Keep business representatives at arm’s length
AS SURE as night follows day, your newspaper will publish the quote ‘we look forward to working with the new States’ from a spokesman for at least one business lobby group following a general election in Guernsey. The assumption that the electorate has chosen candidates to do just that always amuses me.
But this presumptuous arrogance has been cranked up at least a couple more lunatic notches with the idea put forward by the Chamber of Commerce to have a combined industry and political board to ‘help drive forward successful long-term economic policy’ (Guernsey Press, 19 January). Help who? Could there be just a chance that this might be a rather self-serving scheme?
Last time I wrote in these pages, I posted a reminder of the definition of consensus government. This time it seems necessary to flag up a concept called democracy, which means that anyone wanting to be part of government has to resign from their job, if they have one, and become a civil servant. Or, they could run for election and, if selected, discharge themselves of any material conflict of interest. One of the key things is that they are paid by, directed by and accountable to the electorate and taxpayer.
If they don’t want to do either of those things then they still have the right to lobby their politicians as members of the public.
If this preposterous idea were to go through and the combined board made a right pig’s ear of things, what would happen? The public could deselect the politicians at the next election. Who would get to deselect the industry representatives? It seems that these people want an unelected place in government on a permanent basis.
And here’s another question, for
anyone who is employed by any of the businesses who belong to any of the business lobby groups: Do you have a vote in who is on the board of your lobby group? Who exactly do these lobby group board members think they are representing? The Dairy, bizarrely, is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, (no I can’t get my head around how a government department can be using taxpayers’ money to be part of a group set up to lobby government either, but hey, this is Guernsey) yet the Chamber clearly can’t be representing the Dairy because the Dairy falls under the auspices of a States department headed by Charles Parkinson – who, according to your reports, disagrees with Chamber’s idea.
In fact if Deputy Parkinson has described Chamber’s idea as ‘a step too far’ as you suggest, I think supporters of the idea should count themselves lucky to have escaped with such mild admonition.
MATT WATERMAN
Flat 2, 3 Burnt Lane,
St Peter Port