Roamer's column

I intended to start this week's piece with remarks about how I enjoyed a concert I attended at St John's co-Cathedral last Monday. Unfortunately, I was unable to put the thing together for lack of some important details I needed, so it will have to wait until next Sunday. Meanwhile, no sooner do we get over one controversy than it seems to be time for another to break out; this time the Ghadira road project. This scheme, if adopted, will obliterate the road running alongside the bay and replace it with another that will snake round Danish Village and cut across a stretch of countryside that is host to a bird sanctuary and the site of Foresta 2000 - and garigue.

Austin Gatt's argument in favour of this proposal is two-fold: The sand beach is dying of erosion. If we fail to construct this road, we risk losing EU funds allocated to the proposed EU Trans-European Transport Network project with the unlikely acronym TEN-T. He should banish this idea from his mind. Neither contention is worth the elimination of the beach road and the construction of a new route that will impact adversely on Foresta 2000 site and do little good for the Danish Village.

Gatt's reaction to criticism of this re-designation has been that "a row of trees" may have to be removed (for "may" read "will", and probably more than one row once the builders get their machinery's teeth into the countryside) and if the owners of Danish Village decide to sell out, another buyer will take it over at the flick of a euro. This reaction is not good enough.

The point about the EU coughing up 80 per cent of the €15 million project and the loss of these funds if we do not employ them on TEN-T is too utilitarian an argument for words. That money can very well be used to enhance the existing trans-European network while we concentrate on making the bay sandier - as was so successfully done at St George's two or three years ago. The 20 per cent government was going to put up can, instead, go towards this and upgrading the present road.

Gatt is fond of saying that doing nothing is not an option - and he is right to adopt this attitude. There have been enough occasions when we did nothing, and this to our detriment, rather than getting on with things. The discussion here, however, unlike in some other cases, does not pose a socio-political life-and-death issue.

We can do something and it does not have to be what Gatt has in mind. We can widen the beach seawards by building a 'breakwater' across the bay. We can reclaim five metres of sea. We can move the road four or five metres inland to create a more spacious beach. We can also have a car park built so that the cars that litter the road in summer no longer do so. We do not need the encircling road the minister appears to be keen on - in fairness he has asked people to help him arrive at a correct decision.

What we should not do, for the sake of doing something, is turn a relatively minor issue in the overall scheme of things into a silly over-my-dead-body thing.

All change, please

I have no wish to be an anti-Joseph Muscat guy, honestly. I am quite prepared to close eyes and ears to some of the things I see and others that I hear. But when I read that he used the phrase "soldiers made of steel" at the so-called Progressives party conference, my resolution weakens. When this man, who has made it his political objective to drag his party into the 21st century, conjures up words and imagery associated with Dom Mintoff 40 years ago I find I have cause to question his desire to change the political landscape.

What is he all about? For no sooner does he quote Mintoff at his most aggressive than he rustles up Paul Boffa, who was humiliated by the former and from whom Mintoff broke to form his own party - the Malta Labour Party; no sooner soldiers of steel than the torch shibboleth and Boffa's vision as a symbol of progress, light, intellect and love. So, soldiers of steel and progress, soldiers of steel and intellect, soldiers of steel and love. Mintoff and Boffa. Progressive and reactionary. Chalk and cheese.

But, of course, Muscat thinks he can do this because party supporters who are under 25 have either not heard of Boffa, or of the split, or of "soldiers of steel", unless, that is, their pedigree can be traced back to those "soldiers". The political schizophrenia - using Mintoffian speech and garnishing it with Boffist visions - may yet undo this young leader as he tries to be all things to all men in their various niches in the party.

The reason behind this conference is, I gather, to introduce wide-ranging changes to the party's statute. One will have to study these seriously when they have been adopted. However, more, far more is needed if the electorate is to be impressed. This strange collective that seats and unseats governments will wish to feel the earthquake promised by Muscat when he inherited Alfred Sant; and having felt it, the same collective will be eager to see what precisely the promised land looks like once the debris settles.

Whether delegates will leave the conference inspired, buoyed up by the prospect of a new party, confident that they have left the past behind them, ahead of them a glorious future, or conscious, deep down, that there had been no due scrutiny of the analysis of the party's electoral defeats - a lacuna pronounced unacceptable by one speaker - remains to be seen.

They leave their watering hole having heard platitudes a-plenty - progressive people have the will for change ingrained in them (what change?); a desire to be the haven of "all those who hold social democratic beliefs"; transformation of the movement to overcome social barriers; a historic conference; courage to bring about change - but what change? Willing change is only as good as the change willed.

Cassandras, relax

Twenty-four shopping days to Christmas and 21 before the shortest day of the year, but by no means the coldest, starts us off once more to the longest day, but not the hottest; and every day until the blessed 21st of June, one more minute of light to make sliding out of bed in the morning a tiny bit more enticing. Then, alas, on the 22nd of June the dreadful thought that daylight will start to shrink again.

Before that, of course, springtime arrives and the first slab of sunlight hits the west wall of my garden. It's taken decades for me to work that one out. Nor am I certain, I who have to lift a wet finger to the wind before I can tell it's a westerly or an easterly, that I have that right. West wall or not, there will be a robin hopping around and in the depth of the soil a message that all is warm enough for flowers to flourish.

But we are running ahead. Today there are 24 shopping days to Christmas. We are told - and have often been told the same thing in the past; the hard-working and energetic director general of the GRTU has a weakness for the Cassandresque - that retailers are predicting a lousy selling season with consumers lacking the wherewithal to purchase the items they had in mind to pass on to Him, Her, or whoever. Let's wait and see.

It may indeed be the case that the cash tills will not ring as merrily as in years of yore, but my experience of these mournful projections is that they tend not to come to term. Come the last week before Christmas, everybody will be darting around in manic-panic-mode to complete their shopping and plastic money, that painless instrument of purchasing, will do its stuff, which is why January is like a slap in the face. Until then, be of good cheer; and after that, consider that, as somebody remarked between gritted teeth when asked, somewhat stupidly and insensitively, how it felt after the roof of his house caved in, it could have been worse.

Apart from three or four presents, mine have already been purchased. The crunch, when and if it comes, can wait; but some form of crunch there will be, and even the articulacy of the soon-to-be-and-over-anointed President Obama will not prevent the depressive recession circling the globe like a shark the unfortunate surfer it has in its aqueous sight; nor, contrary to the impression the media have been giving, will he walk on water. Meanwhile, he has thrown another trillion dollars into the melting-pot. Is this a case where anything George Bush can do, he can do better?

The resident in No 10 has been in similarly expansive mood with people's money. It was being said in the UK that by the time Britain recovers, a child graduating into secondary school today will be in his third year at university. On Wednesday, the EU got in on the act and announced its €200 billion recovery plan, even as terrorists in Mumbai shattered the calm of India's financial centre.