Selling the palace (by the euro)

Apologies in advance for ending the year on a sour note, but I just had to get this off my chest. After all what other reason is there for maintaining a blog!
The matter in hand has been irking me for sometime now. In fact it has been irking me for at least the last 15 years. So you can assume that I am fit to burst. And yesterday I did just that.
But before I get there, let me take you back to the time 15 years ago when it all began.
I think it was at the Malta Jazz Festival, an event I hold in very high esteem I hasten to add.
There I was about to take in the mellifluous notes of some trumpeter or ivory tickler when across the harbour I saw the logo of one of the sponsors of the festival projected onto the bastion walls of Fort St Angelo.

In one fell swoop, an important and enjoyable cultural event blotted its copybook with a singularly crass act of desecration: turning the recently-restored bastion walls of St Angelo into a large billboard selling mobile phones.
Instead of looking across the waters to a view of Fort St Angelo, one of the most impressive examples of fortifications built by the Knights of Malta which bore witness to countless triumphs and tragedies, bathed in...