The St John’s extension saga has now taken on a life all of its own, independent of the merits or demerits of the project itself. What started out as an argument, ill- or well-conceived as it may have been, on whether a national monument (or should that be A National Monument?) should have works done and, if yes, where and how, has turned into a political casus belli of quite insane proportions.

Or has it? Frankly, the earnest desires of the Lil’Elves and portions of the media notwithstanding, I think not.

Let’s take a step back and examine this little contretemps, shall we? It started out with the environmentalists, led by the redoubtable Astrid Vella, threatening to tie themselves to the front of bull-dozers and generally kick up a heck of a storm if the project went ahead, to which the entirely reasonable response was “wait and see what the impact assessments come up with before getting all Joan of Arc”.

Aforementioned reasonable response, espoused by yours truly amongst others, met with a veritable barrage of “shut up and mind your own agendas”, to which were added comments about how technical assessments were only as disinterested as the people who did them and what were these people interested in, anyway?

As always when hobby-horses are saddled up and battle-standards raised, it becomes impossible for the riders and standard-bearers to back down. No matter that nothing had been written in stone up to that point, and no matter that the Foundation that takes care of St John’s was doing its level best to explain what was being proposed (note the word: “proposed”) in the minds of many, the project was going to involve replacing the façade with an aluminium balcony (gold coloured, of course) and Xmas Fathers were going to be hung from every available cornice, gargoyle and water-spout.

The interior of the church was going to be sandblasted down to bare stone and the flooring torn up, the former to be decked with flock wallpaper and the latter to be covered with linoleum depicting scenes from Disney.

Clearly, this wasn’t going to be the case, but from the reaction from all concerned, you’d have thought that Caqnu was being asked to raise a fifty-five storey block of flats, with a three-lane dual-carriageway being driven through City Gate (eat your heart out, Piano) and with the Royal Opera House ruins being turned into a Texaco Station.

So, what started out as an environmental protest, itself a perfectly reasonable way of emphasising that nothing should be done to mess the place up, countered by a “wait-and-see” attitude, degenerated into quite a name-calling exercise with almost Starship Enterprise speed.

Anyone in favour of the project – or even in favour of waiting to see what the project was really going to entail – was turned into an environmental gangster interested only in filthy lucre, bent on pushing forward his own agenda for all kinds of nefarious reasons.

It is in the nature of things – particularly in countries like ours where the political agenda is driven by considerations found in the Little Valley of the Po (which idea will the crowd shout loudest for?) – that when a shiny little bandwagon like this trundles along, certain political types will sit up and take notice and hop aboard with the alacrity of a five-year old shown a shiny toy, especially if it has bells on.

So it came to pass that the Labour Party thought it would be a good wheeze to table a motion in the House, oblivious of the stark fact that there are plenty of other crises with which to occupy their, and our, attention.

In a way, it’s nice that the Onorevlijiet are so fired up by environmental considerations that they will ignore the fact that the world is coming apart at the seams and concentrate their attentions on an issue that is one that is far better handled by its proposers (a body charged with giving due care and attention to St John’s) and by its opposers, working in a dynamic within the proper forum, the well-loved and universally respected MEPA.

But is it really such a good thing that the House is to debate this?

What is the use of having an appointed Board to run the Foundation, what is the use of having environmental lobby groups, what is the use of having planning and assessment structures, if Parliament is going to use its own time to debate the whole thing?

Megaphone debating techniques, such as are routinely employed in the House, with people shouting from one side of the aisle to the other, are not designed for the proper ventilation of technical issues – in Parliament, no-one sits back to watch the flowers grow, a side is taken and hang persuasion.

Because it is such a unusual question to come up before the House (what is the Government supposed to do if the motion is carried? Enact legislation directing the Foundation to withdraw its proposal or something?) we’ve also had the somewhat unusual (for Malta) phenomenon of Government MPs expressing themselves as not being quite four-square behind the Government on this.

Well, let’s be precise: it’s not a Government proposal, so they’re perfectly entitled not to be four-square behind it.

The Lil’Elves, on the other hand, coming from an environment where everything was a Government proposal (mainly because when Mintoff and KMB were in charge, everything was centrally dictated) seem to have got themselves into a tizzy about how the Government is hanging by a thread on its one-seat majority.

What a load of whistling in the dark.

Even if the motion is carried, which will have to mean that a) not all Government MPs vote against it and b) all the Opposition MPs remember to turn up, it’s not, by any stretch of the imagination (not even the Lil’Elves’) a confidence vote, so it will have no effect whatsoever on the viability of the Government.

So there you have it: a storm has blown up and it will blow itself out. Some folk will feel all warm inside, having shown independence of thought and shown that they have oats and will feel them, others will feel all warm inside, having cozied up to people who are not naturally their allies and yet others will wonder what all the fuss was about.