About to go pear-shaped?

As if that wasn’t worth the crisp £20 note and a bit just on its own, Alexa can do so many more things. For instance this very morning she reminded me that today, Tuesday, is the anniversary of the battle of Philippi when in 42BC Octavian and Mark Antony defeated the forces of Brutus and avenged the murder of Julius Caesar.

As you will all remember from Roman history (one of the very few things I am qualified in, having obtained an O-level in the subject) Octavian and Mark Antony subsequently fell out and Octavian eventually became the sole leader of the Roman Empire.

History has a habit of repeating itself and it has come as no surprise to me that the Ferbrache, Meerveld, Mooney triumvirate is crumbling as I write this. By the time you read this I expect the dogs of war will be howling and the Islanders Association members will be choosing their sides.

An early hint of discord in the Meerveld shed was the sudden unholy alliance between Gavin St Pier and Peter Ferbrache as they both seek a five-year term for deputies. When Deputy St Pier went to great lengths to dismiss any thought of animosity between the two of them I was reminded of a comment made by Winston Churchill to the effect that if Hitler invaded Hell, he would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.

Politics can be, though rarely is, a great source of enlightenment and progress, but more often it descends into backstabbing and false alliances with the participants all seeking to rise to the top by any means possible.

The disgraceful behaviour of politicians around the world makes one wonder if the desire to be a politician is somehow linked to regressive genes, or is it that political power corrupts?

Before the rise of the Islanders Association we were at least spared a lot of the vitriol of party politics. Yes, we had Twitter spats between deputies or strongly worded differences reported in the media, but we certainly didn’t have politicians arguing about politics when there are real issues to be solved.

The Roman Republic wasn’t perfect, but once Caesar crossed the Rubicon it didn’t take long for absolute rule by one man to replace it. For a few years various systems of government were tried but ultimately executive rule was concentrated in the hands of one man.

As I’ve said before, we find ourselves at a crossroads. We have become leaderless not because we didn’t have leaders before, but because we have new types of wannabe leaders. Ever since the Harwood report decided that the Assembly as the Executive wasn’t the path well travelled by other countries, we have been in a limbo of not knowing whether the States of Guernsey is fish or fowl.

Some call for a vastly reduced number of deputies and a greater concentration of executive power in a few hands. This will allow for 20 or so people to decide where the 60,000 of us needs to be. Get the right 20 people working together and we can ban cars, make cycling and walking mandatory and put an end once and for all to the threat of climate change.

Or with the right 20 people we could lengthen the runway, build high rise hotels on the south coast cliffs, dig a tunnel to France, double the population and deport all adults without digital qualifications.

Or with the right 20 people we could tax the rich until they bleed, confiscate the assets of tax dodgers and distribute them among our deserving poor and share them with the impoverished Third World.

That’s not my Guernsey.

In my Guernsey we all hold different views on different subjects but do our best to come up with something that is beneficial, in one way or another, for all. We’d all like our views and opinions to be the dominate ones but we have a long history of live and let live.

Our deputies should be representative of us and be representative of our wide range of views and beliefs. I don’t want to see a States made up of just the people I worked with in finance. Half of those senior people would struggle to run a sweet shop next to a school and certainly couldn’t steer this island through choppy seas.

We don’t have enough deputies, we pay them too much and we flatter them into thinking they are ministers of a great world power. Our Assembly is a mixture of the Parliament of the Duchy of Great Fenwick and the Dibley Parish Council and we need deputies who can fill all the positions.

I fear it’s all going to go pear-shaped. Harwood II will be commissioned to kill once and for all the Guernsey Republic and open the way for the new imperial period. Gavin and Foxy are ‘friends’ now because perhaps they both have their eyes on the Imperial Throne? But only one can rule?

Deputy Meerveld is about to face his ‘Ides of October’ moment as one faction removes him from the scene in an ‘Et Tu, Foxy’ moment?

People of Guernsey, we are not the Roman Republic of 42BC. We have troubles enough of our own without embroiling ourselves in the battles of political giants scrambling for the top. I don’t want to open my Press and read about political spats. No, I want to read about the good news of sensible, pragmatic decisions being taken to benefit us all culturally, economically and socially.

Who will rid me of these meddlesome political associations?