Islanders pick up tab for finance industry
LET'S be honest here. Guernsey has major issues. The Open Market prices for houses are going nowhere soon. The UK tax rate falling to 17% by 2020 will not help. And why would you spend three times the price of a UK house to move to Guernsey? And if you have a young family there is little here for them if the weather turns poor, which is most of the winter.
The finance industry remains the only game in town. God bless them for increasing the price of our flights, the price of our houses (Local Market now unaffordable for those on average incomes) and for applying pressure on the States of Guernsey to agree to anything that is finance related. Shock horror I hear from those finance people, it's only our businesses that are paying for all our infrastructure on the island. Well, that said, great then, stuff GST on to us mere mortals as well (rather than taxing their own industry), because you know full well that GST will be exempt from all finance businesses, as it is in Jersey. And then the finance industry can pay themselves even more off the back of struggling locals, and turn that two-bedroom home on a large plot of land to some stunning, redesigned award-winning property that permanently gets taken out of the reach of islanders looking to buy their first home.
And I don't see local retail businesses getting any assistance from the States of Guernsey either. With the continued growth of the internet they just cannot compete on price and stock availability. The town landlords still charge unbelievably high rents which ensure that St Peter Port only has UK-based outlets across all its highest foot traffic areas. What a shame for all the tourists that come here. But then the States of Guernsey did such a great job destroying the Town Market, would you expect anything else?
As the Canadian singer Michael Buble rightly said, 'It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me and I'm feeling good.' Don't you think he must have been referring to our finance industry?
SIMON SMITH,
Les Landes,
Rue des Landes,
Forest,
GY8 0DB.
