Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1006805
OPINION 26 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 22 JULY 2018 The siege of Attard… and Malta Ralph Cassar Ralph Cassar is AD secretary-general, local councillor in Attard ralph.cassar@alternattiva.org.mt Mark Camilleri is chairman of the National Book Council Mark Camilleri AS soon as you read the title, you might ask why Attard and not somewhere else? Why not the Siege of Pembroke, or why not mention the proposal for a yacht marina in Marsaskala, making the sea unsuitable for swim- ming? What about fortifications such as Ricasoli going to ruins? Or trees chopped down to make way for traffic? The answer is simple: what's been happening in Attard is emblematic of what's happened and what's happening all over Malta and Gozo. The causes and the effects are the same. The mindset behind the 'siege' is one: greed, short-sight- edness and a huge lack of policy foresight. The siege, even though some opportunists and political prostitutes try to make us forget, started quite some time ago. When things had seemingly settled along came the 2006 Na- tionalist Cabinet and at a stroke of a pen declared two million square metres of land all over the country as land for development. They called it 'rationalisation'. They also allowed whole zones of already existing buildings to be torn down and turned into flats. Three storeys plus pent- house. Not to be outdone, and when things had stared settling down again, the new Labour govern- ment, increased building heights once again. Those who donated hundreds of thousands of euros to the Nationalists are now in bed with Muscat. One can imagine the effects on infrastruc- ture and traffic of such decisions designed to please their masters. Since Attard is my example, I'll just mention dug-up streets, and the explosion in traffic and cars, not to mention increased flooding since there isn't even the political will to ensure that all buildings collect rainwater from their roofs. A new phase of the siege is the crazy, short-sighted and frankly grossly irresponsible idea to build and widen roads. The Buqana-Attard Central Link road is a case in point. A whole chunk of Attard will become a huge roundabout. A high-speed road will pass a few feet from residences. More roads will in- duce more and more traffic. The reality is that Minister Ian Borg and his coterie are taking the easy way out. Like their prede- cessors, they do not want to grab the bull by the horns. Ian Borg is ignoring govern- ment's own strategy on trans- port. Decreasing and discourag- ing the use of private cars is the only policy option that makes sense. For all the pollution brought about by cruise liners and ships, which can and should be solved, the elephant in the room is the amount of cars in this countrywhich makes them the principle source of pollu- tion. Government is leaving the public transport operator alone, trying to offer a service in traffic clogged streets. As for alterna- tive means of transport, we are light years away it seems, from making roads people friendly and encouraging a shift to clean transport options. If Borg wants something less controversial he should implement the park-and- ride schemes mentioned in the Transport Strategy. Or maybe he can start by making government employees working in Valletta use public transport, or govern- ment-organised mass transport. However, the only thing Ian Borg is interested in, is increas- ing traffic, increasing pollution and avoiding courageous policy initiatives. The result is a siege of traffic and pollution. The third stage of the siege of Attard is the promised car race track in Ta' Qali. Labour promised Ta' Qali, and the Nationalists, not to be outdone promised Ħal Far. Given the small size of the island, the Nationalists promised to disturb a predominantly Labour area, while Labour, a predominantly Nationalist area – tribalism at its very best. Here again, PL and PN do not have the proverbial balls to explain that there are limits to what can be done in such a small country. While others have the luxury of distance, we do not. Obviously, the plans for a race track come with a hotel and a conference centre, the usual 'viability' argument. Should the track go ahead, the distances are so small there that residents of Attard, Mosta and parts of Rabat will have to bear the noise. Not to mention turnng a relatively tranquil Ta' Qali into another urbanised site. Children playing in Ta' Qali will be relegated to a 'roundabout' around which cars whizz past. Leave Ta' Qali alone for heaven's sake. But probably Prime Minister Muscat has to keep his promises – made to a few at the expense of everyone else. This siege of Attard is em- blematic of the siege of the whole country. The raving and ranting about Malta as some kind of Dubai, or more recently, Monaco, is what is driving these short-sighted policies. Policies based on the now and with no view of the future. Policies which are a continuation of the devel- opment frenzy and car-centred transport policies of the past 30 years or so. In the meantime, we are expected to shut up and bear it all, because the economy is doing oh so bloody well. Forget people being priced out of their homes, the market rules! Creating a centre for books in Valletta BOOKS are the most impor- tant tool for the educational, cultural and intellectual growth of a society, therefore it was rather disappointing to have witnessed, during the last two decades, the closing down of most of Malta's independent bookshops. These bookshops were essential to the local pub- lishing industry's infrastructure because they acted not only as points of sale, but also as cultural and marketing agents – which today the Maltese book market is lacking. Amazon has in the past been responsible for taking away a large chunk of revenue from independ- ent bookshops, but nowadays, all over Europe, independent bookshops are making a come- back. Despite the surge of on- line book retail, the independ- ent brick and mortar bookshop is still a perquisite to every book industry infrastructure. As more people opted to buy books online, local bookshops took a hit and Maltese con- sumers increasingly became less exposed to Maltese books. Local publishers are now adapt- ing to this market environment by increasing their investment in online websites, pushing home the concept of purchas- ing Maltese books online. As part of our long-term vision, the National Book Council has supported publishers by invest- ing in the Malta Book Festival to turn it into a major source of revenue for publishers, thus successfully hitting record sales in 2016, and preserving the record sales rate in 2017. Our sales target for the Book Festi- val this year is to double it. If on the one hand other new sources of revenue for Maltese publish- ers are the planned (such as the long-awaited education licences and peripheral book fairs such as the Book Festival on Cam- pus), we believe that no meas- ure other than the creation of a permanent bookshop that acts as a cultural and marketing agent can satisfy the need for a literary space. It is there that, among other things, Maltese literature can have the kind of exposure it both deserves and needs. Valletta's last standing book- shops, two of them part of the Agenda book-chain, which practically dominates the retail book industry, are just a hand- ful of pockets of resistance in an increasingly gentrified city. Yet, these pockets are a far-cry from what the local publishing indus- try needs in terms of exposure and commercial activity. Cur- rently, Valletta provides ample infrastructure for theatre and art, but authors and publishers, which collectively form part of Malta's biggest creative sector in terms of economic value, are under-represented. Unfortunately, the exponen- tial rise of property prices in Valletta has basically created a situation where the local publishing industry is pro- hibited from penetrating the capital city and representing itself equally to other cultural sectors that enjoy an all-year round presence. Currently, Valletta is the only capital city in Europe without a bookshop that doubles as a cultural space. The National Book Council sees it as its proper duty to ad- dress this deficiency. Here, it is not only the economic survival of the local publishing industry that is at stake. Given that the local publishing industry is not just a commercial industry, but the main seed from which the intellectual and cultural devel- opment of a nation can grow, a book centre that actively pro- motes its authors and literary- heritage in the capital city is a perquisite for our society itself. The current government has acknowledged this problem and in order to address it, it has al- located a 16th century baroque palace in Valletta to the Nation- al Book Council. We intend to restore the palace to its former glory and turn it into an excep- tional book centre accessible to all and free of charge. Apart from hosting the offices of the National Book Council, the palace will be used as a space for a museum of literature, a centre for literary activities and a bookshop leased to a private entity (on the condition that it acts as a cultural and marketing agent). This new book centre will be a great asset to the local book industry, a major source of revenue for local publish- ers, a new hangout for youths and a historic attraction for the general public. The book centre will also open its doors to schools and children and serve as an educational hub for the general community. There is no doubt the successful implemen- tation of this project will be one of government's most impor- tant cultural and educational milestones.