🤵♀️👸 Political leaders are talking about saving Ggantija Temples from damaging development. The PN leader visited the area yesterday; Roberta Metsola wrote about it on Facebook today; and in 🎤 media comments this morning the Planning Minister put more distance from the Planning Authority’s decision to grant the latest permit for a block of flats.
📣 But the political rhetoric does not change the facts on the ground. 🚧 Three permits for buildings that jut above the skyline of the Ggantija's buffer zone have been granted in the past few months; 😧 three more are being processed.
🏗 All the political rhetoric in the 🌏 world is not going to overturn approval of those three permits granted. The only way to get those decisions 👩⚖️ revoked is through legal action.
✅ I am collaborating with an NGO to launch legal proceedings to get the first permit of those three already-granted revoked. In that case, the project architect 💼 also happens to be a Planning Authority board member who prepared a ❌ false architectural drawing. Click on 👉 Learn more 👈 button to learn more about the case – and consider donating.
👁 Click on 👉Learn More👈 button to read the article
✅ The cleanup to be held at Qbajjar Battery by Din L-Art Helwa’s Gozo branch and Nadur Nadif tomorrow not only serves to draw attention to the plight of the crumbling battery, it also has the symbolic effect of the public reclaiming the battery to take care of it after the government has allowed it to deteriorate.
🕵✍️ Here is a brief recent history of the Qbajjar Battery, which was built in 1715 by the Knights of St John, and which is one of the three remaining Knights-era coastal batteries (the others being in Qala and Comino) where the setting remains in its natural state (not been surrounded by buildings):
1️⃣ A company called Rook Limited got the battery under temporary lease from the State between 1981 to 2003.
2️⃣ The company opened a disco called Rook, and carried out extensive works.
3️⃣ In 1999, the Planning Authority instituted infringement proceedings for illegal works, which included extensions of the upper floor, use of concrete bricks, decorative pickaxing of walls, and removal of paving stones on the ground floor. The proceedings remain “pending at Enforcement Officer.”
4️⃣ In 2007, the government issued an eviction notice and informed Din L-Art Helwa that it would pass the battery to it for renovation and opening to the public.
5️⃣ George Said on behalf of Rook Ltd applied for a warrant of prohibitory injunction, which was upheld, and then filed a court case.
6️⃣ After dragging on for 9 years, the court declared that the case was “deserted” and hence dismissed.
7️⃣ George Said continued to seek a new agreement with the government – he told me three years ago that he deserves to be given a lease of the battery just as other companies leased and opened such buildings for entertainment (two such batteries in Malta - situated in built-up areas - are open as restaurants. Their leases were granted considerable years ago: it's politically difficult to do something similar now, especially for a
🕵🔴 After extensive journalistic investigations and technical research, today I launched a new wave of investigative articles into damage that would be done to the setting and integrity of Ggantija Temples from attempts to develop the buffer zone of the temples into blocks of flats.
1️⃣🟠 For the first article - in which I publish extracts of letter that the United Nations Environmental, Social, and Cultural Organisation that I obtained via a Freedom of Information request - click on the Learn More button to read the first article.
🎤❓ The spokesperson of junior minister for fisheries and aquaculture did not reply to my questions asking how many of the ministry’s employees attended an event called Swimming with Tuna. Neither did he say in which tuna farm the event took place.
📺 The event made the news after the politician Arnold Cassola wrote to the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life alleging that the event by the junior minister is in breach of the code of ethics for parliamentarians. There is now an ongoing investigation by the standards commissioner.
👁 In this post, I would like to highlight something else. There have been occasions in which swimming in tuna cages was promoted as a fun experience; it is not clear if this activity is still organized.
❌ But I believe that having the junior minister for fisheries organize such an activity for ministry employees is objectionable given the environmental and social issues surrounding this industry.
🤔 It is an industry that troubles many scientists, environmentalists, and justice or poverty campaigners mainly due to the loss inherent in the feed conversion during the so-called fattening process. The industry works by catching adult, wild 🐟 tuna from the sea, and then feeding them oily pelagic fish for around four months in order to primarily increase their fat-to-meat ratio favoured in sushi and sashimi, before slaughtering and exporting to Japan.
〽️ Yet the feed conversion losses are staggering: for every kilogram that a tuna gains in weight, it consumes between 10 and 40kg of fish. (The range in Feed Conversion Ratio is depended on size of fish – juveniles have lower FCR – and water temperature.)
🐠🐠 The tuna in tuna farms in Malta are fed hundreds of thousands of kilograms of fish every day (figures are extrapolated from reports prepared by environment consultants). All the fish fed to tuna are edible fish, mostly mackerel, herring, sardines, and anchovy.
🌍 🛥This posits the question: i
What colour is global warming?
♨️🫠 Is it too hot to think? And have you thought about how global warming is going to make Malta a suffocating place in summer in years to come?
🍔🌭 Did you have a steak or pork chop or burger yesterday? Do you know how much carbon dioxide – the primary gas that causes of global warming – is pumped into the air in order for you to have that steak, or pork chop, or burger?
🏭 The answer – 7.28 kg of CO2 – has been calculated in a major new study that measures the environmental impact of different diets.
👩🏫👩🔬 The study by 10 researchers at the University of Oxford measured environmental impacts – land use, water use, CO2 emissions, and more – for vegans, vegetarians, and meat-eaters. The large-scale study involving 55,504 subjects was published in the journal Nature Food last week.
🍗🍖 Meat eaters were categorized in three categories: low (50 grams or less of meat daily), medium (50 – 100 grams), or high (more than 100 grams of meat consumption daily). To get an idea of what that means in terms of real-life diet, consider that a burger weighs 120 to 180 grams, a pork chop weighs around 230 grams, and a chicken breast weighs around 350 grams.
💫〽️ The science is clear: a change in diet is needed to halt global warming and the loss of habitats, as well as species lost to extinction.
🥦🌏 The data shows that a reduction in meat consumption reduces the impact by half: the land use and CO2 emissions of low meat eaters are half of those of high meat eaters.
🏃💙 There are other benefits to eating less meat: you would feel healthier and slimmer, and reduce the chances of suffering from a range of diseases and health conditions.
🍅🥑 Best is to go vegetarian or vegan, but any movement towards minimizing meat consumption is movement in the right direction.
Excavation in buffer zone of archeological site
❓❓ Questions surround the dynamics or effectiveness of the archeological monitoring of building site excavations in sensitive archeological zones. I have heard people muttering about monitoring archeologists being absent from sites. And the non-disclosure by the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage – as well as the inconsistent, fickle positions it sometimes takes in consultations over development in archeologically sensitive zones – adds to the sense of frustration and bewilderment.
❗️❗️ All of this is evident in several cases I have investigated in recent months. One of those cases falls within the buffer zone of Tas-Silg archeological site in Marsaxlokk. The video published with this post shows excavation with large excavators in the buffer zone – or, as it is formally known, the Area of Archeological Influence – and the archeologist engaged to monitor the excavation nowhere to be seen.
✍️🗣 A resident sent two emails to the Superintendence, in one of them pointing out that the archeologist had only turned up in the morning for about 30 minutes, and did not return at any point throughout the rest of the day. A Superintendence official replied that the “works, as well as monitoring and its frequency, are being carried out as per Terms of Reference issued by the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage.”
✍️✍️ I asked the Superintendence for a copy of the terms of reference. They did not reply.
🚧🚦 Sources in archeological circles told me that the Superintendence typically mandates that once soil is removed and no heritage features would be evident on the surface of the bedrock, then the permit-holder is authorized to gouge out the rock with an excavator or digger, as shown in the video published here. The source also told me that archeologists who monitor these sites typically handle many sites at any one time.
📣📰 This week I published a journalistic investigation which reported that, in one case near a megal
🟠 Key findings you can read about in the article:
✅ Court upholds injunction, but planning tribunal rejected similar request a few months earlier
❌ The Superintendence of Cultural Heritage - the cultural heritage guardian - inexplicably changed into position over the block of flats
⚖️ Constitutional experts had offered to work with the government on the problems of "parallel jurisdiction" in Malta, but the government repeatedly ignored them
👩⚖️ Six residents are now engaged in two parallel legal proceedings - in front of the tribunal and in the civil court
♨️ Click on Learn More to read the whole article and see photomontage of block of flats
❓ The same as the Planning Authority?
🤦🤷♀️ The authority is justifying a proposed block of flats in large part by the assertion that the site is “within an open piazza having buildings of different height, design, rhythm or proportions… the openness of the piazza allows for vertical extension [of proposed four-storey in windmill’s protect scheduled setting] being proposed whilst still retaining the sense of openness offered by the piazza without detracting from the views/perceptions of the scheduled windmill.”
🎥👀 The video shows the buildings around the piazza: did you see the different heights and proportions? All buildings are uniformly two-storey baroque-style townhouses – the only deviation is the vacant plot where the four-storey block of flats are proposed.
♨️ What else did the authority not see, or policies it ignored - read a full analysis clicking here 👉👉👉https://victorborg.com/planning-authority-approval-flats-windmill-protected-setting
🇲🇹🟢 Inclusion minister Julia Farrugia Portelli made a powerful speech in parliament yesterday about the devastation wrought by psychological violence, a type of domestic violence. She talked specifically about “gaslighting”, a type of psychological manipulation in which the victim can be driven to a point of questioning his or her own sanity.
🧠👤 Psychological violence can be insidious and tormenting, and possibly more long-lasting than physical violence.
⚖️📃 Farrugia Portelli called for strengthening of laws to tackle gaslighting, modelled on a UK law which, she said, makes gaslighting punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment.
🚔🟠 Maltese law already criminalises all types of psychological violence as well as any type of domestic violence (including economic) that results in moral harm and suffering. Psychological violence is punishable by up to 4 years imprisonment (see Article 251 of Criminal Code), although any refinements in the legal texts is always a good thing.
👁👮♀️ Moreover, as an analysis I published yesterday shows, psychological violence already makes up more than half of all domestic violence reports to the police.
👩⚖️📟 The problem with psychological violence is that, unless you have a witness, it is very hard to prove or disprove. You could have recordings of the psychological violence as evidence, but courts tend to be wary of secret recordings because these can be manipulated – made selective, or having parts of them cut – to only give a partial depiction of events.
🟣👥 Psychological violence may also be proven by psychological assessments in which all parties are clinically interviewed, something that could produce solid results if children are witnesses to the psychological violence. If no one is a witness, it would be hard to establish cause and effect that constitutes court-grade evidence and withstands the attempts of a defense lawyer to sow doubt – in the criminal c
👶👩🦰👨🦱 What happens to children after marital separation? Did you know that many children are at risk of psychological damage – or their development potential affected – by the post-separation living arrangement?
❓🧡 Why is this important and why should you care? A major easy-to-comprehend report – one of the most extensive of its kind – answers all the questions. Click here to learn more and see the report 🔴✅👉 https://victorborg.com/shared-parenting-coparenting-joint-custody-best-interest-of-the-child
(Video copyright: Videowokart – stock.adobe.com)
🔴☑️ There are other revelations in the article itself, including an infographic of the project split in 10 development applications, and a picture of the project scheme or blueprint.
🟡☑️ Read also other details of other scathing remarks made by the tribunal, which wrote that it doubted the "genuineness of the request for recusal at this stage".
🟠☑️ But why is construction completed before appeals are decided?
👉✅ Read about all of this and more by clicking on this link ♨️ https://victorborg.com/planning-tribunal-recusal-flats-complete-judicial-fiasco-tribunal
☝️👁⚖️ The recent judgement of the Court of Appeal in which it revoked permit for a five-storey building in a street of two storeys in Santa Lucija has demonstrated that building up to the height limitation is not a right and that developments have to respect street context.
🔴👩⚖️ This judgement caught the imagination or attention of mainstream media and public, but it is not the first judgement of its type. The first one was a judgement delivered on 20 January 2021 (Appell Nru. 16/2020) in which an applicant had wanted to build a five-storey building in a street of one-storey garages and two-storey houses in Mgarr. In that instance the Court of Appeal also held that building up to the height limitation is not a right.
✅💙 Hopefully, some sense will now be instilled in planning decisions as buildings that tower over others in the street have already ruined many streetscapes or neighbourhoods - even entire townscapes as shown in the video here. You can read more about how the permit for the building shown in the video was granted by clicking here 👉👉👉 https://victorborg.com/gozo-skyline-streetscape-ruined-higher-buildings-planning-policiesefined-height-limitations
🏛⚖️ A trio of legal proceedings against trapping and hunting in Malta – two by the EU Commission, the third by NGO Birdlife Malta in the Maltese courts – is an indictment of the failure in the handling of the hunting and trapping portfolio by the Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri, and the political blunder of the Prime Minister in handing that portfolio to Camilleri.
🪺 🪹 Camilleri has presided over moves to allow trapping under the guise of scientific research, and then the creative use of data on turtle dove in Italy to justify reopening a hunting season in Spring for turtle doves.
✍️🔸 The EU Commission’s formal letter sent to the Maltese government this week demonstrates what the EU Commission thinks about use of such data to reopen hunting for turtle doves, a species under decline in Europe and now classified as vulnerable to extinction.
🔑 🔹 The EU’s formal letter now provides an opportunity for Birdlife to request that the Maltese court hearing their lawsuit to refer the case to the EU’s Court of Justice for a so-called preliminary ruling. EU law (which takes supremacy over national law) on preliminary ruling mechanism hold that the final court would have to make the reference, so if Birdlife make a request and that request is rejected by the court hearing the case (the first hall), then on appeal a higher court would have to rule, on appeal, that the lower court has to make the request.
🔴 This would escalate the Maltese lawsuit to Luxembourg, where the EU Commission would be admitted to the case and make its case against hunting for turtle doves in Malta. The feeling in the European Court of Justice is likely to be that a nuanced judgement on Maltese spring hunting a decade ago has been abused to breach EU law, and hence be less nuanced a second time round. This increases the chances of spring hunting for turtle doves being shut down for good.
🌚 Politically, this creates turbulence in the hunting and trapping com
