Malta is small - Malta is famous for being small - so what is happening to our lovely little country?

When I first visited here, just after the Portomaso tower had been built, I was told by a local dignitary that "we have learned our mistakes, it must never be allowed to happen again", in reply to my expression of disbelief that such a monstrosity had been allowed to invade the landscape.

All the people I know who visit Malta, and there are many of my friends who do, love it because of it's gentle, small scale skylines, punctuated by the domes and spires of the villages. Now we have a graceless heap of concrete opposite the Addolorata Cemetery, which when driving in from Qormi direction totally blights the landscape, and there are, God help us, several more blocks on the way.

Such buildings have no place in the nature of this little nation, especially with the tens of thousands of empty properties already creating a scandal. This is building for Greed and not for Need. Perhaps my Maltese friends who tell me that "money talks" or "Malta is so corrupt" are right - I didn't want to accept the fact, but now, I wonder?

Now there is news of yet another cruise liner terminal in the pipeline, this time at Fort St Elmo, with talk of hundreds of millions of euros to be spent. Just how many more cruise ship groups can we cope with along the city streets? Mind you, like the Grand Harbour Ferry re-instatement promised two years ago and which has never materialised, these grandiose schemes will probably never come to more than politicians favourite hobby - talk!

In short, it does seem that after many years of neglecting our heritage, suddenly there is a rush to destroy what is left. A prominent personage in England was laughed at by "top people" some years ago when he stated that "Today's architects had done more to destroy what was left of London's skyline than the Luftwaffe had ever managed to do". Just be careful the same can't be said of Malta!