Carrying on like this isn’t sustainable

BAYES’ theorem, an 18th-century formula, holds that with the right understanding of probabilities, most outcomes are predictable.

So, what are the odds that the late Mike Lynch, tech billionaire and owner of the superyacht ‘Bayesian’ that sank in a freak weather accident off the coast of Sicily this month, would die within a day of Stephen Chamberlain, his co-defendant in the Autonomy fraud trial in the US, being killed in a hit-and-run while jogging in Cambridgeshire? And just two months after they both beat the odds in court (less than 1% of US federal cases lead to acquittal).

If there was such a thing as social media, I’m sure it would be awash with conspiracy theories right now.

In fact there is, and it is. As it was, I was asked on social media how many States committees I thought would be aware of Bayesian probability theory. I’m not sure; I don’t imagine it’s many. But one thing I am sure of is that we wouldn’t need a Bayesian statistical model to predict what would happen to a regional airline operating several routes at maximum airframe capacity and no redundancy if one or two of its planes went tech. An outcome that really isn’t a statistical ‘black swan’, as was claimed by Aurigny’s management earlier this year. And despite their numerous continuing apologies, no one has been held to account for the damage done to the island’s economy and reputation through months of unreliable air links.

My good friend Mort Mirghavameddin wrote an open letter to the president of the States’ Trading Supervisory Board asking him to hold Aurigny’s management to account as shareholder representative, suggesting in the process he might also feel moved to accept responsibility himself and resign. Ten days later, STSB announced it was commissioning a report to assess whether Aurigny has the right fleet. Seems rather after the fact, having previously signed off the fleet strategy. I’m not convinced that was what Mort meant by holding the management to account or taking responsibility.

But I’m not sure any statistical model would have predicted the debacle on 18 August when Aurigny’s last flight from Exeter was told to turn back less than two miles from the runway with its gear down over St Martin’s because it would be landing some 90 seconds after air traffic control was due to clock off. This debacle presents a painfully perfect metaphor for the general feeling so many islanders presently have that there is so much wrong with the way this island is presently run.

This feeling that the island is on the wrong track runs deep. My fellow Guernsey Press columnists have been driven to despair this year to the point of starting to suggest solutions. Spontaneously forming think tanks and ignoring wolves have been their latest – when I first saw Horace Camp’s column in these pages last week the words of Isaiah 11:6 sprang (erroneously) to my mind.

‘The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.’

I clearly took the wrong end of the stick, but as a solution, a leader from the line of David would come in quite handy for us right now (excuse the biblical reference, just consider it a demonstration of diversity).

It might be an unfashionable view (given that he was called a Seventies economic vandal in these pages on Tuesday by a person who previously served as a Labour minister) but it was nice to see Sir Keir Starmer speak with such honesty in Downing Street’s rose garden this week – warning that ‘we (the UK) can’t go on like this anymore’ and saying that we ‘have to take action and do things differently’. My italics. Doing things differently is something we need in spades over here too.

Sir Keir explained that ‘Part of that (taking action/doing things differently) is being honest with people – about the choices we face. And how tough this will be.’

I assume he meant how tough the choices will be, not how tough it will be being honest with people, but I’d wager that for most politicians and senior civil servants, being honest with people is tough. In my experience, our States dislikes negative narratives, tending to view those with a critique of the States or its actions as fifth columnists whose opinions are not to be entertained. There’s a pathological need, propagandising every government announcement, to put a positive gloss on everything.

Last week’s GCSE results are a case in point. If we’d just got straight to the variable of interest – which is how the state schools did with their first post-11-plus cohort – there’d be less criticism.

This week’s claim by the States that we are already seeing ‘early positive signs’ (unspecified, early positive signs, I noted) in alleviating housing demand – a claim made during the publication of the first update to the Guernsey Housing Plan – beggars belief and fans the cynical flames.

Flicking through the scrapbook for other examples, the president of P&R’s defence last week of staff (the ones still employed, that is) and the States on the back of the Thornton review pops up as a little partial. His notes circulating on Twitter confidently state that States ‘procurement practices are fit for purpose and represent good practice with enough governance protections in place’. A sweeping, bold conclusion. No room for lessons learned. Such an emphatic one-sided view gives succour to the constituency prone to believe the worst.

The theme of this column is supposed to be international economics and sustainability with a bit of a local bent thrown in. That’s what a ChatGPT review suggests it is anyhow. This month, in the fag-end days of summer, it’s turned into a bit of a rambling rant at the States. Everyone’s at it nowadays. Richard Digard blames the lack of decent policy, Lord Digby blames the system, Horace blames wolves. For my money, I’m blaming the political culture. It’s bogged down in a morass of bureaucracy. There is zero accountability, communications lack straightforward honesty, and there’s a paucity of leadership.

We’ve all watched one car crash after another this year, with no one taking responsibility. This paper reported that the States sold part of someone’s house from under them for pity’s sake. The initial response was little more than a shrug of the shoulders.

My old boss, Mike Brown, the States’ longest serving CEO, used to joke that as there was no collective responsibility in the States, politicians practised collective irresponsibility, only half in jest. Nowadays it’s collective abdication of responsibility.

I’m not into negative narrative for its own sake. Far from it. I’d like to be proud of our politicians. I’d like politicians to speak honestly, be willing to take action and assume responsibility when things go awry. Failure has to be acknowledged. Resignations need to be part of our political culture. The buck has to stop somewhere.

We’ve got to start holding individuals to account as individuals since we have no political parties to do it for us. There’s too much hiding behind the States structure.

I know Sir Keir, speaking in the rose garden this week, had much deeper societal issues in mind than we face here in Guernsey, but his sentiment that things must change is one that strongly resonates. Carrying on as we are isn’t sustainable. And while Sloan’s law is that things can be unsustainable for a very long time, I’d rather we didn’t test that law to destruction. The stakes are high, there’s a palpable sense of terminal decline in the air. And the economic outlook isn’t pretty. I’ll return to that (and type) next month.