For a number of reasons, I totally disagree with the idea that a proposal to develop a yacht marina at Marsascala should be dismissed out of hand.
It has long been declared that investments which do not cause significant industrial pollution should be attracted to Malta’s southern districts – so that they had better be tourism-related. It has long been stated that we need to guide Maltese tourism towards a profile that is not mass-based but which builds on market sectors that behind them leave higher value added: and the construction of a yacht marina would certainly be a step in this direction.
Such a marina would also deliver benefits to residents in the zone where it is located. As far as I know that is what happened when a yacht marina was established at Cottonera, though in its final version, the benefits were much less than they would have been on the basis of the first version.
It is for these and other reasons that the development of a yacht marina at Marsacala cannot just be set aside. This should in no way be taken as a defence of what has actually been done up to now or what could follow on the matter. In drawing up any project, all local interests involved should be consulted, even if by so doing, the door is opened for those who are more interested in sabotage than in development to create trouble.
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AFGHANISTAN
The reports about the fall of Kabul reminded those of us who remember those long ago times, of the fall of Saigon in South Vietanm, almost forty five years ago.
I was then a student in the US and with others in my course, we used to gather in the sitting room of the building which served as a central office from where our work was coordinated. We would drink coffee and read over the newspapers... mostly The New York Times and The Boston Globe.
The photos that were being published then had a traumatising impact: helicopters evacuating Vietnamese who had worked with the “Americans”, with some clinging to the helicopter door as it was shutting them out, desperate not to be left behind in the city; a Viet Cong tank approaching the gate of the US embassy...
I remember my American student comrades picking up the papers, glancing swiftly through them and then silently putting them back in their place.
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THEY HAVE TO IMPROVE
The need for qualitative improvement in this country’s educational systems is clear. Not only do we have a excessively high rate of early school leavers, but as the latest batch of “Oxford certificate” (to use a term employed a long time ago in my days) results shows, even among those who get to the end of their secondary studies, the levels of scholastic performance are still low.
If Malta were not spending enough on education,the reasons for all this would have been evident. But the fact is that compared to other EU countries, proportionately per capita, Maltese spending on education is well above the European average, not to say among the highest.
Why then have we gotten jammed in a cul de sac?
Probably teachers and educational administators already know the answers. The problem will not be resolved by throwing more money at it.