Resisting Salerie Corner 'expert' advice laudable
PETER GILLSON is incorrect to state that '…the only people seeking cyclist priority [at the Salerie car park entrance/exit] were the Guernsey Bicycle Group'. I am a motorist and habitual user, and observer, of said entrance/exit. I wanted cyclists and pedestrians to be given priority at the rearranged junction. Indeed, like most drivers, well aware that, as a car driver, I was the one with the lethal weapon in my hands, I always gave way to pedestrians and cyclists at the previous incarnation of the junction. If motorists were to be given priority it would hardly have cost £50,000 to repaint the white lines at the junction to encourage cyclists and pedestrians to follow a more north easterly course through the junction, as indeed sensible cyclists and pedestrians already did.
The Environment committee are to be commended for resisting the 'expert' advice of the police and creating a junction that is both safe and easier to use for motorists as well as cyclists and pedestrians. Admittedly they overspent by the enormous sum of £64,000 but that was mainly due to the bells and whistles insisted upon by the police.
Would that other States' committees had the gumption to question 'expert' advice rather than passing the buck to the experts. Our unimpeachable law officers gave their 'expert' advice to the late, unlamented, PSD committee that we should continue to fund RPC's attempt to obtain damages from 3M for our PFOS clean-up* after 3M had offered to settle out of court. Nett result: we had to pay RPC £6m. for reading 'millions of pages of documents'. The exact amount of money lost in this sorry affair is debatable but we can be sure that it is at least 100 times greater than the 'overspend' at Salerie Corner that has had so many column inches devoted to it.
The essence of good governance is that our elected representatives should make the decisions. When a committee asks for expert advice it should ensure that it fully understands that advice; if a committee follows expert advice that it does not fully understand then we are well on the way to a police state.
*The decision by the PSD committee to spend millions on digging up the January 1999 aeroplane crash site some five years after PFOS had been deployed on the site was in itself based on questionable expert advice. One can't help but feel there could have been cheaper ways of protecting the integrity of our water supply.
TIM BARNES,
2, Salter Street,
GY1 2BW.
