Lack of transparency from States? Look no further than the waste strategy
IN THE Guernsey Press of 3 January you have produced an article which was backed up by your editorial on the transparency of our States, or rather the lack of it. You made plain the fact that we were promised much more transparency in the machinery of our government some considerable time ago, but this has yet to come to fruition. Another article in the same edition covered our waste strategy and this is where the two different items come together. We, the general public, are not privy to the discussions concerning our waste, we are simply drip-fed little nuggets of information the appropriate deputies see fit to give us.
Now the Press has been very good to me by granting me more than one interview which has resulted in articles concerning waste and you have also printed at least two letters from me on the same subject. I do hope therefore that I am not pushing my luck too far by asking that this one also appears on your letters page.
Our States members, with a few exceptions, appear to have put up an invisible fence from behind which they are saying to us: 'We have talked enough, we do not want to discuss waste any more, it is going to Sweden.' Well, yes indeed, they have talked enough, it was back in the 1970s that workshops were first held with the douzaines and all other interested parties about what to do with our waste when Mont Cuet was full. Forty-plus years and the best they can come up with: 'We are sending it to Sweden.' Not much transparency there I'm afraid, no facts and figures, just a we know best. Well, I don't think they do know best.
I stand to be corrected, but I do not think there are many successful business brains in that particular States department. If there were, they would be sitting around a table as we speak putting the final touches to a deal for our waste to go to the logical place, and that is Jersey. They want our waste, in fact I will go further, they need our waste, to ensure their incinerator runs efficiently. It would be in our interest to send it to Jersey for so many obvious reasons, but instead of adopting the business approach of meeting their counterparts across the water for coffee or a pint and thrashing out a draft deal, they adopt the attitude of 'they were given a chance to quote, their quote was not acceptable, end of story'.
Can somebody please knock some heads together before it is too late and they sign a contract for our waste indeed to go to Sweden? It is not too late, but it is nearly too late.
What we need now, and I do mean now, are States members with the backbone and initiative to bite the bullet and make the right decision. Please States members, stand up now and be counted, do not allow your colleagues to make yet another giant mistake.
GERRY TATTERSALL,
Le Petit Bois,
Sausmarez Road,
St Martin's.