YEARS ago I reported on Alderney States meetings and while there I took the opportunity to investigate other news stories. I soon noticed the tendency for islanders to readily divide into two distinct camps on most issues.  Sometimes it would be semi-tribal, ‘locals v. settlers’, but more often it was simply for or against a particular idea.

In many ways this represented a healthy level of engagement in local politics. The trouble was that it often went over the top and got personal. Perfectly nice people on each side of an argument suddenly didn’t have a good word to say about each other, even people within the same family.

At the time I thought this political feuding was a sort of local hobby in Alderney, which, while beautiful, had few distractions during the long winter months.

In retrospect, my theory of bored islanders resorting to disputation to relieve ennui was too simplistic.

Indeed, more recently this practice has lessened somewhat in Alderney while it has grown in Guernsey.

The problem with political fundamentalism – like all fundamentalism – is that those involved don’t even try to see the other point of view.

It becomes a sort of, ‘you’re either with us or against us’ situation. I can see the issue of Guernsey’s waste disposal developing into just that sort of semi-ideological battle this summer.

Each faction will have their champions in the House – each will deride the other’s opinions. They will even ascribe bad motives to their opponents.

I don’t doubt that each side is driven by genuine passion and it’s possible to see their unwavering support of a particular stance as laudable conviction politics. I accept that on genuine issues of conscience such polarisation may be unavoidable. Some would like to turn waste disposal into just such a quasi-moral issue – it isn’t.

Rubbish is a real, practical problem that we all help to create, with no perfect solution. The various possible approaches need careful technical and environmental assessment and then we must make a hard-headed decision on the least bad option. There is no room for simplistic mantras such as ‘recycling good – incineration bad’.

I am a passionate recycler and have been since before it was fashionable.

I am also logical enough to know that recycling when it uses lots of energy is expensive and, when there is little market for the end product, is stupid. Worse, it’s environmentally damaging.

Likewise the technophiles must resist assuming the solution is all about a big, quick, technical fix rather than social change. I know generations of male deputies were brought up on Meccano and Lego sets, but preventing a problem from arising is always better than finding a mechanical solution to it.

The middle ground is never a comfortable place to be when warfare breaks out. I found that out the last time the States debated waste disposal. My position then, after assessing the evidence on both sides, was to reluctantly accept that mass burn incineration, with modern flue gas cleaning and energy recovery, was the least bad option, particularly for an isolated island community with no fallback position and a diverse waste stream to dispose of.

Environmentally, it’s better than the sort of landfill we practise today.

It’s capable of dealing with the residue from a future sewage treatment plant and, most importantly, it’s a proven and robust technology. These are vital considerations for an island with no plan B in the event of plant failure.

It’s surely no coincidence that both Jersey and the Isle of Man came to the same conclusion.

That said, I support waste minimisation, sensible recycling, and would much prefer to avoid incineration if there was a better, equally robust, technology available to deal with our residual waste.

A few years ago several disinterested experts concluded that there wasn’t, and the results of the latest tendering exercise tend to confirm that. Thankfully, though, it has come up with a far less ugly incinerator.

My plea to all deputies is to stand on ground chosen through critical analysis, rather than blind ideology, even if that leads them to a different conclusion from mine. Be warned though: in a polarised and febrile atmosphere, refusing to join in the ideological battle will tend to attract fire from all sides.

Oh, and there’s another problem with the trench warfare approach to politics. Like all trench warfare it often leads to stalemate. That really would be a rubbish outcome.