they please with their own property.

Not so, dear Mr Gatt. Otherwise, whoever owns land must be allowed to build on it whatever one wants.

I invite Mr Gatt to check what the British government is telling local councils to do about property left vacant and abandoned for a length of time. Even the French government is planning to take over such property to house the homeless. Both countries are EU member states!

I do not believe that Minister George Pullicino would repeat what Mr Gatt suggests: That the Spinola Gardens should have been allowed to be built upon just because they happened to be private property, when he officially opens the embellishment works. Neither will he condemn both the MLP committee and the Labour government for putting the interest of St Julians before those of property moguls.

If only residents of The Gardens, in St Julians, were treated in the same way by this government and Mepa with regard to the development of Pender Place.