This government has done a stupendous job with the Tritons Square, in Valletta only to ruin it with a ghastly lack of aesthetic taste: the horrendous wooden stalls surrounding the fountain. Now that these are operative, the effect is much worse.

There is another very sad repetition of the same kind of misjudgement, this time at Buskett. In truth, it is a gross insensibility to the green environment. Over the last five years, the government has completed impressive improvements to the whole of Buskett.

The thousands who flocked for the Mnarja festival would have witnessed, had they wandered just a few metres away from the parking lot, a new gross error of judgement by those responsible for the upkeep of the place. This is the spreading of a sort of black gravel (apparently obtained from the scratchings of old asphalted or tarmacked roads) over one of the three long paths (the one immediately behind the parking area).

The only effect of this initiative is that it has immediately turned a charming, luminous country trail into a black, dull, much-neglected village road.

One hopes that not only will the other two long paths escape the same fate but also that the ravaged path will be restored to its former state at the earliest.

Buskett is a national monument and only convinced and experienced green environmentalists should decide what can be done or not done there. All pathways must be left in the state the Knights had imagined them. This subsumes that no cars, not even the workers’, should be allowed any further than the parking area, unless provided with a special permit.

Strict rules should be in place to curb air and noise pollution of any kind. One cannot, therefore, not mention the restaurant that has enjoyed a lease there for over 50 years.

It is high time this commercial site be restored to the people for the leisure and enjoyment of the many and not of the few.

Finally, I suggest trees uprooted from our roads are relocated to Buskett to replace the dead ones there.