OK, so the presentation was a bit annoying because someone's mobile phone kept interfering with the sound (Mr Piano must have left his phone in his pocket) and the people at the back couldn't really see the detail of the sketches.

OK, so the Minister, a City Boy through and through, had a (tiny weeny) lapsus and called Saint Elmo Saint Angelo, no doubt causing all manner of ructions in Heaven. OK, so the politicians did go on a just touch too much (they are politicians, after all) OK, so the project doesn't address the wishes, desires, aspirations, half-baked notions, perfectly formed concepts, objectives identified and gut reactions of every single individual inhabitant of, visitor to, transient through or user of Valletta.

So what?

We've had sixty-odd years of messing about trying to make our collective minds up about what to do with that hideous space between the bus terminus and the current real beginning of Republic Street, near Wembley Stores.

First, came that disgusting carbuncle of a gate put up during a Nationalist Administration, then those pretty horrible flats and shops around the edges of the open space. The worst excesses of crypto-fascist architecture found in some Italian cities (the ones that had been flattened by bombing) don't come close to the horridness of City Gate and Freedom Square.

Just as an aside, isn't it encouraging that finally, a political party in Government has decided to remedy a cock-up perpetrated by a previous manifestation of that same party in Government? Equally encouraging is the Labour Party's declaration yesterday that they don't want to politicise the discussion. Symptoms of some political maturity on both sides, and highly welcome it is to the rest of us, the great unwashed, for all that it leaves me with less ammunition.

Now we've got something concrete (and you'll excuse the lousy pun there, I trust) into which to get our teeth. I've no doubt that the misery-guts and the doomsayers will already be firing off missives denouncing Piano's ideas, dismissing him for a misguided foreigner or pooh-poohing the idea that we can have an outdoor performance space and so on and so forth.

So eager are people to carp and cavil that yesterday, before Piano had even got to the details of the Parliament Building, one whiner had already put up a Facebook status saying that the proposal was worse than she had feared. Actually, she wrote "wirse", twice, but that's by the by. And yes, I do have a bad habit of going online all the time: why do you think they call it the CrackBerry?

Incidentally, said whiner has about as many credentials to talk about architecture as I have to interpret Sanskrit. On the other hand, an architect I met after the presentation, for whose opinion I have enormous respect, was exuberant about the plans.

Of course everyone and his sister has the right to have opinions about whether she or he likes the ideas put forward, and to express them. But there's no way on God's green earth that there is going to be unanimity and it's in the nature of things that the people who stamp their foot and flounce about in disgust will get most of the attention.

I, for instance, might think that it might be a better ruse if Parliament were to relocate to the Mediterranean Conference Centre, though what do I know? There's not much administrative space there and it's already a pretty good performance venue (for all that it needs tweaking and improving) so that's probably a non-starter.

I do know, however, that Parliament just has to move out of the Palace once and for all, and there's not that much space in Valletta - no wisecracks about Saint Elmo, either please: that's a site with much more potential than that. And there's certainly no way Parliament should be outside town, obviously.

Then there's all the huffing and puffing about the ruins. I've said it before (echoing the missus, to give her all her dues), the site should be cleaned up and left as a memorial to the war-dead, to be used as a garden and performance space. I've been to quite a few pretty good shows there and they were using very rudimentary technology, so I'm really looking forward to what we're going to get when Piano works his magic.

And if it rains, well, they have Shakespeare in Regent's Park and the Globe Theatre in London, for Pete's sake, so let's get real here, shall we? This is the Southern Mediterranean, not London.

But the bottom line is quite simple: we have the opportunity to put something memorable on a site that is currently nothing short of a disgrace. Nothing will please everyone, but I, for one, am happy to trust the people who know their technical onions and who have a pretty good track record.

So, let's just go for it, now, maybe someday soon I can walk into town and feel exhilarated straight away.