Hayley North: Has Guernsey given up?

I watched a fantastic film last weekend. It is called Nyad and is on the Netflix streaming platform, should you want to find it. I won’t spoil it for you and I definitely do not recommend that you do any research before watching it to maximise the impact. I can tell you, however, that it follows the story of Diana Nyad, an American long-distance open water swimmer who retired in the 1980s. Years later, aged 61, she is living a comfortable retirement with her best friend and happens across a poem by Mary Oliver which is called The Summer Day. She is both captivated and troubled by its last two lines and reading them will change the rest of her life.

‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’

The film will appeal to many Guernsey folk who regularly throw themselves into the sea around the island and particularly those who brave longer swims in all conditions. It takes a certain kind of strength to swim in the sea for hours on end and a certain approach to risk. It should also appeal to just about anyone who ever wonders what they should be doing with their life. It’s a story of finding motivation in the stillness and comfort of life when you have no pressing reason to do anything. It’s also about pushing ourselves to experience life to the full, rather than comfortably retreating once we’ve reached a certain age. It will also appeal to anyone who might be lacking in motivation or afraid to move forward more generally right now, such as our States of Deliberation.

One key theme of the film is ‘never give up’ and it occurred to me the morning after watching it that that’s what it feels like Guernsey has done right now. Given up. I have been trying for weeks to succinctly express what it feels like living here at this time, watching and reading about a series of projects being put on hold. Witnessing time wasted trying to force people to step down rather than deputies gracefully stepping aside so that someone else can try to lead. I can sense the fear of change and fear of failure drifting in clouds from States meetings, hovering over all of us and paralysing progress.

This isn’t the vibrant Guernsey I used to holiday in as a child in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Town buzzed with energy back then and families flocked here in the summer, the future seemed promising and investment in infrastructure carried on apace. Neither is it the Guernsey that created its own currency to borrow to fund the building of Market Square back in the early 1800s.

No, we’ve lost that magic spark. Local businesses are swamped with work, understaffed and under pressure. They just aren’t getting the governmental support they need to grow, house employees or even recruit easily from elsewhere. When these staff do arrive, they cluster together, finding it hard to infiltrate the long-established social networks on the island. Many never manage to break through and leave, others simply carry on as long as they can, frustrated that they don’t quite feel part of anything. There is a strong resistance to change in certain areas – healthcare is one example – which results in extremely talented staff that we have invited here, leaving before their contract is up. If we keep on like this, many more who have chosen to come here and want to contribute and build lives here, will also up sticks and we just can’t afford for that to happen on any level. We need the energy, we need the diversity, we need the skills and we need the tax revenues.

The island knows it needs to change, yet somehow cannot. We’re just too comfortable as we are. Guernsey has reached retirement age, so it seems.

Those who are running this island should not be doing it for themselves, their children or the population and our descendants. This island has an infinite future ahead of it – at least until sea levels rise high enough to engulf her in a few thousand years. Apologies to scientists if my timelines are incorrect, I’m aware it could be mere decades or hundreds of years before the sea takes over. There is also much we can do to mitigate the impact if we act soon enough.

We often fail to consider that our own finite life experience and the legacy we want to leave as individuals is distinctly different to that of where we live. We have perhaps three score years and 10, or maybe four score years given our better life expectancy here (that’s 70 and 80 for any readers not familiar with the old saying) yet our island will outlive us all with needs that will change far beyond what we can imagine. Our community, whether it continues to live on this rock or has to move to higher ground, needs ultra-long-range planning, not five-year plans or plans that won’t even last this term.

Storm Ciaran last week was a great example. We planned reasonably well for it and benefited from good intelligence from meteorologists. Yet strong winds batter this island every winter and these events are forecast to increase over time, yet I see no obvious public long-range plan, no consistent message to parishes and employers to keep people safe and no well-understood emergency plan. I am sure there is a lot going on behind the scenes but this is not obvious to most people. Plans should be incorporated into new buildings and our own infrastructure; the hospital should not risk losing its roof next time. We can learn from last week’s mainly lucky escape and plan for Jersey’s experience in the future.

Being afraid to borrow for capital expenditure also sends alarm bells ringing for me and this very topic is currently live in the States. We’ve missed the low interest rate window and we risk doing it again by the time lower rates roll around again in coming months and years. Few of us were able to buy our homes or cars without borrowing yet we’ve come to see it as a shameful concept.

Borrowing is an essential tool and we need to be brave enough to explain that to those who insist it isn’t. It’s a way of spreading the cost of buildings over their lifetimes and it gets more done, more quickly, enabling business to grow and public services to be more efficient. We honestly don’t have time to wait to have saved enough money to get things done and it makes little financial sense. Borrowing is calculated risk and the risks are far higher if we don’t borrow and don’t invest in our infrastructure sooner rather than later.

Diana Nyad, our champion swimmer, is a fine example of someone who decided to take a significant personal and financial risk to make something special of her life at a time when most people are winding down. It also invigorated those around her and those, like me, who continue to be inspired by her.

Will we as an island instead retire quietly and settle down to a safe game of scrabble as the walls start falling down around us? Ignore the eerie silence as the working age population sets sail to other shores? Is that really what we want? Is that really what we have worked so hard for decades to achieve?

If we continue to assume that risks are there for someone else to take at some distant point in the future, we will fail. Then it won’t be us calling the shots, it will be whomever has bailed us out.

At some stage we all must take a deep breath and take a risk for a long-term future we might not be here to enjoy and might not be able to understand. We’re already seeing the effects of years of underinvestment in education and healthcare, for example, yet for some reason, it’s still not scaring us enough to start turning that around. It should be.

Islands are not businesses, but they are not people either. Just because you feel safer at retirement with your mortgage paid off and taking fewer risks does not mean that this is the right approach for Guernsey.

‘Tell me, Guernsey, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'