Actually, it has always been a pale blue, not the dark blue republic that Austin Sammut likened it to when he famously, or infamously, twinned it with the republic of Zejtun. Pale, not dark blue, because many people who live there are reasonable, intelligent well-read people who think, who care about their town, their quality of life (read Qui-si-Sana), the buildings around them which give their town its unique character, and feel a little more than they care about allegiance to a political party, which is as it should be. People who live in Sliema today are as much from Sliema as from everywhere else. The rise and rise of blocks of flats has created a different population to the one of even 20 years ago.

The problems the PN are facing there are not only important to them as votes. They are important issues because they are all our issues too! The conflict of private profit over public gain, the conflict between mad consumerism and public health, the conflict between largely educated middle class concerns about our environment, and the political and social need to create jobs in the building, hotel/tourism and allied industries, which are often great polluters, and so many more.

The building issue in Sliema is hotter than anywhere else perhaps, not least because Sliema has or had the largest concentration of fine town houses, built largely in the British period, than anywhere else. The rape of Sliema started years ago and many individuals have profited – blue, red and possibly even green. But mud slinging and trying to gain political mileage will get us nowhere. Surely though there is no excuse to continue making the same mistakes! Despite all the huge blunders we have already made as a nation in Sliema, we should now, at the very least, preserve what is there. We should not have pulled down that house in Ghar il-Lembi Street. We should not de-schedule the scheduled houses in Balluta Bay to replace then with seven-storey blocks of flats? These houses are the ones near Balluta Bay in the Telgha ta’ San Giljan, not far from the beautiful villas that have been restored in front of the new hotel. Why did we bother scheduling in the first place? What sense does it make to preserve a group of adjoining town houses and pull down the others? Once we have four or five or six beautiful homes there let’s keep them scheduled, let’s preserve the little beauty that Sliema still has; or is even that beyond us?

Looking at the local council results and ignoring the Sliema effect would be unwise, arrogant and foolish. It’s not really about saying we only lost 80 votes or we gained 120. Those who stayed home are perhaps those who voted loudest of all and their no vote cannot be ignored by all three political parties. Because the issues that are irking Sliema residents – the Ghar il-Lembi house which was pulled down, the demolished Union Club, an application to build no less than four tower blocks in old St Julian’s, the car park that is hiding or is an excuse to make financially viable a huge entertainment complex in Qui-si-Sana – are all saying the same thing.

We want this madness to stop and we want it to stop now.

This week it was the turn of foreigner and lover of Malta (more than we deserve to be loved perhaps), Jeremy Boissevan to tell us what has changed in Malta in 50 years. He perhaps said nothing that was new, but he did put together, in a relatively short presentation, what so many are saying and are writing separately, individually and with no real strength.

We have to think long-term not short term. We have to make less quick profits in the short term in order to have a more decent or not too indecent Malta long term. And most importantly, we all have to stand up and make a difference. The man or woman in the street, the letter writers to the newspaper, the columnists, the voters, the journalists, the academics, the ministers, the chairmen. We cannot all shut up for ever and hope things will get better on their own, or because we joined the EU, or because we have some good environmental legislation.

The change will only come about when the powers that be and all of us recognise that the Sliema issues are our issues, that we cannot live on a building site for ever, that our children’s lungs and ours are full of unbearable fine dust, that we are dropping like flies from certain odd and unexplained cancers hitting our younger middle aged friends.

That perhaps, just perhaps, getting onto a cranky crammed old bus to Ghadira, as I had to do when I was a child, with our thermos and our hobz biz-zejt to spend a day at the beach where the sand was clean and the water like it still is in the Caribbean, was not such a mad, bad way of life after all?

What Malta will our grandchildren inherit? Tower blocks, stone islands of building waste dotted around our islands like fish farms (!), unbearable levels of dust in the air and concrete beaches? Leave ALL the scheduled houses in Balluta Bay alone. Leave Qui-si-Sana alone. Leave Sliema alone for all of us, for all our tomorrows...