Spinola Palace and its gardens

Edgar Gatt (March 24) cannot have it both ways. Either he believes that owners of private property have a God-given right to do whatever pleases them with their own property - and hence Spinola Palace and its gardens should never have been taken over by the Labour government with the consequence that the palace's gardens would have been built up, burying Spinola Palace in the process - or else he "agrees to having a garden instead of buildings" in Spinola Palace gardens, as he wrote. This means that he agrees with the Labour government's decision to take over "private property" for the common good, as insisted on by the St Julians MLP committee of the time.

This also means that he agrees that owners of private property do not have a God-given right to do whatever pleases them with their own property!

Let me spell it out in another way to prove to him that owners of property have no right to do whatever pleases them with their own property. Owners of property in one street are given permission to build up to 10, 15 or even 20 floors.

Similar owners of private property in a street in the same locality, just a stone's throw away, are denied even adding one floor to their two-storey building! One could mention thousands of similar cases, including owners of land. This proves that private property owners have always been - and still are - subjected to government control, today hidden under the new name of Mepa!

Of course, there have been excesses in the past just as there are even more scandalous excesses today.

But, at least, the St Julians MLP committee of the time did something about it, and saved Spinola Palace and its gardens from the hands of property moguls.

This has made it possible for the Tumas Group to construct the splendid garden shown in the picture which accompanied Mr Gatt's letter. What has Mr Gatt ever accomplished to save some particular beautiful area from the greed of property speculators?

May I also clear up Mr Gatt's misconception, that I am Labour's "unofficial spokesman". I am not even an MLP delegate or committee official, let alone MLP's "unofficial spokesman"!