The window signs are the most radical demonstration of increasing despair in Alderney at the strained relations between the islands, which have been in financial union for nearly 80 years.
Alderney’s top politician – Policy & Finance chairwoman Jeannie Cameron – claimed there had been a change in the public mood.
‘When I first arrived, there was talk of how Alderney may become a parish of Guernsey, and how we were dependent on Guernsey. That was the mood,’ she said.
‘Whoever you talked to, of any age, the thinking was that we needed to work very closely with Guernsey and ensure everything continued the way it was.
‘I have noticed recently that has shifted... the community have this feeling that Guernsey just doesn’t care about Alderney anymore.
‘You see sometimes in people’s windows the little sign that says “Aexit”, like Alderney exiting Guernsey. People are feeling that we are the poor relation, and with the runway and other things it just seems to be getting worse.’
Alderney is already a separate jurisdiction, but under the terms of an agreement signed in 1948 its residents pay most of their taxes into a joint exchequer with Guernsey. In return, Guernsey provides a range of transferred services, such as health, education and policing.
This arrangement is currently under review by the Bailiwick Commission, at a time when the States of Guernsey, and by extension the States of Alderney, is facing pressure to reduce expenditure and frustration has grown about the deteriorating condition of Alderney’s runway.
In a wide-ranging interview on the latest Guernsey Press Politics Podcast – out today – Ms Cameron stressed that calls to break free from Guernsey were being made only by a minority of the population, and were certainly not official States policy. But she also warned that discontent was growing, some of it caused by difficulties in transferred services, particularly health care.
‘Sometimes people will say to us, as politicians, why is Guernsey sending us backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards to Guernsey when one might be for going for an x-ray one time and then another time for the consultant’s appointment. Sometimes it’s backwards and forwards three times in a week. Why couldn’t that be co-ordinated and go just once and do the three things? It’s that sort of thing all the time, constantly.’
Ms Cameron claimed that another cause of friction and frustration was that Guernsey seemed to want to keep Alderney at arm’s length, even on issues of great importance to the northern isle.
She said she had written four letters this year to Guernsey’s Policy & Resources Committee and not one of them had been answered.
It is understood that a draft reply is under consideration by P&R and should be sent to Alderney in the near future.
Alderney’s ideas for a cost-effective runway project have also allegedly been ignored by Guernsey.
‘Alderney doesn’t want to continue just sticking its hand out. It wants to do what it can,’ she said.
‘We put forward these proposals in good faith, and both of them came in well under budget. Now I understand informally that one of them wasn’t particularly good, but the other one was.
‘We could manage the project here. We’ve got all the equipment, the Guernsey company is here doing roads and that sort of thing. It was all possible. Not even to have a response is very frustrating.’
Ms Cameron said that it was ‘very disappointing’ that the States Trading Supervisory Board, which is responsible for the runway project, did not allow Alderney to have a politician on the runway project board, even as an observer.
‘There was very strong push back, and we were told no,’ she said.
It is understood that an Alderney official has attended project board meetings for some years.