Mr Nicholas Henley, head of the nature and biodiversity unit of the European Commission, must be a truly remarkable chap. Talking this week in the European Parliament about Maltese hunting and trapping, he apparently said that “during recent discussions, the government gave its assurance that measures are being taken to reinforce existing enforcement controls in order to try to put an end to illegal hunting.”

Really? Is that what the government of Malta went and did? It gave Mr Nicholas Henley its own personal assurance that “measures are being taken”? And I suppose that means that everything is going to be just hunky dory now, isn’t it?

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Yippee, skip. Oh, OK, on this one I suppose Mr Henley’s naivety can conceivably be forgiven. After all, I imagine he has no idea what the word “assurance”, as understood by the Nationalist administration of government, actually means. How could he? He hasn’t been living here all these years. He couldn’t possibly know that “assurances” are what the government gives when it wants other people to shut up and leave it alone... and that an average of 4,000 such “assurances” are given every other week. (In fact, I’ve heard that government assurances can nowadays be ordered directly over the Internet – it’s called “E-government”, or so I’ve been told.)

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But no matter: seeing as Mr Henley appears to be so very delighted with the assurance given to him by the government of Malta, here are a few recent ones he may want to know about before ringing the church bells all over Europe:

Assurance number 1: that the livelihood of Manikata farmers would not be threatened. That’s right, we’re talking about the same farmers who’ve just had their leases terminated with the stroke of a Presidential pen, so that Lorenzo the Magnificent can go ahead and build his precious golf course. Oh, and please note also that this “assurance” was given a few weeks before the March 2003 referendum... by the same man who signed away their leases last month.

Assurance number 2: That the Maghtab landfill would close. As, in fact, it has... only to be instantly replaced by three separate landfills, all adjacent to each other, with the result that, despite being “closed”, the Maghtab landfill is now three times its previous size.

Assurance number 3: That the hunting regulations “would not change, and even if they do, it would be to the hunter’s benefit and not to their disadvantage.” This, by the way, was more than just a run-of-the-mill “assurance”. This was a written contract, signed by Eddie Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi a week before the 1998 election.

Assurance number 4: That trapping will continue after 2008. This declaration was made live on Xarabank by former Foreign Affairs Minister Joe Borg, and also in MIC’s Aggornat (more of this later)... by a huge coincidence, a few months before the referendum.

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But of course, we must all be careful that these “assurances” were, in fact, given by the government in the first place. In other words, we must be certain that they are not concoctions invented by the evil media merely to confuse minds, distort reality, and give the mistaken impression that not all is rosy here on the island of gbejniet and bigilla.

After all, wasn’t it Mr Nicholas Henley himself who first alerted us to the fact that what passes for “illegal hunting” is actually nothing but an exaggeration on the part of the media?

Needless to add, he’s completely right. And, oh, look: the nasty, nasty media are at it again! This week, The Times invented a story about 13 flamingoes which were shot at sea by a hunter in a speedboat. Yes, that’s right. With clinical deliberation and a total disregard for the truth, they fabricated a cock-and-bull story simply to piss the hunters off. And it’s not the only one, either. Earlier in the week, some wise guy managed to hoodwink the same paper into believing that a kingfisher had been shot over Malta. A kingfisher? Shot over Malta? Can you imagine? What’s worse, this lying so-and-so even took the trouble to provide photographic “evidence” of this crime. The kingfisher in the photo looked like it had the lower part of its beak shot clean off. Of course, this can’t be true, as kingfishers are protected by law. So it must have been a Photoshop manipulation.

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And to be honest, I myself occasionally make mistakes of this kind, too. For instance, earlier this month I came across the body of a swallow lying in a field. At first, I assumed that the bird must have been shot... but of course, thanks to Mr Henley I know this can’t possibly be the case. No, the swallow in question had clearly died of a heart attack. Not at all surprising, when you consider that it had flown thousands of miles to get here, and that flying insects – staple diet for swallows, swifts and other hirundinidae – are notoriously high in cholesterol. To add to the poor bird’s misfortunes, it must have landed on something sharp and pointed, too... because it had a small, bloody, pellet-sized hole right in the middle of its neck.

And there you have it. Just look how easy it is to come away with the mistaken impression that illegal hunting is rampant on our islands...

Taking the MiC

More bird-brained stuff for you today. Did I already tell you that Aggornat – the Malta EU Information Centre’s official newspaper, in case you weren’t aggornat about it – also gave us an assurance that trapping will continue after 2008? Well, this week I went and dug up the issue (Number 13, October 2002, to be precise) and found that... yes, it did. Look: “The European Union and Malta have agreed that... Bird hunting will continue in spring... Bird trapping will continue, even in spring...” and “traditional trapping will continue to be allowed provided a number of measures are implemented after 2008.”

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My, oh my. Now look at what the European Union has just gone and done. Bird hunting will continue in spring? Not looking very likely from where I’m standing. As for bird trapping, not only will it not “continue in spring”, as guaranteed by Aggornat... but after 2008, it will not continue... at all.

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Anyhow: as far as I'm concerned, good riddance. But I must say, I shared the curiosity displayed earlier this week by (I think) a Super One journalist, who asked Aggornat editor Mr Carmel Attard the following question point blank: What happened? How on earth did you manage to get it all so horribly, horribly wrong?

His answer? Simple. The government misinterpreted the EU directive. That’s right: no mistake on the part of Aggornat, or of MiC, or for that matter of Mr Attard himself. Not at all. As they say in the movies, it was the government “wot did it”. And Aggornat simply reported the government’s misinterpretation without question, thus passing it off as a fact.

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Excuse me, Mr Attard, but there’s something I haven’t fully understood here. Considering that Aggornat was the official Malta-EU information Centre magazine... and that MiC was set up specifically to “contribute to a higher level of information and education about the EU in Malta” (www.mic.org.mt)... doesn’t that make it your direct responsibility to instantly correct the government’s misinterpretation of this EU directive? I mean, isn’t that what the Maltese tax payer paid your organisation Lm3 million to do? To inform the Maltese people – which, by the way, also includes the government – precisely about EU directives, and how these can and can not be implemented in Malta? And while I’m on the subject... don’t you think it’s a little late to inform us today that the government got it all wrong way back in 2002... by a huge coincidence, just a few short months before the referendum?

***

Oh, dear. Far be it from me to stick up for hunters, still less for trappers, but it’s beginning to look like these people have been royally shafted. As have the Manikata farmers, the Maghtab residents, a certain Mr Nicholas Henley of the Commission’s nature and biodiversity unit and, for that matter, anyone else foolish enough to believe “assurances” given to them by the government of Malta.

It’s also beginning to look as if MiC had nothing whatsoever to do with information about the European Union at all... which, come to think about it, is probably why the European Union had nothing whatsoever to do with its funding. So why was it created, I hear you ask? I’ve absolutely no idea. Perhaps you should ask its former chairman, Dr Simon Busuttil, MEP... you know, the man who received more than 50,000 votes in the 2004 MEP election, thanks in no small part to the overwhelming publicity created for his benefit precisely by the Malta EU Information Centre...

Adieu

Serious matters now. I have been warned by numerous experts in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder to break the following news as gently as possible, so as to avoid any scenes of widespread panic, mass suicides, withdrawal symptoms on a national scale, as well as a general exodus of Biblical proportions. So before reading the next sentence, my advice is: sit down, get comfortable, pour yourself a large whiskey, and, above all, please remain calm.

This is likely to be my last column for a while, as – not unlike certain species of migratory bird – I will be leaving the island for a few months next week. Having said that, I will be sending the occasional article from abroad, and – hang on, what was that noise? Sounded suspiciously like someone popping a bottle of champagne...