It’s extraordinary that so many politicians have concluded that GST is the only way forward

As I understand it the prime movers are the civil service. They are the permanent servants of the government and the people of Guernsey. Politicians come and go and have wide ranging views from the left and right wings.

If I am correct in this assessment then it would be the civil service who suggested to the politicians that the best method of raising more tax revenue would be to introduce GST. It is quite extraordinary that so many politicians having been vehemently against it for some time have concluded that it is the only way forward.

We already have various sources of income and the obvious and cheapest way is to raise these existing taxes.

I do think that the civil service has failed to bring the island’s tax system into line with modern practice and they should be severely criticised for not doing so. The accounts are very difficult to understand and things like the sea and airports should be dealt with separately so that we can see whether having our own airline is worth the high costs.We can also then clearly see whether the sea ports are profitable. In my view they should be, whereas a reasonable loss running our own airline would be acceptable if it helped us to retain the finance industry.

There seems to be a complete lack of agreement on the capital requirements and some, like the hospital, keep changing. We really need to try and cut back on capital expenditure. I believe that a deputy recently put forward a proposal to reduce expenditure by 4.7% and only 11 deputies voted for it. No business would last one year with this level of intelligence at board level.

Many years ago when a sales tax was being mooted a friend of mine who was a retired head of Customs and Excise in the UK was lecturing in several European countries on the merits of VAT versus a sales tax. The former was much better for the government but appealed less to business as it was more expensive to run. However VAT was virtually impossible to avoid, whereas the opposite applied to a sales tax unless considerably more people monitored it, which would be expensive. The answer was quite simply that VAT was by far the best system. He offered to come to Guernsey and give a free lecture on the subject but it was turned down as Guernsey knew exactly what it was doing and did not need outside advice. Sadly he died some years ago but I am sure he would be laughing at the current decision to go for a sales tax.

Because we we are currently so dependent on the finance industry I believe we should be looking to introduce some new industries which could contribute to our economy.

As a retired master mariner and keen yachtsman I believe we should consider building a dry dock capable of taking superyachts and establishing a team of tradesmen to carry out all work involved in ship repair. This could be a joint States and private enterprise but I suspect our civil service would strongly object to such a venture. I know several people who would be keen to progress this idea and would be happy to discuss it with them and other interested parties.

My second idea came about when the UK joined the EU. It meant we lost our tomato growing business to the Dutch. This made me think that we should retaliate by setting up a diamond-cutting business. We should try and convince a Dutch company to move to Guernsey by offering them a tax break they would find hard to refuse. Unfortunately I could not find any enthusiasm from our politicians so I dropped the idea. Strangely I feel that it could be a good time to reconsider the idea and add man-made cubic zircons into the equation. The thing against most manufacturing businesses in Guernsey is the high freight costs.

In the case of gems their value is so high that the freight costs are negligible. We might just concentrate on cubic zircons because real diamonds were, not are, a girls best friend. Anglo American is considering selling off De Beers because of falling diamond sales. I am not sure whether any of our jewellers would be interested in this idea and being involved so that a proposition could be put before the States with a view to giving such a company a special introductory tax break.

Hopefully with the new extreme left wing UK government we will attract some wealthy entrepreneurs and we should welcome them and their businesses.

T C TILDEN-SMITH

Les Landelles

Rue de la Foire

Castel