This is basically all about Ian Borg’s swimming pool, right?

What are we skinning? The news that a new legal notice now allows for properties which encroach on ODZ land to be sold, which generously expands the remit of a similar 2016 scheme.

Why are we skinning it? Because it's yet another sop to developers and the real estate and property market on the island, which continues to be granted the blessing of the government to expand and destroy our countryside with impunity.

Sounds to me like it's sanctioning what was happening anyway. In a sense, yes. The Planning Authority has said that in most cases, the legal notice would cover sanitary infringements and internal structures which just about jut outside the 'red lines'.

They would say that, though. In truth, there does seem to be a somewhat concerted effort to make it more onerous to regularise any infringements -- with heftier fees being applied, and with the PA assuring all of us that regularisation will not be an automatic affair.

So this is all about making things efficient for all concerned. Yes, exactly. The official take on it, I suppose, would be that the legal notice would simply ratify into law what is already something of a fait accompli...

What's that when it's at home (ODZ or otherwise)...? It's as if the authorities are saying: "We're lax about this stuff anyway, nobody's complaining too hard about 'minor' infringements into ODZ, and there would be money to be made all-round."

Looked at that way, it makes perfect sense. Yes, a closed circle of pragmatic, profitable and decisive government action.

It sounds too good to be true. In fact, it is a leap of faith meant to help us continue worshipping the gods of construction without complaint.

And what would the apostates and heretics say to that? Well, they might say that a rush to regularise illegalities does, at the very least, look like an example of extremely skewed priorities.

It looks like the bad guys are helping each other out, though. It would make sense for them to legalise illegalities, yes.

The apostates would do well to consider that they chose to be the good guys, then. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And in the island mecca for land-gobbling developers, ODZ is very much back on the menu.

Now you're just being melodramatic. So what if a villa's pool or washroom juts out into the countryside a little bit? One small jut for man, one giant leap for the construction hegemony.

The future does indeed look bright. That it does, my friend. As bright as a sea of fresh yellow limestone baking under the Mediterranean summer sun, with nary a spot of greenery to offer respite.

Do say: "There seems to be a spirit of 'efficiency' that motivates moves of this kind -- the in-built justification that 'we're just making official what was happening anyway'. But the fact that it shouldn't happen in the first place takes a backburner, which paints a very ugly picture of the island's ethical stance on this, and many other, issues."

Don't say: "This is basically all about Ian Borg's swimming pool, right?"