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Dave Jones

Paul Le P
It is those kinds of statements that drive good people out of the States, I dont want Executive goverment but to question the trust of those who serve is unfair, just look at what our Treasury Minister said the other night, the press are responsible for this, the public believe much of the drivel they print as fact when it is nothing of a kind and the politicians get a good kicking as a result. Why would anyone want to do this job? For myself I still have the will to fight but there are many who do not.

TREASURY minister Charles Parkinson yesterday elaborated on his reasons for planning to step down from the States after June’s capital prioritisation debate Deputy Parkinson announced that he would not be seeking re-¬election in 2012.
Deputy Parkinson was the speaker at the B4-8 Club’s meeting yesterday and when asked by a member if he was tempted to stay on given the number of large projects he was currently ,involved in; the Treasury minister said’ two terms in office would be enough.
I will have been in the States for eight yeas after this term,’ he said.
‘This is not a particularly well-paid job. It doesn’t even have the esteem it used to – politicians• are not held in particularly high regard. and are given a kicking in the press on a regular basis. ‘I will be 58 at the end of this term and. I hope I will have’ one last big job in me before J retire. ‘But I hope’ people will-think I have done some good during my time in the States.’ .

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4

Paul Le P

Grace and Dave Jones have completely misunderstood my post. I don’t recall actually saying I didn’t trust all States Deputies, I was simply pointing out that when you read these forums and the GP Letters pages as I do, you cannot help but see a considerable lack of trust in the States in it’s entirety, let alone ten memebers. That made Deputy Kuttelwascher’s statement rather ironic in that context – at least to me. Perhaps I inadvertently hit a raw nerve?

Finally Grace, I respectfully decline your invitation to keep my opinions away from this forum. First, I see no reason to stop posting my opinions on a forum specifically designed for that purpose simply because you personally find them unhelpful; second, last time I checked freedom of speech was a concept still permitted on Guernsey; finally, if you don’t like reading opinions that differ from your own, I suggest you don’t read forums where people are invited to freely give their views.

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6

Dave Jones

Paul my comment was not directed at you, it was in response to the headline of what Jan is reported to have said.

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8

Dave Jones

Paul I don’t think anyone goes into politics without realising that they are going to get some stick from time to time, it goes with the territory especially if you have a position of responsibility
The following is a piece I wrote before the last election. It a bit long and I apologise for that in advance but it will answer your question.

Who would want to stand for a seat in the States. Now I don’t want to be over dramatic but having experienced several years as an active States member I can only relay some of what I feel and what my family often feels when contemplating whether to stand for election or not.
The first thing that anyone weighing up whether to put the head above the parapet will need to realise very quickly is that your life will most certainly no longer be your own should you be successful, your family will also become part of the public process, the behaviour of close family members becomes an issue, what they are involved in or what activities they get up to may have a bearing on their parents position should they become a States Member. Also if you have little ones at school they can sometimes have a difficult time if one of their parents is a fairly high profile States Member. Even when both your children are grown adults and out there working in the community they will be told fairly regularly as they go about the daily business that their elected parent is either stupid, worthless or useless or “on the make”, they should not have voted for this or that and are by and large “as thick as two short planks” or whatever the latest collective disparaging phrase for describing States members is on the day. So you will need to develop a very thick skin indeed and if you do not, the battering you receive will wear you down very quickly, so if you are a bit of a luvvie then I am afraid becoming a States Deputy is probably not for you. The fact is that you and your family will to all intents and purposes become very public property, you will be constantly reminded of who you work for and who pays your salary, which incidentally under the present rates of pay is (£39,000 gross per annum for a Ministers post) less of course £8,000 odd in tax and Social Security, as all States Members are considered to be self employed. Basing it on roughly the hours I do in a week, your wage will work out at about £10 per hour, your salary also includes all your office allowances, phone calls (average phone bill for a quarter about £150) computer equipment, paper, pens and envelopes, it is all included in your salary. For that salary as a Minister you will be expected to head up a government department and read all the papers concerning that department and become familiar with all the department policies and correspondence. Then as a member of the Policy Council you will be expected to read all other documents and policy reports from every other department as well as all the papers from the various sub groups you may have a seat on. The Chief Minister will expect you to be able to inform the Policy Council in detail and at length on your departments brief and he expects all his Ministers to be well briefed and up to speed and you will find out in fairly short order what the Chief Minister and the other Ministers think if you fail in that task.
In addition you will need to find time to prepare for the monthly States meetings and consider closely all the various topics in the billet for that month, together with any other additional scrutiny or audit reports. You will also need to find time to deal with constituency problems which can often be varied and many, they can range from simple problems like badly parked cars to complex issues that find you dealing with the children’s services or the police, writing letters to the Health and Education departments or the seemingly never ending problem with planning applications. So anyone thinking of going into politics for the money, forget it, you can get a much better wage outside politics and much more sensible hours. And just to explode another myth often put forward by members of the public about states members holidays, while it is true that the states does not meet in August, meetings still take place behind the scenes and you are expected to attend.
You will have all your past scrutinised in minuscule detail with the most outrageous, slanderous nonsense sent around the world on discussion forums usually by people who have little or no knowledge of you at all and who have achieved very little in their own lives. The next attribute you will need in abundance, especially those who are taking the plunge for the first time is to become an instant authority on all things political and on a very wide range of subjects indeed, ranging from abortion to complex financial management, this will also include a wide working knowledge of international issues facing the island. Now you may protest that you will have to take expert advice on many of these matters as they simply don’t fall into your realm of previous expertise but I warn you now, that simply won’t wash with the public as you are their elected representatives and MUST at all times only take advice from them, or those they happen to agree with, you must only vote the way those who are most vocal want you to vote, or risk being condemned as “selling out” or worse of “changing your mind” which is often considered as an act of betrayal.
Trust me, the phone calls and letters will come thick and fast when those who elected you think you got it wrong, some of them will be from people asking for an explanation and who will hang up satisfied that you have answered them fairly, others will be extremely offensive and followed by what I find is the hardest to deal with of all, the attacks on our personal property, these may follow should, your name be associated with a difficult policy or department that has made a small minority exceptionally angry.
After the swearing in process you will become part of an elected assembly that no matter what happens from that day on, it will be all your fault, you will be automatically held responsible for the shortcomings of every other elected assembly since the occupation, possibly to be told a couple of years into your term of office that you are part of the worst States ever. If you are privileged enough to reach a position of responsibility, you will instantly become answerable personally for every policy put forward by your board, even though you may have been out voted by your own board on a particular issue or simply don’t support the policy put forward, once the board has made its decision, then you must support publicly your boards democratic conclusion and be prepared to take the full force of any public backlash personally, it goes with the job. That doesn’t change even when the States as a whole passes a particular policy collectively, you as the head of the department will be held personally responsible by the public and often by the media for every policy decision made by your department. So if you can convince yourself you are up to it then come on in.

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10

Dave Jones

Paul

No I dont and I believe the calibre of those elected must and can only be decided by the electorate, if they believe someone is not up the job then dont elect them.to It is often forgotten that the reason we have 47 members of the House is because we don’t have party politics and the numbers include a built in opposition. Although that opposition is transient in the sense that it moves camps depending on the debate and the issue being discussed, So you and I could be on the same side in one debate in the morning and totally apposed to each other on another debate in the afternoon. It is the purest form of democracy around as far as I am concerned. That is why the party system is inherently dishonest, it forces elected members to vote for policies that they do not believe individually but are forced to vote for collectively. In fact they are whipped into line by the party enforcers and the penalty for disobeying orders is de-selection. That kind of blind obedience is what fuels political dishonesty and the general publics distrust of those who say one thing to get elected and then do something else when they get into power simply because their party orders it. Many of the policies of a party system never appear in the party manifesto that brought them to power in the first place and therefore the public have no idea what sort of government they are likely to get. Because of the party system, you end up with the unedifying spectacle of politicians in the UK having what is known as a “safe seat” because of the historic political colour of the geographical area, which is usually defined on class lines, industrial areas of the UK have traditionally voted labour while the stockbroker belt of southern England has been staunchly conservative, with those parties holding onto those seats for generations. No parliamentary seat should be safe and in Guernsey under our system it isn’t, you can be removed by the electorate after four years whatever you’re political beliefs and that seat refilled by someone whom the electorate believe will better represent them, that in my view is true democracy. A consensus system also makes it much more difficult for those within government to be corrupted, with a Cabinet or executive system you would only have to patronise or persuade a dozen influential people who make all the decisions of your particular point of view, in order to get government policy changed, powerful factions outside the States could easily through that patronage and nepotism hold huge sway over government policy by offering incentives and hospitality to the right people, so the potential for corruption is huge. It has not gone unnoticed that most of the calls for executive government come from influential local business groups. However with 45 individuals it is almost impossible for one pressure group or a powerful individual to corrupt an entire government. It is even more important in a small community such as ours that we don’t have a executive government, which would be nothing more than an elected dictatorship. I challenge anyone to show me a party system with cabinet government that is working and which the people are satisfied that it is looking after their best interests. Real democracy means power vested in the hands of the many, not the hands of a few and democracy only really exists when people elect those who govern them. Jersey went for a form of executive government that clearly is not working, since it conception Jersey politics has been in turmoil. With the rest of their elected deputies who are not on the Council of Ministers performing little more than a scrutiny role, a classic case of Deputies elected to govern but not in government.
Guernsey has a system which gives the people government from the bottom up, not the top down, and the real control over policy remains firmly on the floor of the assembly, amongst all those elected by the people, not as in Jersey, behind closed doors by a handful of ministers. One of the arguments put forward by the pro executive group is that with a party based system people would then know for what they were voting, I have seldom heard a bigger distortion of the truth, lets just examine that statement. The British people did not vote to go to war in Iraq, nor did they expect to be cheated out of the promised referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, good grief, they didn’t even get a say in who is their present prime minister. They didn’t vote for mass immigration or for handing the decision making process to the EU or on MP’s expenses either. So the idea that democracy is much better served by a party system is inherent nonsense. Executive government is about removing power from the masses into the hands of a few, it is about forcing the wishes of a small political elite onto the electorate bi-passing their elected representatives, a dishonest corrupt system that Guernsey should have no part of. As for the perceived lack of leadership or accountability, anyone looking at the UK at present could not put forward an argument that this is a country that is being strongly led or that its so called leaders are accountable to the people, so the idea that if you have a party system you get strong and decisive leadership is also drivel.

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12

Cliff

Paul Le P – Do you honestly believe that your shout and the GP letters page are representative of the feelings of the Guernsey people? They’re not!
Dave Jones – Thank you for taking the time to compose what is probably the most interesting and insightful post I’ve ever read on here. Unfotunately
I think it’ll be mostly wasted on the people engaging with your shout regularly.

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