The rock arch at Dwejra collapsed yesterday – how could you not have heard? – and the government found it necessary to call a press conference. Yes, that’s right – the government, and not, for example, anybody with a professional interest in the subject. Not one but four cabinet ministers elbowed their way before the cameras: the tourism minister, because the ‘Azure window’ was a tourist attraction; the environment minister, because it was something in nature, the Gozo minister, because it was in his fiefdom; and the justice and culture minister, for no reason that any of us could work out. Maybe it was considered culture.

Did they have anything to say? Of course not: they’re not geologists, they had no geologist to accompany them, and they sought no briefing from geologists. They dragged journalists out of their daily schedule so that Owen Bonnici could say to them: “It’s like when a member of your family dies, and even though you know they are dying, it still makes you sad because even though you knew that this person would eventually die, you still hope it won’t happen.” I feel, somehow, that the only appropriate response to something like that is, “Like, wow. Ama-az-ing.”

The Prime Minister wasn’t there, because right now, he’s avoiding journalists and sudden questions. He goes through these patches, and this is one of them. When he sneaks out through the back exit, he gets ribbed about it, so clearly, he’s decided that it’s best to stay out of the picture. Instead he’s found the smart solution of avoiding reporters but getting extensive coverage anyway, and even better, saying what he wants to say without being challenged, and not letting journalists set the agenda with their pesky questions. He does this by speaking alone on the party radio station, then getting the headlines he wants because he’s not been forced to speak about what really interests us.

I can’t say I was particularly fussed about the collapsed rock arch. I’m not one of those people who has her personal identity invested in her national identity, or her national identity invested in a picture postcard for tourists. It’s a natural process, after all – the people making the most noise about it don’t seem to have understood how the arch was formed in the first place. It was obviously not going to stay an arch forever. I suppose that’s what Janice’s boyfriend meant, and if so, he should have said it, instead of speaking in parables and metaphors as though he had an audience of peasants before him.

Now can we get back to normal life? There are things going on which actually affect us and the life of this country. And one of those things is the manner in which the government gave a large parcel of prime-site land in a tourism area, near the sea, to an operator called Silvio Debono (you must have heard the name over the last few days…). That is public land – its dissipation, and the way it has been turned over to a private operator as his own personal money-machine, is something which should exercise us all. But instead we are talking about the value of the land. That’s right, the value – having assumed and taken for granted that it is perfectly all right for public land to be transferred to cronies in this manner, or even transferred at all, using a fake tender process and then changing the parameters afterwards, from a hotel to towers of flats.

And if we are going to talk about the value of the land, we should more properly speak about the price that Debono will pay, which is €15 million financed not with his own money but through a bond, with payments to the government staggered over seven years, and the rest of the “€60 million” being no investment at all, nor payment by Debono, but among other things redemption of ground rent by the owners of the flats and the rest of it by the time the concession expires in a century’s time. That’s right – a century, or more precisely, 99 years. By that time, everyone alive today will be long dead, including the babies.

Meanwhile, an estimated €75 million will have to be plucked from public funds immediately, and not over 99 years, to pay for the building of a new catering college in Ricasoli, so that the catering students can clear out of Silvio Debono’s way leaving him free to get to work on his goldmine, helpfully given to him by Joseph, Keith and Konrad. And the fact that the students will be incredibly inconvenienced by studying in Ricasoli instead of St Julian’s doesn’t matter at all, because making a rich man even richer is far more important.