Cloud-seeding experiments

The article ‘Malta becoming too dry to support its habitat’ (May 2) predicts that our islands are turning into a desert because of the continuing rainfall shortage. This is a dire prospect for the agricultural sector and would be very detrimental to our green environment.

On a number of days during the ‘rainy’ seasons our sky is quite cloudy but we often remain without rainfall. Facing similar occurrences, various countries are resorting to cloud seeding, with varying degrees of success.

This seeding involves spraying certain substances, such as dry ice, which already exists in the atmosphere, into the clouds by means of aircraft or rocket  to induce the water vapour inside them to fall as rain or snow.

The government produces second-class water for irrigation and so it should be in favour of funding cloud-seeding experiments, which may benefit the local agriculture and the water table, especially in view of this expected crisis.

Satellite images and the forecasts of the Meteorological Office would be helpful to seed the clouds right in their path over our country. This would be necessary so that as high a percentage as possible of this ‘extra’ rain would fall on our islands, considering their small size.

The University of Malta or MCAST and the Agriculture Department could research the techniques used abroad and co-ordinate this local project.

Anthony Scicluna – Victoria

Robin Hood attacks again

Why should we pay foreign adolescents who come to Malta to learn English? Photo: Chris Sant Founier

Once again, Robert ‘Robin Hood’ Abela strikes again. This time he offers €300 of my money paid through my tax return, to foreign adolescents who want to come to Malta for the 3D experience in Paceville, to drink, drug and dance, while their parents think that they are learning English.

Last week, Abela offered €200 of my money to anybody staying in Maltese hotels and €100 to divers who intend to observe our wrecks.

Well, €600 is more than most pensioners and low-income earners in the construction industry or in the caring of old people earn in a week. Those being paid between €2 and €3 an hour would make €120 to €180 a week and they would need to work for a full month to earn what a youngster, coming to Malta to learn a bit of English which he/she could equally do online paying the necessary fees, is being offered to enjoy after school hours.

I must say that I would love to fly to the Maldives, stay in a luxury hotel, take some lessons in Maldivian and take a diving lesson or two if I am given €600. Why do we all accept this idiotic use of our hard-earned incomes and pensions on which we pay a good part of in tax?

Malta should be able to attract tourists without bribing them. Malta should not give money that could be used for alcoholic beverages among young people or, worse still, for drugs.

Is nobody thinking clearly anymore? I wonder when the public in Malta will have had enough and when all citizens will exercise their right of civil disobedience and keep back €600 from their next tax bill?

Every Maltese who wishes to have a trip abroad to learn French or German, the new EU languages of the future, and to dive off the Spanish or Greek coast and stay at a good hotel in Riga or Warsaw should receive €600.

The real Robin Hood was stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Our Robin Hood is taking from the poor to give to the rich.

John Vassallo – St Julian’s  

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The ongoing deluge of revelations of high-level corruption, sleaze and tax avoidance/evasion surely begs an additional solution to the slow, if steady process of the courts in ensuring justice is eventually done.

I wonder whether an institution inspired by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up following the end of the apartheid era, is a fairly successful attempt at gradually healing gaping wounds in individual and national conscience? It should not allow criminals to evade justice but might eventually encourage a gradual change in the very human (if intensely regrettable) tendency to allow personal, corporate or political success to be corrupted by greed and a sense of entitlement which encourages misbehaviour of all shades of grey and black ethical colour.

That and, perhaps, a sudden and philanthropic desire by individuals and organisations which have encouraged, enabled or profited by many years of tax evasion to donate large sums of money to deserving causes. This would be in lieu of having failed to provide much-needed income to the public purse which may have been less likely to neglect the environment and sustainable development as a result.

Am I being naive? Perhaps, but one has to start somewhere.

Anton Borg – Gloucestershire, UK

Greedy developers

I sympathise with Alfred Gauci’s plight (‘Dog owners’ responsibilities’, May 9). The problem is that our environment is being continually plundered by greedy developers with fields, trees and parks rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

A dog, like a human, needs to relieve itself. A solution would be for dog parks to be constructed in our towns and villages which are being slowly converted into concrete jungles. Realistically, however, I doubt whether anyone is willing to give up precious cash-generating land for this purpose.

Charles A. Gauci – Sannat

Keep the national anthem

Fr Joseph Borg (May 9) suggests that Dun Karm’s national anthem be changed.

I disagree. It is the Maltese people who need to change back to the values they have lost and try to reach the lofty ideals which are expressed in our national anthem.

Stephen Vassallo – Xewkija

Open roads

Flicking through some cuttings that I’d thought might be worth saving, I found a photo of the €2 million resurfacing of half a mile of road in Għajnsielem. Readers may recall that the prime minister, no less, came to Gozo and ‘reopened’ the road with so much fanfare that locals thought a general election must be imminent. But that was last September, when the Gozo minister said the road would be completed “by the end of October”.

I just thought I’d mention that it is not finished yet.

And I suppose there’s no news about what’s happening with this road’s connection to Nadur, which doesn’t appear to have seen any action at all since the new minister was appointed.

Revel Barker  – Għajnsielem  

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