My friend told me: “Stop writing about Seoul and horrible high-rises. I can’t bear the thought of seeing them all round me in a couple of years’ time.” So I went and read Esquire magazine instead – the July edition with Bjorn Borg looking steely (though the headband does ruin the effect somewhat).

The blurbs on the cover page are as far removed from tales of environmental woes as you can get. They promised to give us the goods on the coolest sportsmen of all time from George Best to David Beckham.

I was flicking through the ages, reading about how Best had a women’s wear boutique in Manchester with a handy flat on top. There was a snippet about the unforgettable Brazilian player Socrates – the chain-smoking, philosopher-doctor who captained his team with such flair in the 1980s. A good bit about cars and man-gadgets and then the travel section. A Giles Coren piece entitled ‘Hot mess’. And this is where it got uncomfortably familiar.

Whoever came up with the idea of reporting and blocking a group page, has done his or her own cause a great disservice

The double page spread was an aerial shot of a bleached-out landscape with a phalanx of high-rises in the background. Coren wrote a great piece about holidaying in Dubai with his young daughter. He enjoyed it – because how he could not enjoy a week with an adorable little girl who could have waffles and bacon and maple syrup for breakfast, as opposed to boring cereal at home.

But he compared holidaying in Dubai to going to Mars – doable, but at a great cost. His summary of the place is that of “A soulless gimmick thrown up in the desert overnight which offers barely a nod to democracy and has no indigenous culture or natural beauty”. I really hope we’re not going for this model.

• Victor Hugo once said: “All the forces in the world are not as powerful as an idea whose time has come”. I feel this is the case with the protection of our natural and built heritage and lifestyle. This is the time to realise what we risk losing and to rally round and give it our best shot.

It’s not a question of clinging on to some misplaced nostalgia of Malta as a rural idyll where għonella-clad women traipsed around with their goatherd husbands in the fields. It’s definitely not a rejection of progress and modernity.

It is the realisation that we have to preserve that which is still good and beautiful and worthy of protection – that a balance has to be found between unbridled speculation and a calmer, sustainable approach – even if it means righting the swing of the pendulum from the extreme pro-developer end.

This is the time.

• Despite the fact that practically everybody is online these days, there’s one basic rule that many people still don’t get. It’s the fact that you can’t control the internet. No matter how popular you are, no matter how widely subscribed your site is, no matter how nasty, biased or silly, critical comments are, it is practically impossible to control the conversation on social media. Any attempts to do so will backfire badly, resulting in a communication fail.

I write this after reading reports that a Facebook group comprising more than 8,000 Maltese women has been reported to Facebook and the group page blocked. It isn’t clear who reported, or why the report was made, but it isn’t too hard to figure out.

During these past weeks, a furious debate has been raging about the ‘morning after pill’ and whether it should be available or not. The debate has become so heated and so confrontational that the fact that there is no actual prohibition of the importation of the pill has been ignored.

Still, pro-life and pro-abortion supporters slugged it out on the comments boards. The level of debate descended to pitiable levels. And then – all of a sudden, the page was offline.

Now I am firmly in the pro-life camp, but I can say with the utmost certainty that trying to quash debate by having dissenting views blocked is the worst thing one can do. That’s because resorting to heavy-handed measures to still the debate is a tacit admission that you cannot defend your position with lucid arguments.

Secondly, because it is sneaky and attracts sympathy for the people you are trying to silence. And in the third place, it is a totally futile gesture as a replica Facebook group is incredibly easy to set up. In this case a substitute group was up and running within minutes.

So whoever came up with the idea of reporting and blocking a group page, has done his or her own cause a great disservice. The battle for hearts and minds has to take place through open and respectful debate, not by means of underhanded tactics.

Huge social media fail.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt