Richard Digard

Never mind the rhetoric, taxing goods and services doesn’t resolve what’s really holding Guernsey back – which is a declining workforce and why that is happening. Bringing in GST will simply make it easier to carry on ignoring these structural warnings.

Given all the criticism of GST-lite, including from this column, what does its author have to say in its defence? In a nutshell, P&R president Lindsay de Sausmarez tells me it’s designed to buy the island some time, delay the looming fiscal cliff-edge – and help out some islanders.