I realise that things are getting pretty bad when reading The Motorway last week brought a huge, big lump to my throat. That’s because The Motorway is not one of those deep, angsty, existential books with multiple levels of meaning which go on to win literary awards.

It’s a primary school reading book by Roderick Hunt – one in a series of books about the delightfully-named children Biff, Chip and Kipper and their dog Flopsy. Their parents also feature, as does their motorbike-riding Gran. In The Motorway, art imitates life, and developers are intent on building a massive highway that will destroy the woods near Gran’s house.

Gran and the children are dismayed because this means they won’t be able to go for long walks and picnics in the woods. Again, I was finding this alarmingly true-to-life. Gran organises a protest meeting and Biff helps her paint a banner. Chip makes a poster saying ‘Save our Woodland’.

So far, so familiar.

In yet another very realistic scenario, the worried villagers attend a public consultation meeting and an ‘important woman’ tells them that it can’t be helped – the motorway has to go somewhere and the powers-that-be have decided it’s going to rip right through the woods. Gran goes home dejectedly (the villagers have probably accep­ted the futility of appealing to a fictional version of Mepa, which would be as useless as the real one).

The children wander into the woods where the bulldozers are already creating havoc. They pick some flowers before they are crushed by the demolition machi­nery. They give them to Gran. And then in a wonderful turnaround, Gran realises the flowers are a rare and protected species and their habitat cannot be destroyed.

The motorway cannot be built there and the woods are saved. The villagers triumph over adversity and the onslaught of development.

My son thought it was a brilliant ending.

I thought so too, but in real life it would work out differently. In fact, it would go something like this: Developers want to build on the last bit of unspoilt land in Malta.

Worried citizens point out it is a scenic spot along the foreshore, that is outside the development zone and that if even this is taken away from them, they will have even less place to walk and ramble and generally escape from the crowded urban hodgepodge developers foisted upon us. Development goes through anyway. No amount of protests by citizens or children are going to change that reality.

The Budget and the comments made by the Prime Minister after it, have laid to rest any fanciful notion that this administration gives a toss about the environment. The signs were all pointing that way before.

It is clear that some kind of ­pre-election understanding was reached with the development lobby and that they are calling the shots

First we had the relaxation or removal of practically every policy regulating more building sprawl – horizontally and vertically. This was accompanied with the unofficial dissolution of all enforcement agencies and structures.

In the Budget, an insulting €10,000 was granted for the Sustainable Development National Strategy. This is the umbrella strategy drawn up for managing the environment and resources and promoting sustainable economic development – a sort of road map for the environment, if you like. It should be important. It’s not. Willie Mangion gets paid more for seeking out elusive garages.

After the Budget speech, Joseph Muscat brushed off the concerns of environmental NGOs by saying they were looking at environmental issues in a restrictive fashion – concerning themselves only with the built-up environment.

That was what I call a ‘Bir-rispett kollu’ comment – the kind where the speaker precedes an insult with the declaration that he respects the people he is insulting.

Muscat is deliberately missing the point. Environmental NGOs are concerned about the built environment. But there is another graver worry which should concern all citizens – even those who don’t give a fig about the countryside, birds, bees or flowers (to go by the cliché definition of tree-huggers’ inte­rests).

It is overwhelmingly clear that some kind of pre-election understanding was reached with the development lobby and that they are calling the shots. We can all reach our own conclusions as to what the Labour Party got out of this understanding and what it has to deliver in return. It may seem beneficial for the party/government in the short term because the deliverables are all extracted from public resources – the handing over of public land, favourable tax regimes, relaxation of all planning rules.

The Labour government gives out nothing of its own and continues to enjoy financial support and the fruits of purported economic growth. It may appear to be a win-win situation. But a word of caution. Even if the Labour government doesn’t give two hoots about effectively handing over the keys of Castille to unelected individuals, it may consider the eventual fall-out of these types of Faustian pacts on its self-preservation.

In time, it will realise that it is no longer in control and it will have to face the flak for being associated with the individuals who are.

This has happened to the Nationalist Party with its ‘barunijiet’ fetish, and look where it is now. It would seem that politicians never learn.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt

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