While I was on a canal tour in Copenhagen a few weeks ago, the guide informed us that she was going to stop her commentary for a couple of minutes, as we were passing through a residential area. This was at 11.30am. I could not help but make a comparison with the total disregard which many operators in Malta have to the rest of the community.
I imagined explaining to this tour guide that in our savage land, boats with blaring music are free to sail around the island and wake up people at any time during the night. The guide would probably advise to report the matter to the police, and I would reply that the police are an accomplice to these atrocities, as whenever you call them, their standard reply is: “They have a permit, and you have to bear with it till at least 4am.”
As a result, hundreds of families in many areas of Malta have no option but to stay awake till the early hours of the morning to the thumping sound generated by the so-called entertainment outlets, or else to adopt the increasingly common practice of sleeping with earplugs.
This has been going on for so many years that many are now resigned to this fate. In this savage land, the mighty rule and trample with impunity over the basic rights of weaker citizens.
In the spirit of our pseudo-liberal values, a group of cannibals may well be welcomed to our savage land to satisfy their urges
The pollution from the fish farms is but another manifestation of the encroachment of some unscrupulous operators on normal people’s private space, but noise pollution is far more insidious.
In the case of the sea slime, one may decide not to go to the beach, or perhaps to take a dip in a swimming pool.
The people living within a four-kilometre radius of clubs like Gianpula and Numero Uno have no option other than to abandon their houses and sleep in a hotel, as the noise invades the privacy of their homes with no chance of turning it off.
The police feign ignorance of the provisions of the Trade Licensing Act, which clearly prohibit these savage practices. They pass the buck and claim that the permits are being issued by other government departments.
Recently, the media turned their spotlights on a rave party in Buskett which was disturbing the avian population. Although I sympathise with the plight of migrating birds, I fail to see how their welfare has become a higher priority than that of citizens who are exposed to this abuse regularly.
Even more astonishing is the reaction of the FKNK, who surmised that rave party revellers should have a right to practise their delizzju (hobby) as they are a minority group.
Indeed, in the spirit of our pseudo-liberal values, a group of cannibals may well be welcomed to our savage land to satisfy their urges. If they are a well-connected minority and play their political cards well, it is possible, even probable, that after buying their passports they will be given space to practise their culinary culture, maybe with a proviso that the meat has to be imported to put our minds at rest.
It is quite likely that Malta has more lions and tigers per square kilometre than any other place on earth. Through the bars of their cages all over Malta, these noble creatures must pity a society where the worth of a person is increasingly being measured not by the contribution to the community in which he lives, but by the extent to which he can flout the laws and values that should be the cohesion of any civilised society.
In the case of the noise polluters, the inconvenience they cause is a demonstration of their power and influence.
Thus any option to operate without generating a constant disturbance, through sound-absorbing technology for example, will be rejected, as it will be perceived by them to diminish their status.
Our lions and tigers must feel protected in their cages, as the savage land outside is too hostile even for them to survive.