No, I haven’t been sprayed by the toxic substance that seems to pervade our world, making us mortals lovers and admirers of Ian Borg, Joseph Muscat, dust, terrible air quality and the uglification of Malta.

I still seem immune to this toxicity. But I do have a great respect for cranes; for their shape and immense utilitarian function.

Cranes are useful blots on our landscape which have turned us into lovers of what we once had. Without them we would not appreciate how lovely our country was before they took over our land and ruined it. We once had a Malta that was, and should have remained, beautiful.

It had some blemishes; it had some horrendous scars. But all that remains now is a huge blotch with cranes, cement and unrefined buildings. Trees, those precious things for our life, are being chopped down in the name of progress and development.

Cranes, a scourge on us all, give us unmitigated and affluent living. Cranes everywhere from Valletta to Mellieha and down to Kalafrana. We keep building to make our country better, more developed, more cosmopolitan.

The noise level in Malta has gone alarmingly high. It’s either the din of excavating machinery, builders swearing, music blaring or cars, buses and trucks hooting and zooming along as if only they exist. And when it is at its loudest we realise how lovely, how musical it is to live in near-silence. Until a few years ago I thought I preferred sounds to peace or quiet. I never truly appreciated silence.

Now I feel like a lover who realises how wonderful love is when a loved one is missing temporarily. And when gone forever, for whatever reason, then the emptiness proves how awesome the love you had was.

We are living in the age of the crane, with more cranes per square centimetre than most other countries ever saw. This is the legacy of Joseph Muscat who has always been ready to sacrifice all in the name of property development, the economic motor of our country.

Developers – shouldn’t they be known as destroyers of the environment? – have a golden pact with our Prime Minister. He lets them develop at will. They keep bankrolling him and his party. This is why the crane has been left to take over the landscape and do away with any love of the built or semi-pristine skyline.

To be totally fair, this development mania had already begun under the PN administration. So a curse on them too. But, in the PN’s near 25 years of power, never did we see such development frenzy.

The PN can also be compared to what cranes do to our appreciation of what is good when we see the horrid. The PN in power was, especially at the end of their reign, a total shambles. Or so many thought.

They considered Lawrence Gonzi a bumbling leader, seeing him trying to make sense of the farcical mess some of his MPs produced. Yet today, viewing what has been wrought on our land by Joseph Muscat, surely we can see how much better off we were then? Kemm konna aħjar meta konna agħar (we were much better when we were worse off) goes the terribly apt Maltese saying.

Gonzi’s warts were many; his terrible decisions plenty. But compared to the autocratic, who-cares-about-real-democracy, way of life today, Lawrence Gonzi was a blessing from heaven. He was not the ideal liberal politician. But who really needs the liberty to get married if we lose true liberty?

Success in life should not be measured by the amount of cubicles built, roads cemented and money in our pocket. Success should be all about inner peace, good governance, proper freedom of expression, mutual respect of divergent views and planned sustainability.

There is so much more to life than the economic growth cranes get us.

Billboards, soulless cubicles, tarmacked roads have taken over our land. But these negatives make me realise how good life was before they took over in the name of progress.

I dream of a country with better quality of life, less division, less hatred, less abuse. A country with no violence: except maybe the destruction of all cranes to win back our country from their depredation. The felled, and destroyed, cranes would truly be a beautiful sight to see.