Avenue charity shop will benefit medical trust

SARK'S Professor Saint Fund has received a welcome boost to its fund-raising activities with the opening of what is probably the island's first charity shop.

Caragh and Simon Couldridge, who run a gifts and souvenir shop in The Avenue, also own the next door outlet and when that became vacant recently they decided to hand over the premises to the island's principal domestic charity.

The Professor Charles Saint Medical Trust was established in 1973 as a result of a generous bequest by the Sark resident of that name and subsidises the cost of prescribed medication to island residents.

When the bequest was made the fund had more than enough cash to meet its needs but the crippling inflation of the 1970s meant that it had to be supplemented. This is now done with a wide variety of events, notably the annual sheep race meeting each July, which raise the tens of thousands of pounds needed annually to continue the subsidy.

Mr Couldridge told me that the charity shop was his wife Caragh's idea and added that, as is always the case in Sark, there had been no shortage of volunteers to staff it or indeed items to sell.

All are donated by Sark residents and Simon said that the quality in most cases was excellent.

'I am told that we have very little in the way of sales items which don't move – the turnover of stock seems to be quite rapid – and in the first few weeks or so we have raised over £2,000,' he told me.

Yet again, it seems to me, all this speaks volumes for the extraordinary generosity of this small community.

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Chief Pleas will have come and gone by the time this column is published as it is being written a couple of days before Wednesday's evening sitting.

Quite how much of a debate there will be on the first item of business – the appointment of a temporary chief secretary – is anyone's guess and particularly so because, as I understand it, an informal (another way of saying behind closed doors and secret) debate was held a week earlier, probably as a sort of dress rehearsal.

The fact that the General Purposes and Advisory Committee found it necessary to invite their fellow conseillers to this informal discussion is indicative, in my view, of their general nervousness about two things.

The first is the possibility that a majority of the 28 elected representatives may well either vote against the appointment or abstain, although in the case of the latter option those who seek to sit on the fence need reminding that they are there to make decisions.

The second, and more probable, cause for GP&A nervousness is the distinct possibility that if there is a vote against one of the principal recommendations in Belinda Crowe's report then the bully boys in Whitehall will threaten to once again impose their will upon this community, as they did with sections of the Reform Law.

Given the increasing disenchantment with the British Government by some politicians in Jersey and Guernsey, Sark is about the only place left that Whitehall believes it can threaten. For that reason alone I am tempted to hope conseillers reject GP&A's proposition but, despite the abysmal way it's been handled, that could be counterproductive.

I just hate the idea of outsiders thinking they know better. It reminds me of the man who said he knew France very well, simply because his brother once wore a beret.

• The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net