I HAD hoped, despite the run-in to next week’s Christmas Chief Pleas, that I could write prosaically about crocodiles of children and snowdrops defying the elements – however, having read the forthcoming Chief Pleas agenda my conscience drew me irresistibly, but dangerously into the arena of Sark politics.

This is perilous ground, for everyone has a firm opinion.

It’s made more difficult in that we all seem to have multiple roles and I am no exception, for beyond a variety of activities I am also employed by a Barclay-owned company.

This can mean the way you relate to somebody as a friend can be affected by the various jobs that you do and the part you may play in an official island capacity.

The meeting of our parliament on 20 January is the first anniversary of a fully democratically elected assembly and maybe I should have taken time to review the first year, but that’s for a braver man.

There’s a range of public opinion that varies from the impressed to the depressed. Some take positives from a sitting that, previously needing a day and half, is now compressed into three hours. Others see that a chamber comprising mainly members elected in an anti-Barclay backlash has no effective opposition and that the speed with which business is resolved reflects the predominance of one way of thinking.

The agenda topics range through the registration of charities, outlawing of frilly necks in inkwell lobster pots, medicines, education, building development, harbours and shipping. There is much that deserves scrutiny, but one issue alone drew my attention – the Shipping Committee’s proposal for the amendments to its licensing law.

When I originally read the committee’s recommendations it left me with more questions than answers. An innocuous enquiry to one Chief Pleas conseiller revealed little other than the proposed amendments being an effort to tidy up some aspects of the shipping law to give Sark more control and beyond that there is nothing to cause alarm.

I asked Peter Cole, the Shipping Committee chairman, for clarification and he kindly obliged me with a full raison d’être that made it quite clear that the intention is to strengthen the legal protection of Sark’s lifeline shipping service.

The Spencer Review of 2007 stressed that there could be no competition on the Guernsey-Sark route, particularly because the summer service subsidises the winter one – that is a tenet of the island’s shipping policy and one that is generally accepted. However, the aspect of the proposed changes that raises concern is that operators of vessels trading to or from ports outside the Bailiwick will need to apply for a licence. These applications will not be opposed where the overall effect does not jeopardise the viability of Sark’s lifeline service.

If I can express a concern, it is that a good law has to provide a level playing field where all are judged equally. Here, within the amendment, there is an element of subjectivity where personal agendas can intrude and affect the final outcomes.

My first experience of this kind of subjective law was many years ago when I first arrived on Sark and received my first tax bill. My assessment had been made, rightly or wrongly, on the basis of what the douzaine thought I was worth and pitched higher than needs be, because I might just pay it anyway.

Talking with a plummy accent and buying a yacht didn’t help my case, but there was more than a hint of self-interest and whimsicality in the way the law was applied. This nonsense was soon addressed and the law was changed, not necessarily to be fairer, but to at least provide a set of rules by which every participant knew exactly where he stood.

If a law is badly formed then it will come unstuck, because that is the nature of the beast. However, on Sark particularly, where we have contention between two sets of interests, there is the potential for the proposed shipping amendments to be used against the current activity of the Brecqhou Warrior.

It poses a couple of questions – is this law change being proposed as a measure to stop the work of the Brecqhou Warrior and, secondly, is this anti-competitive, beyond the remit of Sark Shipping’s current monopoly of the Guernsey route?

William Gladstone probably had it right when he said that for him politics was just a matter of moral choices. We don’t have a William Gladstone in Chief Pleas – not yet.