One wonders why Lord Digby Jones chose to use an emotive-laden term?

‘the former political system in South Africa in which only white people had full political rights and other people, especially black people, were forced to live away from white people, go to separate schools, etc’.

There are numerous scholarly articles on the definition of apartheid in international law. Critically Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, addresses three key elements central to determining an allegation of apartheid:

1. Its wrongful acts

2. Its distinctive purpose requirements

3. The issue of what constitutes a racial group.

It also draws attention to the wider importance of the prohibition of apartheid in the international legal system.

Possibly Lord Digby Jones, in his article, is referring to point 2. Its distinctive purpose requirements, however, the evidence that policymakers in Guernsey have purposefully set out to undertake wrongful acts as in element 1 and constitute certain categories of Guernsey society (civil servants and pensioners) as a distinct racial group as in element 3, is far from clear. Indeed, if policymakers in Guernsey have set out to create an apartheid system as Lord Jones is intimating, they could potentially be in contravention of international law.

One wonders why Lord Jones has chosen to use this emotive-laden term? Of course, he may be referring to the definition of apartheid as a simple segregation of one type of pension from another. However, more likely this is a deliberate act of populist opinion to garner attention towards a Guernsey unique ‘social and political-policy’ problem – how to pay for civil and public services. For Lord Jones it is a binary choice. Cut wages and services. Do not increase taxes.

In this, not only is he really quite annoying, he has the brass neck of a snake-oil salesman. To associate a Guernsey-specific political-social issue with what is understood to be an universal abhorrence, while begrudging the average median wage, is nauseating. He laments paying a fair tax while failing to mention that worldwide only four cents in every dollar now comes from taxes on wealth. A flour seller in the developing world will probably pay 40% tax on his subsistence wage while some billionaires’ tax rates are as low as three per cent.

One might add that Britain is now recognised internationally and economically as a struggling state, and the rot arguably set in when he was director general of the Confederation of British Industry from 2000 to 2006, and minister of state for Trade and Investment from 2007 to 2008 under a conservative government.

Enuff said.

Robert McCann

Forest