Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/803478
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 26 MARCH 2017 26 Letters There will be no public consultation on the Crowne Plaza development that will see six more apartment blocks rising in the heart of Tigné, after MEPA's direc- tor of planning exempted the developers from preparing an impact assessment. The Crowne Plaza Hotel will be rede- veloped into six blocks of 386 apart- ments and a four-level underground car park, but developer George Muscat will not be required to prepare an environ- mental planning statement (EPS). It means no public hearing will be held on the environmental impacts of the development, which includes a 16-storey building, bypassing any consultation with neighbours and residents of Tigné. Plans will be submitted to the MEPA board tomorrow Monday, for a decision on Thursday. The final sale of the Crowne Plaza, which is currently under a promise-of- sale agreement, will signify an injection of Lm23.3 million into national airline Air Malta, the previous owner of the hotel. "It is an irresponsible act," Alternat- tiva Demokratika chairman Harry Vassallo said yesterday. "A government that exists to serve contractors, was not satisfied with having a toothless plan- ning authority. We'll have to revert to a way of protest where, once the develop- ment is complete, will create a greater economic impact for the investors." Vassallo added that the action was illegal, and warned that the addition of the Fort Cambridge development, cou- pled with the Midi development and the Townsquare project in Sliema, and the Hilton and Pender Place project in St Julians, will create major traffic volumes at the Tal-Qroqq roundabout. Tigné is expected to host over 1,300 apartments. MEPA said it had waived the EPS in view of the fact that it had "sufficient information to take a decision" on the application. It said the potential signifi- cant impacts had been identified, along with mitigation measures proposed in the applicants' project description (PDS). The PDS claimed that negative effects from vibrations, air quality, shadows caused by the tall buildings would be minor. The latest traffic system being pro- posed for the burgeoning commercial development in Sliema and Tigné will be running from the Sliema front (Ghar- id-Dud) along Qui-Si-Sana, through a one-way tunnel emerging at the Fortina Hotel – diverting traffic away from the current commercial centre on Bisazza Street. That will mean that all traffic from the Sliema ferries will run up the steep and narrow Censu Xerri street, entering gridlock in Tigné. Coordinator for Flimkien Ghal-Amb- jent Ahjar, Astrid Vella, said the holding of the MEPA board meeting just days after the final plans are submitted, was in violation of EU directives which state that "reasonable time must be granted to objectors". "It is therefore illegal. The government is making fine pronouncements on its initiatives to curb global warming, and yet actively encourages cancer-inducing traffic in Sliema, with projects like these that directly raise temperatures in the area." News – 25 February 2007 Send your letters to: The Editor, MaltaToday, MediaToday Ltd. Vjal ir-Rihan, San Gwann SGN 9016 | Fax: (356) 21 385075 E-mail: newsroom@mediatoday.com.mt. Letters to the Editor should be concise. No pen names are accepted. No consultation on Fort Cambridge, MEPA ignores public Ethics surely deserves higher place in curriculum How Jesus became Christian I wholeheartedly embrace the spirit of the MaltaToday editorial (22 March, 2017) to place ethics at the centre of State schools' national curriculum, over and above religious instruction. To me, as a Briton whose two Maltese sons are educated sepa- rately at a Church school and a State school, I find such a view refreshing. On the one hand, my 12-year-old Church school-edu- cated son seems to be limitedly interested in the religious in- struction that takes place inside his school – although, admit- tedly I find the Catholic ethos is conducive to civic values which are positive and constructive. On the other hand, my teenage State-educated son has been giv- en the option to take up ethics, a subject which piques the interest of his younger brother. Both seem to agree that ethics repre- sents a well-honed subject that fits in with their mind-set; none of them, thankfully, are scornful of religion, and both understand the importance of religion in the lives of the Maltese and how the Catholic pageantry is part and parcel of our lives over here. Ultimately, the State remains responsible and obliged in ensur- ing the right to an education for anyone of schooling age, which is why it should be the govern- ment schools that readily oblige with providing Islamic instruc- tion to Muslim children who are citizens of this country. However, I also question why ethics should not be widely available to all our State-educat- ed (and faith school, why not?) pupils. As a basis, ethics and social studies should represent the civic values bedrock of the national curriculum, which can further be enriched by religious doctrine according to parental and pupil choices. Naturally, I would expect some form of opposition from faith schools, which are by their very nature Catholic, and perhaps even from those private schools who embrace the same religious ethos. Can we oblige such pri- vate establishments to provide a different form of religious educa- tion to their students? I doubt it. Should they embrace a secu- larised programme of ethical education – I think this is where the debate lies. I understand that consti- tutionally, Malta recognised Roman Catholicism as its of- ficial religion and surely this must be something that is to be respected. But surely there is room for a debate on how to present Catholicism, Islam or any other comparative ap- proach to religion, as an optional subject to compulsory Ethics, exists independently of religious beliefss, "and should ideally teach students to develop a ma- ture, individual moral outlook and sensibility based on values which transcend individual religions" as your newspaper put it so succinctly. I am afraid that Archbishop Charles Scicluna's statements, while surely in the right place to call for more religious inclusiv- ity in Church schools, may have provoked the wrong kind of furore among certain quarters. Maybe this debate will have to carried out in another five years' time. One hopes for the best! Martin H. Smith Sliema Hermann Reimarus, a professor of Oriental languages at the Ham- burg Academy, left at his death in 1768 a 4,000-page manuscript on the origins of Christianity. He argued that Jesus, the Jewish reformer, had no intention of es- tablishing a new religion. No one dared to publish the manuscript until Lessing, regarded by Goethe as "the father of the German Enlightenment", published seven portions of it (Fragments from Reimarus). In the seventh fragment, 'On the aim of Jesus and his disciples', Rei- marus not only rejected the mira- cles and resurrection of Jesus but pictured him as a deluded young Jew who was faithful to Judaism to the end, and who accepted the belief of some Jews that the world was soon to be destroyed. Albert Schweitzer observed that Reimarus was "the first to grasp the fact that the world of thought in which Jesus moved was essentially eschatological", based on a theory of an imminent end of the world. After Jesus's death, his Apostles transferred this promised kingdom on earth to a life after death. Geza Vermes, a translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls and author of several books on the Jewish background of Jesus, said in an interview in a newspaper in 2013: "If it is accepted that we can know something about Jesus, one real- izes that we are dealing with a totally Jewish person with totally Jewish ideas, whose religion was totally Jewish, and whose culture, aims, and aspirations could be understood only in the framework of Judaism." The man who detached the early followers of Jesus from Judaism was Paul of Tarsus. The break continued in the Gospel attrib- uted to the apostle John. Jesus was no longer presented as a Jew, liv- ing more or less under the Jewish law. He was made to address the Jews as "you" and to speak of their Law as "yours". In this perspec- tive, the Jewish life of Jesus could be put into the background. In How Jesus Became Christian (2008), Barrie Wilson, a histo- rian and philosopher of religion, argues that Paul – not Jesus – established Christianity. The author shows in detail how the religion that evolved from Jesus was different from what Jesus himself had taught and practised. The New Testament Gospels, par- ticularly the Acts of the Apostles, are presented as early examples of sophisticated spin. John Guillaumier St Julian's