(Illustration by Peewee)

Cher Eugene,

YOU know there was all this talk about a flu epidemic over the winter, mon vieux? Well, if you ask me, the States, they’re suffering from a review epidemic. There’s been one on the dairy, one on the postal service, one on the airport, and the States spending, and now there’s one on the population and on island-wide voting as well. The trouble is, with the States it’s not an illness, it’s what they do to avoid making a decision, eh?

You know how it works, Eugene. They say there’s all these important issues facing Guernsey, so they have a debate about it and then decide to commission a consultant’s report. Then when that arrives they debate it all again and send a committee away to do a strategic review. And when the review’s done, they send it out for public consultation. I suppose the plan is to make it last until the next election, because no one will be able to accuse them of making a bad decision if they haven’t made any at all, eh?

I was saying to Mick, from Fermain, it seems to me the only one making any decisions lately is that Office of Utility Regulation, and that’s just to keep putting up prices, eh?

The latest review, it’s all about controlling the population, mon vieux. You remember, they said four years ago they didn’t want it to get any bigger? Well, they didn’t do anything to stop it and now they’ve spent two years on a strategic review while the population has gone up even more. And they want to go to public consultation now, so it will be a few more years before they get any changes made. I said to Mick, everyone knows there’s more people here than they admit to. Hang, by the time they get round to deciding anything, people will be falling off the edge of the island, eh?

And the thing is, their review, it’s 180 pages long but they say it doesn’t contain any proposals, it’s just ideas for discussion. Old Mick, he said if he has to read 180 pages and then tell the deputies what to do, what’s the point of having the deputies in the first place? And he said it wouldn’t take him two years to decide they should put work permits in now and put a stop to all these workmen coming over from England and doing jobs that locals could do, eh? And if local people go away and get trained, they should make it easy for them to come back, without these outsiders who don’t even live here buying up flats and putting the prices up so the locals can’t afford them. I said to him, if I had a pound for every English trade van I’ve seen, I could buy some flats like that and if I had another pound for every time the States decide to do a strategic review, it would be open market, eh?

Talking of people who don’t live here, that head of VisitGuernsey, or whatever they call the tourist board these days, he’s gone off to live in England, him, eh? But the States are saying he’s going to commute back here every week so he can still be in charge of tourism just the same. There’s a few people saying it doesn’t look good if the head of tourism doesn’t even live here, but I was thinking, me, if he’s going to come over every week, he’ll find out what it’s like for real visitors, who have to pay high prices, get stuck by fog and pay extra if they want to take a suitcase with them, eh?

And this new police chief, he’s from London, him, and I heard he’s gone and spent £400,000 on getting some armoured cars. That Home minister, he wouldn’t say whether it was true or not because it was a matter of security and everyone else said they couldn’t comment because it might affect security. Old Mick, he said you can tell he hasn’t been in Guernsey that long if he thinks you can keep that sort of thing secret, eh? He said you just have to ask Mrs Goupillot, from the fourcross. If she doesn’t know, she’ll know someone who knows someone who knows. And anyone would get suspicious of a Fiesta which is heavy enough to buckle the weighbridge, or with fuel consumption like a tank, eh?

But the thing is, Eugene, the police are saying they want to get out into the community and stop things like toilet vandalism. Caw, for £400,000 you could have a few extra policemen, or even build armour-plated toilets, eh?

Perhaps they need an armoured vehicle for protection, because they still can’t get ammunition for those Taser things they’ve got. They’re supposed to give criminals a shock, but I said to Mick, if they went back to the old methods, a clip round the ear from a copper would be a shock these days, eh?

Mick was saying someone needs to give a shock to the bloney Environment, because if anything needs a review it’s the way they use the planning laws. You know they keep refusing people permission to put up sheds to work from? Well, there’s even a site to the Vale, it’s supposed to be for allotments to grow vegetables, but the Environment have said there can’t be a shed there for people to store their tools. I said to Mick, it sounds like they know as much about growing vegetables as they do about running a small business, or a shop to Perelle. Perhaps the only spades they know about are on the card games on their computers, mon vieux. I suppose if the growers brought a couple of white vans on the ferry from England and stored their tools in there, no one would say anything, eh?

The parish deputies, they’re not very pleased but we might not have them for much longer because there’s a review on island-wide voting as well, Eugene. There’s some deputies saying it will be too difficult to choose 45 members from all the candidates who might stand and it would be easier if the number of States members went down. The thing is, that’s being reviewed as well, but by a different committee. So there’s one committee wants to decide on a voting system before a different committee has worked out how many to vote for. I’ve said before, it’s a good job they don’t have to keep a horse in with a stable door, eh? Perhaps they should review their joined-up government before they do anything else, eh, mon vieux?

One of the deputies, he was on the radio saying too many candidates would make the vote more like a lottery, but it seems to me you could say that about some of the votes in States debates, mon vieux. And most of the planning decisions from the Environment, eh?

A la perchoine,

Your cousin Emile