Let's co-operate with our sister isle on waste strategy
YOU kindly published a letter from me recently in which I was pleading with our politicians to get together with Jersey and thrash out an agreement concerning the disposal of our island's waste. My pleading fell on fertile ground in our sister isle but very stony ground over here.
We read in the Press that Deputies Luce and Noel from Jersey are now actually offering to get together with their counterparts over here to try and come to an amicable agreement whereby Jersey takes and burns our waste. They go as far as saying that they are meeting with Guernsey politicians next month to discuss the matter. That is very different from what we hear in Guernsey. Only a few days ago Deputies Brehaut and Parkinson, the former tasked with deciding what should happen to our waste and the latter with making it happen, both stated publicly that the time for talking was over, our waste was going to Sweden. Now I do hope that our two deputies are not going to put their heads in the sand and stick to that short statement of: our waste is going to Sweden – unless of course somebody has jumped the gun and signed a contract before the matter was agreed by the States.
I pleaded in my last letter and I plead again, for the sake of our island's future, talk to Jersey and do not be afraid to do a U-turn if necessary. The people of Guernsey would applaud you for having the guts to look again and make the decision that the vast majority of Guernsey people feel is the right one. Of course in a perfect world we would have our own incinerator and would be independent of Jersey, but we do not live in such a world and with two tiny islands in the middle of the Channel being only 20 miles apart, it does not make sense to have two incinerators. So let us share and let us make this the first of many things that our two islands do together.
GERRY TATTERSALL,
Le Petit Bois,
Sausmarez Road,
St Martin's.
