Dictators make our under-10s nomads

I cannot for the life of me see how our local government can sit in judgement of whether people born in Guernsey are local or not? To have the nerve to say a person born in Guernsey can only be recognised as local after they have lived in the island for 10 years is just beyond words. Surely if a person is born in Guernsey and their birth is registered at the Greffe — from that very moment onwards they are local to the island. I have friends who went to live in Australia and have been there for years. Their children were born out there and they are recognised as local Australians. They are local to the country/island. My friends (their parents) are now considered Australian citizens but can never be local. Another friend of mine took his family back to Madeira (their birthplace) for their child's birth so he/she can be, and is classed as, a local to that island. These people can grow up having a birthright and a place to call home.

The Guernsey child — until the age of 10 years – is a nomad. To actually hear deputies say that if a child born in Guernsey was taken out of the island before reaching the age of 10 will still be classed as local and are welcome to return but if they wished to buy a property they could only do so on the open market was (in my opinion) disgusting. They have the outright nerve to say to people's faces these returning people are still local but because they have not lived in the island for 10 years they cannot buy a property on the local market. Is it just me, or is this a contradiction in itself? How can you be considered as a local person – but you cannot buy a property on the local market? Someone somewhere wants to get their act together. The sad thing is that these so-called laws have been made by some people not local to the island along with weak Guernsey-born politicians frightened to stand by the people who voted them in and are more interested in the 'I will scratch your back if you scratch mine' brigade. Also, because of our silly voting system where people can vote for 'x' amount of people in their parish allows some to get in on a few votes whereas a one vote one person would delete them from being able to blight our lives. Especially as a lot of these would be failures who get a minister post by being elected in-house. I personally think voting should be island-wide – but not each person getting 45 votes if there are to be 45 seats on offer. This will not weasel out the duffers at all as they will still get in through the back door (and be given ministers' posts again). If we stay with the present system of deputies being voted into a parish – then let's have it that those people actually live in that parish otherwise it makes a mockery of the whole thing – but go with the one person one vote.

One other thing I strongly believe is that any person wishing to get our votes with their soft patter on the doorstep should be made to declare any business interests they have in their manifesto. Never mind about data protection, which only seems to apply to some and not others. I would like to finish with the fact of how some politicians manage to tell a Hans Christian Andersen-like story in answer to most questions and never touch anywhere near an answer to the question at all. Ha, ha, ha.

ROD HAMON.