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Dave Jones

Thinking further on the press article about the retrospective application, I made to environment on another thread, I am surprised it made the front page at all, considering that the islands government is allegedly in meltdown and according to the editor of the press is a “basket case” so lots of support for our economy there then (that quote comes from the Barclay owned Daily Telegraph yesterday two brother who have contributed huge amounts in one page articles in the press and who as you know have their own ideas how things in this neck of the woods ought to be run). Given this is what the press believe, you would have thought that the front pages for weeks would be full of examples of failing services, mass unemployment, or inadequate benefit systems, medical cases where people lay on hospital trolleys stacked up in corridors for hours, school children unable to go to school for the lack of facilities, hundreds of people living in cardboard boxes in the streets because we don’t have any social housing, applications to the IMF for funds to bail the island out, street riots over impossible taxes, thousands protesting that the island infrastructure has collapsed and families who can no longer feed or clothe themselves.
No, clearly no evidence of that but what do we have, well we have a report from the Welsh Audit Office that says we as a government do not work corporately enough and very little else, in fact the whole report seems to be based on a series of interviews of a very small number of people with the WAO filling in the blanks. It is yet another expensive report telling us what we already know and the areas where we don’t work corporately enough were recognised sometime ago and are being addressed through several reviews and the government business plan mark 2. I can tell you this though; we are in much better shape than Wales and if ever there was a “basket case” you need look no further than the UK which really is in meltdown.
By the way, nowhere in the report does it give the States zero out of ten, that is yet another press manufactured sound bite one which might come back and bite the editor in the rear as business turns away from Guernsey if his comments are to be believed, which is what those who want low tax jurisdictions closed down want, his revenues will fall. The press accuse us of ignoring the report, yet more drivel, many of the issues listed in the report have already been discussed at Policy Council and form the subject matter of other work in progress, or form part of other reviews. What they (the Press) are peeved about is that having read it, we don’t immediately rush out and form an executive system of government. Having seized on the corporate governance aspect of the report with its editor using this to re-launch his attempt to bring our present consensus system down, based on the misguided view that our system will vastly improve with some sort of executive government, what abject rot, most of the jurisdictions that have a cabinet system, are in a real mess, Jersey for example has lost 3 Health Ministers and now has 2 other senior ministers facing possible votes of no confidence, a real success story over there since they changed their system. The English owners of the paper laughingly still called the “Guernsey Press” would like to see our system changed, as would a number of local powerful factions who want to be able to control the government of this island by the patronage of a small number of people within a cabinet system that will make all the decisions and do the bidding of these powerful groups behind closed doors. The press with its editor apparently dancing on the end of the strings of others, is being used as a tool to bring this about and many of those who would like to see cabinet government will of course be contributors to the press in one form or another. Its masters need revenue and my prediction is that unless they get more revenue, we will have a weekly press, should that revenue continue to fall. As I say two words that immediately spring to mind looking at the Telegraph article from the GP point of view are “shoot” and “foot”. The next phase of the press campaign will be more rubbishing of the system and the islands elected deputies just as I predicted before this last election. Much to Mr Digard’s disgust, the decision on what type of government this island has will be made by the elected members of the States, not by the Guernsey press editor or the owners of newspapers, despite the relentless attacks on its Deputies and the system that has served this island and produced one of the best economies and provided some of the best services in the world. As for the unions they seemed much less willing a couple of years ago when I went public about the shortcomings of the Civil Service and what I refered to at the time as Spanish practices.

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