We keep risking missing the trees for the leaves – focusing on what is not important and missing out what is really important.

The mainstream media has a tremendous importance in this regard, so do those who dominate the social media but actually each one of us is ultimately responsible.

I am referring today to the interview given by the head of the developers’ association and the controversies that ensued. Much that has been said was very apposite and I do not want to repeat all that. But there’s more, much more, to say.

Anytime that the mainstream media want to do their job well they could go and find out, for example, the impact of the tsunami of development on the population of Gzira. The stories of people, especially the elderly, who have had their lives disrupted by the developers.

Before them, the people of Sliema passed through this upheaval and were beaten. Today the genteel bow-windowed houses along the seafront have been replaced by huge anonymous apartment blocks while the streets behind them have been turned into dark alleys. The quality of life has deteriorated for all except the owners of the new apartment buildings. Remember the controversies about a car park or about a massive development plonked in people’s backgardens?

The mayor of Gzira is meanwhile fighting a lonely battle to block the relocation of the petrol station next to the Manoel Island bridge to just a short distance away to the rather nondescript garden.

The ultimate culprit is the government which in 1993 promised to solve the traffic problems in that spot by building a feeder road linking to the roundabout at Tal-Qroqq but then did nothing. (The same has happened regards a feeder road leading to Smart City)

That Nationalist government is also the one to blame for the 2006 amendments that allowed a further storey on residential buildings which has and still is causing havoc in residential areas all over Malta and also opened up development areas which had previously been protected.

In other words, both the Nationalist and the Labour administrations have contributed and still do to the huge construction spurt, aided and encouraged by a host of ancillary trades that provide employment to many thousands.

But the developers want more. They used to rail against Mepa and they got a government that opened up the processes. But they are still not happy. Now they rail against the taxmen. They speak of getting far more tourists in, five million a year instead of the present two million something. And they have employed the former prime minister to push through the polices and programmes he championed in his time.

Time has now passed and we have had to cope with the failures of what at the time looked like being good initiatives – the sale of three hospitals, an Arab university at Cospicua, etc.

We now have to cope with a national airline in freefall while a massive road-building effort, while good in itself, has snarled the entire areas of roadworks, still causes massive traffic jams and cost the earth.

The whole country is dirty and looks neglected. The massive number of new residents, needed for among others the construction industry, is placing the whole country under extreme stress from hospital places to residential units to the education system. And what about the country’s infrastructure which is not geared to support these numbers?

Malta has changed and so have the Maltese. The national language, our real heritage, is continually undermined by the English language and also by wrong usage on Maltese language sites. There is simply no incentive to get the new arrivals to learn Maltese especially those who are long-term residents.

The Maltese streetscape has drastically changed, as is evident from the persons on the buses, which are free. The much-acclaimed multiculturalism is here now, though there are capital cities, from London to Brussels, which are worse.

And we have not spoken so far about Rosianne, Yorgen and the many rule of law issues. Robert Abela has more than enough on his plate and coming to power as the ‘continuity candidate ' has put him in Joseph Muscat’s camp from which any departure is painful, as Rosianne’s case has shown. Abela cannot allow Muscat to dictate the way ahead.

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