Some large projects are circling, likely to drop like bats out of a hot Australian sky. A social and development fund is being fronted as part of the controversial citizenship scheme and its backdoor to Europe for ‘individual investors’. The debate rages on as a stack of proposals jostle for position at the start line.

It has been posited that a percentage of the National Development Fund will go towards social housing. Theories run rampant over whether government will resort to land acquisition or just buy up existing stock from friendly developers reincarnated as government advisors.

Take a look also at the EU funding programme for the next seven years, endorsed by Deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech. We are told that government has been seized by a feeling that it needs to invest in coastal areas such as bays and beaches, with a notable interest in shallow areas.

Government is setting the scene for environmental ruin. All claims of wide public consultation are left behind in the dust

Allowing land reclamation from the sea would certainly meet the needs of developers with truckloads of construction waste on their hands to dispose of. Shallow waters are the only place where fish have their nesting grounds and posidonia meadows can thrive. To dump any sort of material on them could hardly be described as respecting the environment.

While launching the Budget, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that a sports village that had been proposed on the site of the derelict White Rocks holiday complex was to be “relocated elsewhere”. A fresh call for expressions of interest would be issued for the development of this prime site, next to Magħtab. Is the sports village idea to be put forward as one of the reclaimed island projects? What minority interests lie behind all this?

• Just before the last general election, the gun lobby rallied successfully to drop, among other things, a requirement for harpoon owners to have a police permit. But what were they really up to?

In 2005, during the final stages of the new Arms Act, the Association of Maltese Arms Collectors and Shooters (AMACS) had stumbled across something of interest for gun-toting, game-loving recruits. An opening was left in the legislation to include airsoft (a sort of military simulation with ‘toy’ guns which require the wearing of protective equipment) as a sport that can be practised legally in Malta.

Activities involving shooting may well have been made safer as a result of the new law (a similar claim to that of the fireworks factory lobby). AMACS was ruffled over the reversing of gains, that were attained last February, after some police measures were introduced in the succeeding months, limiting the society’s ‘improvements’ to gun legislation.

Airsoft guns are replica firearms used for recreational purposes in a game inspired by military training. “But these gun toys could be confused with real guns and the implications can be devastating,” warns an article on an American airsoft society website.

Only last October, a 13-year-old boy carrying an airsoft replica assault rifle from his home to a friend’s house was shot and killed by police officers in Santa Rosa, California. The recommendation is that airsoft toy guns should not be sold to minors under the age of 18.

“These weapons should be treated as real weapons because of their nature. They are not easily distinguished from real guns. Although they are made for recreational use like paintball guns, they can confuse law enforcement, scare people, and even endanger the lives of child­ren”, according to www.airsoftsociety.com.

Under existing local regulations, airsoft guns must comply for the firing of six-millimetre pellets, or BBs, as approved by the Ballistics Unit of the Malta Police Force.

The law encourages the use of biodegradable pellets. However, there has been some question about whether the plastic pellets are damaging to the environment when used outdoors. Ironically, biodegradable pellets end up in the soil even faster than non-biodegradable ones; therefore they do have some impact on the environment.

Paintball guns or markers, with water-soluble dye or powder, are used for training by the military and security organisations. To own a paintball marker in Cyprus, the owner has to have completed military service and have a clean police record. Most indoor paintball areas in Germany have a strict no-military-simulation policy, meaning that no camouflage clothing or real-life-looking marker guns are allowed. In order to be more easily distinguished from real weapons, the guns often come in bright colours.

Airsoft events have been held at a number of venues over the years at Ta’ Qali national park after closing hours (these have now stopped), and at the derelict White Rocks complex.

Sporting activity is the guise under which many development projects may see the light of day, be they car-racing track islands or military simulation games in derelict sites. Fraternising with lobbies such as motor sports promoters, government is setting the scene for environmental ruin. All claims of wide public consultation are left behind in the dust.

On its part, the gun lobby can claim no fondness for marine environment since the repeal last January of the law that required a police permit for a harpoon.

• The illusion still lingers that land-based air pollution, like any other unwanted item, can be blown clean off the land since the sea is so vast that it disperses all ills to the four winds.

This illusion was turned on its head over a holiday weekend with news that Malta sits on a kind of marine roundabout for international shipping, with significant amounts of ship-generated airborne pollution reaching the islands.

At an average of 82 ships a day, a ship goes by every 20 minutes. There is hardly a moment when there is not a marine vessel on or just over the horizon, spewing sulphur dioxide, vanadium and ozone in our direction. The presence in air samples of persistent organic pollutants, known as POPs, may point to unregulated onboard incineration.

Atmospheric pollution research­er Ray Ellul, who has been studying shipping emissions from the Global Atmospheric Watch station at Ta’ Ġurdan lighthouse in Għasri, called the pollution levels “significant”. This makes what we knew to be an already considerable problem even larger, adding to emissions from power generation and traffic.

The challenge, as Prof. Ellul points out, is to ensure ships around the world clean up their act. Malta, holding the largest ship register in Europe and seventh largest in the world, could make a start to work for cleaner air with its own fleet.