Deputies need to get island balance right
Businesses are shouting from the rooftops that they cannot find enough people to fill the job vacancies they have on offer and yet having such a shortage of dwellings for people to live in surely points to the unbalanced way the island is being run. What obviously points toward helping to unbalance things is there appears to be no such thing as a local and open market for people to buy houses in Guernsey any more. Local market may be there in name but name only. It seems that anyone can buy on the local market these days and outsiders, especially businesses, are buying our local market properties to use for accommodation to house the people/staff they bring into the island. If and when they do not need the property any more they will offer it at some inflated price and then it’s take it or leave it. We are told there are at least 500 people crying out to be housed and we are letting the Guernsey Housing Association build places on agricultural land to ease the problem. Yet when those in need now are supplied with homes we will still have a waiting list, probably longer because we are told we need hundreds more people on the island. Our states/education system may be hell bent on forcing people to have an IQ of 180-plus – even though it is going to harm those who are slower at learning to keep up and do something they may not want. It’s only going to produce a bigger unbalance in the future.
Where are our salt-of-the-earth people coming from to empty bins, sweep roads, drive lorries and the likes of all those totally necessary jobs? Where? Well probably or obviously they will come from overseas to be exploited and underpaid – while our forced over-educated locals are not going to bow as low as to do the lesser jobs and will be leaving the island (as they have already started doing) to find high paid jobs that are not below them and their education. All leading to families being split. Some people will not want to leave their homeland and remain here out of work because there will be more over-educated people for the jobs available, leaving them to claim off the system.
Then there will be more people actually coming into the island than leaving.
The people in power need to look around them now because we are at breaking point for balancing things. Once the island is full with rich people who have a cap on their tax – and we are overloaded with people imported that will be exploited and work for minimum wages and therefore paying less tax, we are going to be in even bigger trouble than we are now. Deputies need to get the balance right and quickly instead of arguing about where they can or should sit at meetings.
ROD HAMON
5, Rosemount
Mont Arrive
St Peter Port
GY1 2AF