When we were kids we had some bad losers in our midst. These would cry, stamp their feet and try to rush off with the ball every time they lost. One of us had tried bursting the ball as part of his revenge. It was deflating for the rest of us but it did give us an appreciation of life and its vicissitudes.
Above all, it delivered a silly lesson in forgiveness with a particular sting in its tail. Dumbly, after a few missed matches, we always forgave the bad loser and invited him to rejoin us. It wasn't because we were some saintly kids; we lacked the numbers so he was a last refuge. And yes, he would once more play out his tantrums and be a spoilsport. He never learnt his lesson, just as we didn't learn to ostracise him, even if we would have had to play with a player less. Humans are such oddities.
That is childhood idiocy and ball games. Yet these inane stories of our young days have some unnerving connection to the present. Labour, right now, and anyone connected to them, are on a rampage.
They seem hellbent on spoiling the game for us all. Are they acting in desperation, thinking they could be booted out? They seem to have decided - as a team, a party, a cabinet - to ruin Malta in its totality.
The Labour Party, God bless its wondrous soul, has been on a historic victory path for quite a while. Yet the fear of losing - and letting those perfidious PN people back in - is, by the looks of it, driving all the Labour people manically sore.
Why else would Cabinet - and therefore all ministers voting aye - have proposed a change to the local plan? This little detail would add more misery to the miserable state of the country with its ongoing development, or rather mayhem and destruction.
The Villa Rosa development in St George's Bay will now grow exponentially. That area, as all areas in this country, already endures too much traffic, filth, and congestion. These mega projects will add more strain on the infrastructure, an infrastructure already stretched to the limit. These developments are detrimental to our lungs, our patience, our sanity. And yet government keeps piling on more and more.
The Villa Rosa extension near enough adjoins the former ITS building. And from the ITS building will sprout another project, monstrous in size, in scope and in its negative impact on the country.
A few metres away from these two mega monsters is a stretch of land that, back in time, was anointed as the Golden Mile. The shine of that mile has long gone, now turned into a concoction of rubble, cranes, noise and confusion.
But the Prime Minister, the minister of tourism, the MTA officials, all seem happy that more mega projects are happening there. And more will soon be on the cards. Even the ever-smiling, happy-go-lucky Leader of the Opposition seems happy enough about the state of affairs, at least in relation to tourism and new projects. So, we have little hope of ever seeing a change from today's madness to some form of old-style sanity.
When the Ryanair man came to Malta singing the praises of his airline, he actually took the mickey out of us all and self-crowned his airline as the national airline. All this while enjoying banter and fun photos with members of the MTA, our local tourism authority which should safeguard the best for Malta, today and in the future.
While here, this Ryanair supremo, Michael O'Leary, actually predicted that his airline would increase the numbers of travellers to Malta to eight million. That's from the miserly three million or so of today. And his prediction was based on numbers and growth happening at the moment. Not based on some random lottery number the CEO bandied about.
No one from government attacked these words of Irish wisdom; no government member said let's stop this madness. Because all these big projects need more people to visit these islands so all is fine, all is flourishing, all is going to plan.
We don't need to stop all tourism or drastically reduce the numbers immediately. However, a plan, a vision, a new policy to stop the numbers growing without any limit - when our land and resources are so limited - should be put into action immediately.
Yet how can Robert Abela and his team of dummies plan anything if all they can see is setting records of tourist arrivals, passengers at MIA and number of hotels. All this leads to reduction of quality of life for the locals and even for the future tourists.
The Labour Party might be concerned that they're on the way - by some miracle - to being booted out of office. But, just as the bad loser was recalled, so the Labour Party knows that, even if facing being booted out, one day the electorate will vote it back in. Because the electorate never learns its lesson.
When that boy of my young days tried bursting a ball, we knew we had the option of buying a few dozen other balls. Expensive but doable. But what are our options for this little scrap of an island? Where can we find more space, new territory, a new lease of life?
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