How are sites that have valuable natural endowments being protected? Indeed, protection just does not mean that turning such sites over to construction or similar projects which destroy their significance is being disallowed.

It should also cover the regular and ongoing activities of guardianship and upkeep that ensure sites remain in good “condition”. About this aspect, it is difficult to find information that is easily accessible to the public. I am convinced that the efforts of guardianship and upkeep are being kept steadily and that a number of dedicated people do safeguard properly what is left by way of beauty and interest in this country’s natural environment. However, it would be a good approach if the public is better informed about what they do and how their work is planned and organised.

Not doing so gives the impression that the whole effort lacks real value. But its importance can hardly be trivialised. To the contrary, it needs to be more strongly emphasized.

And NGOs which are committed to the defence of the natural environment should be brought into this effort, including those which are always at the forefront to criticise government action. For on this issue, the goodwill and genuine intentions of participants can well be distinguished according to the commitment by which from words, they move onto facts.                        

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LATEISH

This year, curiously, it took a long time for certain “personal” campaigns in the European Parliament elections to get launched. As I see it, for such a campaign to take off  and develop well on its own steam, it needs to start running a year at least before the election date. It so happens that the constitutency of each and every candidate is the country as a whole.

To get a personal message across on such a  scale, one needs time. Up to now, this factor had always been considered as crucial. Successful candidates managed somewhow to forge a “recognizable” national profile. Could it be that candidates have calculated another factor was more important for them than launching their campaign early? Did they need to know which nominees their party machine would be promoting?

If that was the reason for lateish starts, it does not augur well....

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ANTI-SEMITISM

Linking to anti-semitism the criticism of Israel that is doing the rounds with relation to the barbaric way by which that country is running its Gaza campaign follows on a practice that has been prevalent for many years. It would seek to identify as anti-semitism all critical assessment of whatever Israel happens to be doing.

Such an approach is no longer viable in the context of what has actually been happening in Gaza. Without any shadow of doubt, the October Hamas attack on Israel was horrendous, totally unaccepatable and must remain subject to full condemnation. But nothing then justifies the way by which Israel has continued to organise its attack on the people of Gaza without any care for how civilians – among whom women and children – were being killed in scores and hundreds. They certainly had no involvement in the Hamas attack.

By endorsing this critical view, one in no way becomes as a result some antisemite.