More homework needed on city project (1)

Whenever teachers have Parents' Day they always meet parents who do not like their children to be given a lot of homework.

Why? Mainly because this involves parents in a lot of work after school. They resent it. But homework is an important need in their children's education.

The need for homework must be instilled in every school-age child from very early on and homework is always much needed by people at the top. So many mistakes and miscalculations of financial spending occur because the powers that be do not do their homework well.

I will never forget when Joseph Calleja and his wife came to sing in Malta and the venue of Manoel Island was chosen. It could not start in time because the streets of Gżira were absolutely packed with people following their festa march. Traffic jams galore.

The then President Eddie Fenech Adami, who was always very punctual, arrived right on time. Not so the many patrons who turned up for the concert. They could not just leave their cars because theirs were not chauffeur-driven. The faux-pas of choosing this date came when at the end of the concert no one could hear a note because the festa fireworks started... "no homework done" and those seats were very expensive ones. The performing artists are now complaining about an open-air theatre because they are aware, far more than the clever Renzo Piano, what a lot of outside distractions Malta offers, alas!

The Maltese know that the Royal Opera House was precious to many. When it was burnt, it was rebuilt.

We do not want to be reminded of what it suffered in the war, it is not a ruin.

It became so because we can never decide to satisfy the wishes of a great majority who want it rebuilt... same as many historic buildings in Europe have been rebuilt, in Moscow, Dresden, Berlin... (to mention only a few).

Mr Piano's declaration that it would be a fake got accepted... it won't be a fake. Why not have a referendum and see how many want it rebuilt even if it would then be used as a multi-purpose theatre?

And what of Parliament House? It is in Malaya that there are houses on stilts, not in Mediterranean Malta. Many clever architects here know that the building is going to be too high.

My original suggestion was that the Opera House, if rebuilt in its former grandeur, can function as a theatre or maybe a place for the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra downstairs and have the top floor slightly higher and display the Flemish Tapestries. The viewing of these gems will turn out a fortune in no time at all.

If the €80 million earmarked to be spent includes a building on Freedom Square why not have an Opera House that would satisfy, to the full, the needs for such a theatre to make up for the deficiencies in theatres such as The Manoel and Mediterranean Conference Centre. The MCC would be ideal as Parliament House! After all it is really a conference centre not a theatre. The Prime Minister must admit that before saying yes to Mr Piano he should have consulted the experts and the public in general... a referendum would not be amiss.

Mr Piano came here 25 years ago and left with nothing being decided. The party in power thought of getting him back but without doing any constructive homework. Let us not end up building something in a hurry (the main reason to build in the next four years is to create work in a time of recession!) and then find out the building was done without sufficient homework.

My humble suggestion, for what it is worth, has quite a good following when it is submitted among friends. This is what is done in Malta... people meet outdoors and talk and one reaches a consensus. Our homework is done en masse !