Ashamed of what was once my home
HAVING just returned from visiting my mother and having read in your paper articles on tourism, I must congratulate the States tourist board on their optimism but must also question whether they actually know much about it. Firstly, you have to have something to offer them, something a grossly overdeveloped and overcrowded rock in the English Channel does not have.
Secondly, you need the infrastructure to support tourism. In years gone by when the island had a tourist industry there was something like 70,000 hotel beds available. Now I believe it's down to about 7,000. The island also had character, quaintness and charm, things that have noticeably disappeared with the advent of the greed that has over the years gripped what must be the biggest rip-off in Europe and what must be the most expensive 75 miles of water to cross.
In the late '60s/early '70s I worked for British Island Airways and we used to handle 20-26 flights daily in the summer. British European Airways, as it was then, used to handle a similar amount, with Channel Airways (later British Midland) also handling 8/10 flights a day and Aurigny running hourly services to Jersey and Alderney and all without needing a massive white elephant built. There were also proper and reliable ferries operating. Duty-free and VAT-free meant exactly that.
I can now buy diesel and most VAT applicable goods cheaper in the UK and post them to Guernsey cheaper than they are sold for there, so maybe traders should buy singly and get items posted over because from what we are told the freight is the cause for the expense and postage seems to be cheaper.
I have in the past strongly advised friends and acquaintances against visiting the island and will continue to do so as what was once my home and a place I was proud of now makes me hang my head in shame at the very mention of it.
Just one final unrelated point. Perhaps the States should reinstate the tax on business that they relaxed a few years ago and maybe they would not have to penalise pensioners. Let the greedy, tax-evading money-grabbers take up the slack.
COLIN DE LA MARE,
27, Kingsale Road,
Salcombe,
Devon, TQ8 8AS.
