Europe’s smart money comes to Malta!

Wealthy savers are pouring money into Malta just as I predicted last July. Who says so? Why the money section of the London Sunday Times that’s who. They reported on 31 October that in the six months to March, savings rose by 15 per cent in Malta, only by 3.3 per cent in Switzerland and they actually fell in the Channel Islands by three per cent

Well done Dr Gonzi and well done Prof. Joe Bannister – let it not be said that I’m afraid to praise when praise is due. It truly is, in this case.

Who is the elephant in Dr Gonzi’s room?

So who is the elephant lurking in Premier Gonzi’s room? “Construction” is the answer. “What?” I hear you mutter to the old dragon as she makes your breakfast on this autumn Sunday morning.

But I am right. Think about it. Malta is a very small island with a very large population for its size. Land for agriculture, parks, other public amenities and even graves are already critically sparse. There are reputed to be 56,000 vacant properties on the island. This compares to only 5,000 vacant dwellings in Ireland, a land a hundred times bigger and with over 10 times the population. That is absurd, ridiculous and very wasteful.

And yet no one dares stop this tiny island from ignoring this fact, preferring to have a skyline of cranes and hideous unfinished buildings, which, if and when finished, only disappoint equally by their ugliness as they do by the poor quality of their finish.

Why oh why do the island’s developers, architects and builders insist on throwing up poor quality replicas of the worst examples of 1960s ghastly British housing estates and shopping centres, while taking every opportunity to demolish anything they can in the Maltese vernacular? And why are they allowed to do this?

Naturally, I realise that the construction industry employs many people. But not as many as the tourist industry, and poor construction, along with rubbish dumping and some awful resorts like Bugibba, are doing serious damage to the country’s largest industry.

The government has said that it wants Malta to be the Mediterranean’s top destination resort in five years’ time. Well, unless 90 per cent of the others are blown up by bin Laden between now and then, there is more chance of me becoming the next Prime Minister than that happening.

I’m afraid the rest of Europe’s impression of Malta is one of increasing tackiness despite extensive investment by the government, great improvements in quality of restaurants and a rash of new five-star hotels during the last decade.

The French are always keen to say that only Arabs build as badly as the Maltese. You know, as a regular visitor to the Arab world, I must say that that is not entirely fair – on the Arabs that is. Certainly most Arab builders do not finish off a building as badly as their Maltese counterparts, and many more also realise that it is important to keep their vernacular alive for the sake of their pride in their history and individuality.

Don’t those involved in construction realise that people come to Malta to visit a historic island, with an amazing history and beautiful Maltese, Baroque and Imperial British architecture, and not a clumsy imitation of what they perceive to be the ghastly mistakes of the large European industrial nations in the post war years?

Perhaps the worst example of this is Tigné Point. This architectural carbuncle is ugly, poorly designed, and shabbily finished. The roadway to it is a bottleneck. The car parking is poorly sign-posted. The three-storey shopping arcade has far too many shops of the same trade and moreover, these themselves are far too narrowly focused. The combination of all this is that I predict that most shops there will not survive long – leaving the place a down market shopping slum.

I notice Zara have not moved there. I’m not surprised. It is a very well run company and will be laughing all the way to the bank at the expense of those rivals competing for a trickle of customers over at The Point.

Of course, despite the huge problems that the Maltese construction business has caused, no one should expect, or even want, it to simply cease to exist. But why doesn’t Mepa insist on keeping the old wonderful facades and only allowing new development behind them? And where this is not possible why don’t they insist on building new developments in the Maltese vernacular?

Why doesn’t the government stop all future development on green or brown sites in favour of the redevelopment of the 56,000 vacant homes, which should be compulsorily purchased if left empty for more than five years, and the craters that exist in between them?

So, of course, I happily concede that Malta needs a construction business. But my God that business needs much better regulation, design and direction if further serious damage to the island is to be avoided.

And so construction will continue to be a swear word, in my vocabulary at least, until the industry decides, or more likely is forced, to stop wrecking this potentially beautiful place.

Let’s hope le petit Bonaparte is un homme de fer after all

The French loved to hate but secretly admire La Femme de Fer – Madame Thatcher as she defeated all who came before her both at home, and, worse from their point of view, abroad some 30 years ago.

Now Monsieur Le President Napoleon Sarkozy would very much like his present struggle with the militant French unions and brainless students to be his ‘Thatcher’ time.

The leader of the socialist opposition has warned Le Petit President that he cannot take on the French people and win. She has a point, even the all-powerful General de Gaulle failed in 1968 and any successor since, who has taken on public protest, has lost.

However, this tradition has to end this time. The government’s proposed rise in the retirement age from 60 to 62 is a small price to pay and probably not even the kind of adequate action necessary to save the French economy, and therefore the French public, from the serious public sector overspending which is no longer sustainable. If left unchecked it will bring down baby, cradle and all.

Across the English Channel the new coalition government has decreed that men and women will be required to work until they are 66 while cutting an average of 19.5 per cent out of the annual budget of each government department. So far the British public have taken these measures in their stride. No doubt, when the cuts bite Mr Cameron and his chums will become increasingly unpopular.

However, when these totally necessary measures see Britain rise from the ashes of the Blair and Brown years as a strong economy, the French will rue the day that their government failed to take strong enough corrective action themselves.

Worse, if Le Petit Bonaparte loses to the economically illiterate unions and their far from bright puppets in the universities, then France will be heading down just as Germany and Britain are going in the opposite direction.

So let’s hope for the sake of la belle France that the President stands tall in his Cuban heeled boots and holds his nerve to become the first President in a very long time to defeat public dissent, which has become an extremely bad national characteristic.

You know what – he may just do it. After all Le Petit Napoleon has already stopped Muslim women covering their faces in public and expelled over a thousand illegal immigrants. So it might just be a case of don’t underestimate a small man. The same could be said of the murderous dwarf Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Disraeli, Tom Cruise and Charlie Chaplin – not to mention the real Napoleon Bonaparte.

And talking of Maggie!

And while talking about La Femme de Fer, David Cameron’s refusal to accept an EU budget increase of 5.9 per cent and insisting it stayed at just 2.9 per cent was acclaimed by many as a timely reminder of those halcyon days of Mrs Thatcher’s titanic struggles to reduce the UK’s EU budget contribution 30 years ago.

Of course, Cameron was right and it didn’t take him long to enlist 12 other heads of EU states to his cause. So he continues with the promising start to his premiership.

However, given that UK government departments, left in a state of incompetent bankruptcy by Gordon Brown, have had their annual spending slashed by nearly 20 per cent over the next four years, one wonders why Mr Cameron wasn’t peddling the same message to that most wasteful of all gravy trains – the EU.

What a waste of water

Sunday 24th October saw the worst downpour on Malta in 70 years and thankfully nobody was killed, even if coffins were seen floating down the street. But what happened to all that water – most of it went literally down the drain. What a waste for a small island that has a low annual rainfall and is over populated.

British engineers managed to collect rainwater very successfully here over 150 years ago. So it shouldn’t be rocket science today. Moreover, Malta’s awful roads do act as very effective canals when the heavens open. Couldn’t they be harnessed to steer the floods into existing underground reservoirs?

Is this a life?

“As the mucus of life lay heavy in my lungs and my fever soaked the pillow,

“I reflected a little; well I reflected a lot.

“The dark night was lit up by dancing dangerous lightning.

“The driven rain slammed on to windows but was lost in the thunder’s roar.

“Now, not even I could hear the wheeze of my shallow breath.

“Life had given me a few baubles, but not the recognition I had sought.

“Never mind, my wealth was plenty and more –

“All wrapped in a golden cloth of family love – making me the richest of men.

“And at least life was not hung as the lavatory seat of stinking poverty around

“My wretched neck as that of a polio crippled boy limping in a Mumbai sewer.

“As a child I had been safe inside a cosy blanket of wealth

“A happy sensitive boy whose only winter was a raging parental war.

“But I was never denied love and so eventually found determination.

“I wanted to be a leader; I wanted to have it my way.

“So I reflected a little; but I dreamed a lot.

“I believed I had given of my best – perhaps it hadn’t been good enough.

“Then I remembered how I had thumbed my young nose at the establishment.

“Never wishing to bring it down as I knew of nothing better to put in its stead.

“That was uncommonly wise but a wisdom left mainly unsaid.

“Utterly unlike the empty headed protests of the sixties child.

“Later, success, acclaim and celebrity gave rise to foolish pride.

“But arrogant confidence was dashed on the rocks of ungodly savage loss,

“Then finally destroyed by a raging fire leaving a life half gone.

“But still there was time for new inspiration, women and frenzied effort.

“I reflected a little; well I reflected a lot.

“But now so old and with so little time left – what to be done?

“I reflected a little; well I reflected a lot.

“Should I be content to smile down on my children and their heirs?

“Or instead rise up in one last Herculean effort of Christian endeavour?

“Morning will decide as I had already reflected a little; well I had reflected a lot.”

Sir Hugo Holbein, October 2010.

Did he speak for you?

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