We must adapt to changes if our island is to thrive

When Royal Mail changed to using elastic bands instead of string, the island’s economy collapsed. Guernsey derives most of its income from the finance industry but changes in legislation in other countries could wipe the industry out at any time and leave the island with the same problems as St Helena.

The only hope Guernsey has to avoid that sort of disaster rests with the ability of islanders to react quickly to threats to its industries by adapting and finding new sources of income. This can only be possible if islanders are clever and flexible.

Two areas that have featured in the news recently give rise to concerns that in future Guernsey may not be clever enough or agile enough to survive a collapse of the finance industry. These areas are planning laws and secondary education.

Those of us who are old enough can remember how in the 1960s and ’70s UK unions fought tooth and nail to protect their members from changes affecting dockers, printers, shipbuilders and car-makers. With the benefit of hindsight we can all see now that the unions could never win. The technological and market changes were inevitable and the effect on workers unavoidable.

In Guernsey, planning officers have taken over from the unions the hopeless attempt to hold back change. For instance, it is they who are trying to prevent changes in tourism that are inevitable. The owners of the former Chalet Hotel are being forced to try to continue providing accommodation for visitors who don’t exist. Every time someone sees a new opportunity to introduce new industries to the island their efforts are hampered and delayed by the planning laws and processes.

If planning laws made Guernsey a better or more attractive place to live, they might have some justification but all the evidence suggests the opposite. All the features and buildings in the island that visitors find appealing were built before the planning laws were introduced and all the eyesores that we all complain about were built with full planning permission.

The first thing Guernsey must do if it is to survive and prosper in an ever-changing world is to scrap the planning laws altogether or at least reduce drastically the powers of the planning authority.

Turning to the second factor that will determine the future health of our economy, since Guernsey can never be the cheapest place in which to run a business, it must be able to offer a brighter, better educated workforce than any rival. To do that it must have a better education system than elsewhere.

The previous Education, Sport & Culture Committee made no attempt to provide excellence in the proposals it put forward. The comprehensive schools they favoured would not provide the best possible education for every pupil. Instead, they would have given teachers a stress-free environment by ensuring that parents had no power or choice over the education of their children, so the teachers would not be answerable to parents for the standard of their work. Schools would have remained under the control of civil servants who might have no knowledge of, or qualifications in education. Those proposals would have made Guernsey a favoured location for mediocre teachers.

We must all hope that members of the new ES&C committee are strong enough to resist pressure from teacher’s representatives, who want a system that doesn’t challenge teachers to perform well and are prepared to allow parents to have the final say in matters concerning the education of their children.

The real test of any new proposals will not be if States members vote for them but whether deputies are prepared to let their own children or grandchildren attend the schools they have voted for, or if they will continue to pay for them to get a premium education at one of the independent colleges while the rest of Guernsey’s children are processed like products in schools run like factories.

BARRIE PAIGE

GY6 8BP