The ultimate betrayal?

If anyone believed then that I was scaremongering they did not have long to wait to have that threat confirmed.

On Saturday 4 May the Guernsey Press printed a report of the events of a recent meeting of the 2020 Association held at Les Cotils Centre. Well, not only was it made clear that those attending the meeting had no sympathy for any form of control over who came to live in Guernsey, there were also calls for the entire population law to be scrapped.

One has to ask what those supporting the removal of controls over the movement of people into our community expect would happen in such a circumstance. I thought it might be helpful if I sketched out a few of what seem to me to be the more obvious consequences.

In my view there would be a dramatic and immediate increase in the pressure on the island’s infrastructure. More competition for jobs, health services, housing, room on our overcrowded roads, energy, education and, perhaps most telling, increases in demands for services such as care for the elderly etc.

What also seems clear is that those calling for the removal of population controls are only interested in the short-term gains in terms of easier access to labour and unrestricted access to housing. No thought appears to have been given to the longer-term consequences to the island’s wider sustainability. Perhaps they are not intending staying around that long.

What must be obvious, if this report accurately set out the events of this meeting and we take them at their word, is that the 2020 Association’s manifesto objectives and a sustainable future for the wider Guernsey community are mutually incompatible. While their honesty is to be applauded, they are clearly not aiming to pursue the policies that Guernsey’s overall population needs and deserves.

One speaker made the point during the meeting that the majority of States members had never run a business; it was claimed the States had a preponderance of those without ‘real world experience’.

I am sure I am not alone in thinking that many of those attending the meeting were themselves devoid of the ‘real world experience’ most islanders have to live with on a day to day basis. One where there always seemed to be ‘too much month left at the end of the money’. Perhaps if islanders believed their representatives lived in that world there might be less dissatisfaction with the present Assembly.

While no one would disagree that the States should function in a professional and business-like manner, it should first and foremost be acting at all times in the interests of all islanders. Not, as it now seems, mostly on behalf of the business interests and those who came to live among us for tax and other considerations. If moves to remove controls over population go ahead, in the manner described above, islanders will be left with only one conclusion. If this is seen as being done solely to improve the profitability of certain business interests and to benefit those in open market residency, islanders will in my view judge this to be the final, ultimate betrayal by those they trusted to look after all our interests, with all the consequences that will surely follow.

GRAHAM GUILLE

ADDRESS WITHHELD.