2

Paul Renouf

So the politicians and a group of delegates are swanking themselves up in, total luxury I bet, trying to win over high net worth people to invest in Guernsey.

Who are they trying to kid apart from themselves?

You would need to be a multibillionaire fool to invsest locally because if some money dealers wish to have a flutter and get it wrong kiss goodbye to your hard earned and the politicians will be doing all they can to get to the root of the problem.

This will probably be best sorted out in the Maldeves and reflected upon for six weeks in 5 star luxury.

Rather than sorting out their own affairs they jump ship and live it up att the expense of the taxpayer.

I will happily accept some of that if it offered.

This Island is being run by some clowns with far more capable people sitting doing nothing because if they say to much they may receive threats from the man that strives for effing respect.

Very sad

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4

David

The Guernsey Finance trip to China is designed to attract high quality fund, fiduciary and captive insurance business to the island. Those are the very sectors which will see Guernsey’s finance industry, and thus Guernsey’s economy, through the turmoil in world banks. What’s the alternative ? Doing nothing ? The trip was planned months ago, long before the current crisis and long before Iceland went belly-up.

Of course its natural that senior government ministers went with the delegation.

I’ve seen the schedule of meetings lined up for the trip (which incidentally includes around a dozen finance professionals who are paying their own way) and anybody who thinks that its a “jolly” to China is way off the mark. There seems to be a perception out there that such trips are nothing other than holidays in exotic places and swanky hotels at the expensse of the taxpayer. Its actually very long days of multiple meetings with pressure to secure new business.

But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

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6

Fast Robert

Who is assessing how useful these trips are. How much business has been brought in? Who is justifying to the tax payer the usefulness of a ‘permamnent representative in Shanghai’?

Did Lyndon Trott really need to go? Surely this is a matter for the finance houses? GuernseyFinance?

I think it’s fair enough when he meets other politicians from wherever, I would expect his office to ‘sell’ Guernsey as a coherent jurisdiction. This is business, pure and simple, something he should not be involved with.

It only adds to the public perception that our senior politicians are not interested in the Guernseyperson but in the muddied world of international finance. And look where international finance has got us.

So I would say the facts remain that the politicians are only going there in some vainglorious effort to promote themselves as rulers of the Guernsey finance industry. They are not, they are elected by the people to serve the people.

If someone can tell me that he is meeting the President or the Prime Minister or the foreign ministers with a view to creating political ties and mutual appreciation, then all is forgiven. The problem people are beginning to understand is that Guernsey only seems to exist as ‘finance’. Guernsey = Offshore Cash Fiddling. It is not attractive to people who live here and don’t care for these suits who, at anytime, could walk away and leave us scuppered.

Is that what we want?

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8

Fast Robert

With respect, David, the most part of Guernsey’s institutions and products have been set up to mitigate tax expenses from other higher tax jurisdictions. Perfectly legal but still fiddling.

Are they meeting senior government officials or are they meeting representatives from business?

I would also add that the success of our finance industry has created a two tier economy in which the low paid locals get pay cuts whilst the top few percent get bumper pay. People go on about the trickle down effect and whereas certain local industry might benefit (coffee shops in SPP are doing well, and the hotels are able to keep on functioning despite the failure of tourism, oh and the increasingly rip-off merchants in the building/home improvement trade (I wonder what the breakdown of these industries’ employees’ nationalities are)), I don’t see how this is being translated into top notch public services, a high quality of life and a safe pension fund for the elderly. No doubt you will come back with increased tax receipts from wealthy individuals that are attracted here through not wanting to pay a fair share of tax, but all this does not offset the perception that Guernsey is being turned into a playground for the rich at the expense of the local.

There is a black hole, there are massive capital projects that need sorting out urgently. We are told nearly everyday how well our deposit gatherers are doing, how well run our fund and trust admin sector is and how generous this rapidly ballooning industry is to the people of Guernsey. Most of them are not local. The international corporations fly their own senior management in. The lack of local expertise cannot fill the gaps.

Yet we want to keep it growing, and by tapping into the vast Chinese arena that may well happen. Good luck to them. Have they thought who will be doing the penpushing? Not locals, they’re all employed. No, we’ll have to farm them in from elsewhere. We’ll need to find more capital to build houses and infrastructure, without fixing the mess we’re already in.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to explore new avenues, we need to get them whilst it is still acceptable to have massive global discrepancies in tax law, but shouldn’t the politicians be concentrating on not falling out with the public they are there to serve?

It looks like they are there only to serve big business, not locals, but internationals. I think that they have their priorities wrong.

You sound like you are a paid up member of the elite, trotting out the lines of how superior Guernsey is, but is it? Or is it just that it is securing your pension whilst the public sector fund is being run into the ground?

The overwhelming feeling amongst the locals is that of apathy and disconnection from the whole process of governance. That is poisonous.

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10

Stephen John

Fast Robert says

“With respect, David, the most part of Guernsey’s institutions and products have been set up to mitigate tax expenses from other higher tax jurisdictions. Perfectly legal but still fiddling”

I’m with you until the last three words. I have no doubt that there is some tax evasion but that is the resposibility of the individual.Hopefully, most will declare their interest to their tax authorities.

Some fiddling (tax evasion) is ilkely, but blanket fiddling no.

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12

David

Robert – of course it needs to be within an offshore structure. If it didn’t involve legitimate tax planning structures then it would simply be illegal tax evasion and Guernsey is no place for that, whatever you may choose to believe. Don’t fall into the same trap as Lawrence (are you Lawrence in disguise ?) of failing to accept the distinction between illegal tax evasion and legal tax avoidance.

“Thinking more modestly, with more appropriate products” takes any finance centre into dealing with the “mass affluent” rather than with the “very wealthy”. Guernsey has far too high a cost base, i.e. high salaries paid to workers, to be able to offer cost-competitive products to the mass affluent. Strangely enough, many thousands of local residents benefit from those high salaries and unless they discover a niche market knitting jumpers out of seaweed they simply won’t have jobs if we don’t protect the finance industry.

The way you are talking makes it sound as though the finance industry is rotten to the core, all because of once incident driven by the implosion of Iceland for goodness sake. It most certainly isn’t !

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14

PAUL

FINANCE GO.

Allow us to appreciate life as we should know it.

Unflustered and to a good quality like one would like to expect.

Stop WHINGING.

JUST GO.

LET US BE AND FIND OUR OWN LEVEL.

ARE YOU SCARED OF FINDING YOURS?

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