Pollet plans: What exactly is the point of planners?

Like other UK multinationals that have stuck their flag in Guernsey they will pay no taxes here, and will generally suck the lifeblood out of the island.

In my experience, the Environment Department would never give permission for new licensed premises to open, so once the White Hart is gone, it's gone. This is one of the few sports bars on the island, and a valuable part of the leisure offering in town.

Interestingly, Deputy Burford said that there is nothing that they (Environment) can do, because there were no objections to the development from the public. So what she was effectively saying was that the department do not, in fact, in the majority of cases, make decisions, they just wait to see if there are objections from the public.

Therefore, was she suggesting that a huge number of their employees were effectively redundant? I do think, on this matter, that the majority of the Guernsey public would agree.

She went on to question why the public were apathetic about making an objection, and only objecting to a decision once it had been passed. Well, on that point I think that Guernsey folk are just so used to being let down by bad decisions from the civil service that they are indeed apathetic. For example, the failure to install an incinerator, the failure to extend the runway, the failure to promote an open skies policy, the seafront fiasco, the list goes on.

There was further comment on this phone-in about Guernsey's expectations, and about having to (yet again) raise more taxes to pay for them.

Guernsey is a small island, actually it would only fill two-thirds of Twickenham. We simply cannot meet every minority expectation.

However, we never hear any deputy or minister talking about leaving taxes as they are or indeed finding ways to lower them, in order to attract new business to the island (especially in the finance sector) and to show that we are a stable economy. Instead they debate endlessly new ways of squeezing more money out of you and I in order to pay for yet more departments of paper pushers to regulate and legislate for every minor aspect of life on the island.

What they never debate is how to cut the civil service, namely bureaucrats. I am convinced that if at least 40% of these posts went, ordinary islanders would not notice the blindest bit of difference in their day-to-day lives on this island, apart from a budget surplus.

Guernsey needs desperately to balance the books, but raising taxes further is not the answer. There is only one alternative, and in my opinion it now needs serious debate.

Steve Smith