Like Antoine Attard, (A master plan for Comino, 14^th August) I too spent an “exceptionally enjoyable weekend in Comino.” Unlike him, however, I am not a “banker with a personal interest in sustainable growth,” which sounds a bit like a Halal butcher with a keen interest in veganism.

For one, I unusually chose to camp with a few mates. Terrified as I am of rats, it transpired during a boozy chat with fellow campers that some chap called “Salvu” did a great job of eliminating hundreds of those four-legged nuisances, making it easier for two-legged nuisances such as myself to arrive in droves. The only casualty was a packet of peaches, shrink-wrapped in supermarket plastic, out of which the rats took a cursory bite and left in disgust like you would at a chip shop in Morden.

As anybody who has travelled and hitchhiked carrying only a tent and some overused, discoloured underwear will tell you, part of the charm of places like Comino is their being uninhabited, inaccessible, and in the August heat, unforgiving.

OPINION: A master plan for Comino

So, while I do share Mr Attard’s sentiment that too many people visit the Blue Lagoon, it needs the exact opposite of “investment to cope” with swathes of visitors. I half vomited at his idea to cement and level the Blue Lagoon, a proposition as eerily hideous as the Chinese replicas of Versailles, and the cultural equivalent of ISIS’s flattening of historical temples. In a way, this idea would be the perfect advert for those fighting the legalisation of hallucinogens.

The remaining round of projectile vomiting punctually arrived after I read of his idea to cover the cement with parquet and plastic. Attard’s concept of “sustainable growth” involves making the Blue Lagoon “more upmarket,” as if our economy wouldn’t survive without catwalks of steroid-fed bodybuilders in Speedos carrying golden iPhones, accompanied by their botoxed partners sipping Martini with olives. Same goes, of course, for his idea of transplanting sand here and there: Mr Attard will be shocked to know that beaches need not be sandy to attract tourists.

For the sustainable growth of the Blue Lagoon, we would need to control the numbers of tourists entering and exiting. After a day in which hundreds of tourists stomp all over the place looking for a place to stay, dribbling deckchairs, each other, and burger remains all over the floor, at sunset the area looks like a once-pristine whitewashed wedding hall after a cattle stampede.

"A road network will only increase the number of vehicles on the island, while, again, tourists don’t really need roads to walk or ride a bike."

I agree with his call for a ban on boat movements between 10am and 2pm. Actually, why not between 9am and 5pm? Anybody who wishes to land in Comino should do so at Santa Marija and walk to their camp or beach of choice without being guided by Mr Attard’s luna-park of LED lights and pathways. We seem to have an issue with walking in this country, which year in, year out translates into the unforgiving obesity figures; I forget we’re a nation of slobs whose concept of travel and adventure extends merely to a weekend in a resort eating burgers, just like most tourists from our last coloniser.

But there’s a clear reason while this boat ban will never come into being, and it’s because government, this one, and the next, and the one after that, led by whichever of the two parties, do not really have a shred of environmental sensibility. Deckchair vendors, boat tour operators and ferrymen alike will always have their day, come what may – and the real terror is that a lebenstraum like this master plan could inch towards becoming a reality.

Limiting arrivals would help Comino, but it will never happen, argues Wayne Flask. Photo: Shutterstock/Zoltan Gabor

Another of Mr Attard’s howlers – more howlers than Kevin Pressman could collect in a season at Sheffield Wednesday – is the road network. Up to a few years ago there was only one van on the island, driven by a man who has received more medals than a North Korean general for his high scores at Rat Roadkill.

Now I can count another four or five vehicles devoted to the art of stealing public land and covering it in deckchairs, a bike, and at least two Hymacs standing behind the bungalows, having dug up a pile of rich red soil. One can easily surmise that a road network will only increase the number of vehicles on the island, while, again, tourists don’t really need roads to walk or ride a bike (see the Croatian islands).

Mr Attard must have an issue with dust storms and the lack of accessibility, which, as he should know, is part and parcel of a relatively uninhabited island such as Comino; yet, I’d like him to come up with a few proposals on how to solve dust storms and lack of accessibility in the permanent construction site that is Malta. Ironically, his list of ideas will cause more dust and inconvenience, and will invariably destroy the good old Comino we have learnt to enjoy as an escape from our congested, polluted, loud towns with their scoliotic skylines.

As somebody interested in “sustainable growth,” in his shopping list there is no mention whatsoever of the need to protect the island’s flora and fauna, the seabed, the need to control fuel dispersion into the sea and the controlled disposal of waste, just to mention a few. Seasoned environmentalists can have a field day adding to this very brief list of environmental concerns.

What Mr Attard has proposed is not really a master plan: it’s a call for interested applicants, a brochure for sanitised living on a desert island, and an environmental horror movie. It’s like expecting Robinson Crusoe and his pal Friday to wear a tux and cook linguine in their air-conditioned huts to appease tourists.

This list of proposals, with all the good intentions it might carry (I’ll afford him the benefit of the doubt here), reminds me of that insatiable urge to gentrify, to fake, to sugarcoat that has become a trend in so many of the few Maltese open spaces: a race towards the artificial, the homogenous, and the outright boring.