New Zealand is currently celebrating the news that the Rugby World Cup for 2011 will be held there. Most newspapers have commented on the fact that the country can expect 60,000 visitors for this prestigious sporting event.

Meanwhile, back in Malta promoters of a golf course at Xaghra il-Hamra have been throwing about the figure of 30,000 extra visitors a year. That a single golf course in a Mediterranean already crowded with innumerable bigger and better golf courses can bring in half as much extra visitors every year , as New Zealand expects to bring in for a prestigious international sporting event is unbelievable.

The real and clearly-quantified costs to the country have been set out already – namely the destruction of rare ecological habitat, scenic landscape, agricultural land and aquifers not to mention reducing yet further the psychologically-important need for empty space.

The fantastic figure of 30,000 visitors a year is the only benefit to the nation proponents have been able to offer. Until this figure can be justified, it should be treated as the product of an over-active imagination and treated with the contempt that it deserves.

Dr Carmelo Aquilina

Brighton,

East Sussex

UK