Guernsey Press

Doing the maths

THE Alderney airport debate has set me thinking, which is never a good thing. I found it a bit overwhelming and decided the easiest way to work through it was to follow the money. And because the numbers are quite large, and you know I’m not good at maths, I fired up a calculator app on my iPad.

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I tend to work in round numbers and if I can’t find the actual numbers I tend to make them up, therefore please take the following calculations with a pinch of salt. It’s the principle I’m trying to establish, not the most accurate figures.

I think I’ve read, though I may have dreamed it, that Aurigny loses £3m. a year operating the Alderney route. And didn’t someone say Guernsey pays nearly £1m. a year funding the Alderney airport? Let’s call that a total of £4m. a year. I did that one in my head.

There are about 2,000 people on Alderney. £4m. divided by 2,000 is a cost of £2,000 per head. I do know that P&R have estimated the true cost of the Alderney subsidy as £4,000 per head but I’m willing to use half of that amount because I couldn’t show my workings of how I could get to £4k.

To improve the airfield will cost £12m. or £6,000 per head.

Let us assume that the above costs are fair and justified and for equality purposes let us also assume that the same amounts were allocated to all the people of the Bailiwick. That would give £120m. a year to subsidise airfares and £360m. to spend on extending our runway.

Given that Guernsey airport has about 500,000 passenger movements, the £120m. extra subsidy would reduce each fare by £240. I’m pretty sure that such an average fare reduction is the Holy Grail of cheap air fares that we are all searching for? And, wait a minute, then that would mean we wouldn’t actually need to extend our runway to attract Easy Jet’s big planes? That’s £360m. (in my example) that doesn’t need to be spent.

All we therefore need to make air travel links more affordable, our people happier and tourists more likely to visit is £120m. a year. Which is only £2,000 per head or £8,000 for a family of four. Surely cheap air fares must be worth paying a lot more tax?

Perhaps we can spread the tax cost wider? Introduce a General Sales Tax, paid parking, a TRP travel supplement to capture the corporates? Perhaps a Poll tax?

It’s just so simple. All we have to do to get cheap air tickets is to find a way of taking a total of £120m. extra tax a year from us. If it works for Alderney, why not us? Ah, I do see the flaw in that argument. Of course, the 2,000 inhabitants of Alderney are subsidised by the 60,000 in Guernsey. What we need is for 1.8m. people somewhere else to gift us £120m. a year. Perhaps Jersey could help a little bit? Or the people of Normandy?

AFTER doing all that number work I’m sitting here in a bit of a daze with a wet tea towel wrapped around my head and from out of nowhere has come a strange compulsion to praise our senior politicians. This feeling isn’t going to last and therefore I’m typing as fast as my finger can poke my virtual keyboard.

You may want to sit down now and I advise you to swallow any tea or coffee that you may have sipped. This will avoid any uncontrolled spraying of hot liquid all over your newspaper or computer screen.

I think Deputy Gavin St Pier is doing a magnificent job on our behalf and I don’t believe there is anyone else in the Assembly that could be doing the high level work that he is doing. I’ve said before that the political wing of the States is a combination of the Dibley Parish Council and the Ruling body of Grand Fenwick.

We have been well served with chief ministers of Grand Fenwick in the past and each and every one of them could and did up their game when required. But come the hour, comes the man and in the unsure international environment we find ourselves in, Gavin St Pier is that man and we are should thank our lucky stars that we have him.

I will declare that I did vote for him both in 2012 and 2016 and will do so again in 2020, if he stands again. This despite his bleeding heart liberal views on social policy which don’t quite align with my own views.

I think he is blessed with having two fine former chief ministers at his left and right hands. In Deputy Le Tocq and Deputy Trott he has the dream team for the international stage. Much of the work this team does is not exciting and is pretty much out of the public gaze. But it is vital and is far more important than bonfires, polar bears and the waste strategy that gets all the publicity.

I do accept that we do hear a lot more about Deputy Trott’s work, mostly from Deputy Trott himself.

I fear that Deputy St Pier could lead us through these troubled times but not get the praise he needs for the work he has done on our behalf and, like Winston Churchill, will feel a backlash at the polls even though he had given his all.

I doubt if I can get an ‘I’m backing Gavin’ group up and running and I don’t expect a lot of ‘I totally agree’ comments about this column. But I think he’s the best we’ve got to tackle the current issues. If the environment changes we may need to find another pair of hands for our tiller but that’s not now.

He may not be perfect but remember even Mary Poppins was only practically perfect in every way.