Don’t ask if you don’t want to listen

Consultation is great if the public comes back with ‘the right answer’, but very inconvenient when they do not.

The Your Schools, Your Choice consultation on the 11-plus in 2015 was the most extreme example, when islanders chose to keep selection, only to be overruled by deputies.

The excuse then was that the survey had been hijacked by pushy parents from the Grammar and private schools.

Three years on and the States has learned nothing.

A consultation from Environment & Infrastructure on reducing the speed limits on scores of roads received a thumbs down from 55% of respondents.

Did the committee change its mind and shelve the plans? Of course not, because it knows better.

E&I’s decision to ignore the majority will come as no surprise to those who have followed the debate.

From the poorly-timed summer holiday start of the consultation to the barrage of defensive comments by E&I deputies it was clear that this was a group that had already made up its mind.

So what if the people who use the roads don’t agree? The committee knows best.

It has done its research and can quote World Health Organisation stats and OECD reports verbatim. Those who complain are ill-informed.

Objection after objection is therefore obliterated by a single mantra ‘the safe system approach’. It’s a catch-all piece of reasoning.

Forget problems with policing, low accident numbers, evidence that people ignore low speed limits and the inconsistent application across the island. It’s all about the perception of safety.

So convinced is the committee of its case that not a comma of their proposals is changed. Not one of the 81 lanes, roads and part-roads has been dropped, despite public protests.

So much for the power of consultation.

This high-handed ‘we know best’ approach makes the consultation a sham.

Why would islanders bother to respond to the next States questionnaire?

If five ideologically-fixed members of a committee are prepared to ignore local feedback in favour of national data it is better to be honest about that and not bother to ask in the first place.