Talk's cheap but £90m. is not
What’s the difference between a plan, a proposal, or a well-worked up idea?
Maybe we should ask Guernsey Ports, whose £90m. plan/proposal/idea has left them in stormy waters with quite a few islanders. Ports will argue that its drawings and concepts are enabling it to seek feedback from the public. That feedback seems very mixed.
Some, especially those within the boating community, think it’s a cracking idea, and will more than pay for itself as we seek to play catch up with other destination marinas.
But islanders are at least confused, as they just don’t understand how the States can say that next year it might not get enough money in to pay the day-to-day bills, while a £90m. project is introduced with a straight face. We’re staring down the barrel of austerity, but still leafing through the high-end brochures, and people don't get the rationale, particularly when for non-essential infrastructure projects.
Ports, losing millions year-on-year, say that any public funding, which it couldn’t come from mooring fees, would have a longer-term pay back.
The pool marina project has shades of the ‘build it and they will come’ rhetoric of Alderney airport – and, indeed, extending Guernsey’s runway. Islanders – maybe even some deputies – would like to know if we are actually in the market of speculate to accumulate, or whether such talk is simply a waste of time.