Way to grow
MAYBE I am just getting too old and cynical to appreciate new ideas, but I can't help finding the suggestions from consultants Oxford Economics on how to grow our economy a tad fanciful.
MAYBE I am just getting too old and cynical to appreciate new ideas, but I can't help finding the suggestions from consultants Oxford Economics on how to grow our economy a tad fanciful.
It seems the way to make our fortune involves health tourism, film-making and alternative energy.
I'm certainly not unfriendly towards any of these ideas – particularly the last one – but I somehow don't see them being big money-spinners any time soon. That might change when tidal power technology matures, but that's probably a decade or more away.
In many ways, Oxford Economics' suggestions for economic diversification reminded me of a similar effort from the old Tourist Board many years ago. Their three big ideas for bringing home the bacon were a casino, a Victor Hugo centre and a thalassotherapy clinic. I was never sure exactly what this last one really was except that it involved seawater – but not, apparently, jumping off the Tommy Rock at Bordeaux.
Suffice to say that many years later, after lots of expenditure on civil servants' time and States debates, none of these ideas bore any fruit.
Talking of fruit, remember when the babaco was going to save our growing industry?
To be fair, the casino came close to reality, but how much cash it would have generated for Guernsey is questionable.
Will this latest expensive research prove any more practical? I hope so, but I somehow doubt it.
Let's look at these ideas one by one, starting with Guernsey being a film set. Certainly our island is very beautiful, despite being overcrowded with both people and cars, but film-makers want more than that. They want a low-cost area to film, preferably with financial incentives and good transport links.
I recall that the old Board of Industry pursued this idea for years with an officer dedicated to wooing film-makers to our shores, but nothing much came of it.
Surely the fact that we only just managed to get some scenes of a film about Guernsey (and maybe called Guernsey) shot on the island after wealthy private residents dipped into their own pockets rather suggests that our broader appeal to directors/producers is more limited than we might wish to believe.
As for health tourism, well, I'm sure there may be a niche market but it's hard to see how we could undercut private hospitals in the UK. Perhaps if we went for expensive operations in areas of growing demand, such as gastric banding/bypassing, we might make a bit of cash, but there are political issues to be dealt with.
Even if the fly-ins were treated in the evenings or at weekends, out of normal operating hours, with HSSD support staff working privately-financed overtime, you can still hear the complaints.
'I'm local, my taxes paid for that hospital, I've been waiting for an operation for seven weeks, how come you can bring people in for treatment but I can't have my operation sooner?'
No amount of calm, logical argument about how the new income stream is helping to pay for local health care would quell the criticism.
Lastly, alternative energy. Personally, I think the first target should be to reduce our own dependence on the twin evils of fossil fuels and nuclear fission. It seems likely, though, that renewable sources will remain more expensive than conventional power for some years to come.
Maybe by the middle of the century we'll have a massive array of wind turbines off our west coast and a suite of tidal mills in the Big Russel and we'll be pumping energy to France through our cable link. However, that long-term prospect is one the island was already considering, so as a new suggestion from highly paid consultants it represents pretty poor value for money.
To be fair, most ideas for 'sunrise industries' probably seem a bit weird when they're first mooted. A Guernsey factory building oscilloscopes? Madness.
Even so, Oxford Economics' proposals for diversification do appear rather more wacky than practical.
And as it's the season for offbeat ideas, let me offer three of my own...
1. Potato Peel Pie-themed experiences for American tourists. Just because the book was disappointing, it doesn't mean the business opportunities should be.
2. An expensive consultancy offered to Scotland on 'how to run an almost independent country' once they vote for devo-max in their referendum.
3. A £1bn deal with Greece to let them use Guernsey pounds when they get booted out of the eurozone.
