Bring back the beef

Better, surely, to seek to persuade the baying mob in la plaza de toros to stop men in sequins torturing bulls to death, religious celebrants to forego hurling donkeys from towers and the Spanish fishing fleet to desist from raping the seas for anything edible, no matter how undersized. You know, bigger picture rather than ethical Quorn sort of stuff...

Alas, it was not a meeting of minds. Veganism can be blinkered. Meat is murder, milk means snatching calves from their grieving mothers and fur is worn by heartless hags. Please don’t even mention leather. Oh, and that jaunty pompom you’re wearing used to have a face.

Never mind that many of the traditional animal alternatives are themselves environmentally damaging, you’re either vegan or the enemy.

Today’s blind opposition to others’ views is why a wholly decent MP can be barracked as a ‘Nazi’ during a live BBC interview outside Westminster.

This intolerance is spreading here. It’s why the campaign against fireworks because Tiddles/Fido/Trigger ‘doesn’t like the bangs’ will ultimately succeed and families will be deprived of a simple annual pleasure. After all, we’ve already banned the wrong sort of bonfires.

It’s also why this island is at a crossroads and its future as a relatively happy and prosperous place is far from assured.

After Deputy Peter Roffey used this space last week to rejoice in population decline and reduced immigration and embrace the tranquil ideal of the island scaling back a bit, the question was posed online as to whether he had started his 2020 election campaign early.

More to the point, however, would be this one: who’s going to be the next chief minister and in which direction will this island head as a result? Gavin St Pier has done more than anyone in the Assembly to try to keep the Guernsey plc show on the road. And that task, according to ex-member Peter Gillson, has been accomplished despite this States being the weakest and least intellectually capable for a generation.

I’m not entirely convinced that’s correct, but not even Deputy St Pier’s colleagues know whether he will stand again. Indeed, some rather doubt that he will do so – hence Deputy Roffey’s early marker on population and an unspoken but evocative reminder of the halcyon days of yore, when beaches were empty and toil was simple, physical and honest. Or, to decode, not in finance.

I’ve already highlighted how over the years we’ve lost States members whose motive was doing what’s right for the island, ‘putting something back’ as they’d see it, while the pendulum swings towards those with a more individual agenda based on their view of how life should be led.

This is worrying. We’ve traditionally been run by people who recognised Guernsey had to earn its living in a competitive and hostile world. Anything else was secondary and in the ‘nice to have’ drawer after the bills were paid. Additionally, there was a kind of unspoken collective responsibility understanding regarding that approach.

Today, we have progressed to the point where houses we need haven’t been built because the mandatory cycle store wasn’t deemed secure enough and a government department now wants ‘climate change, the fight against thereof’ added to its mandate. In an island of just 25sq. miles...

So what happens at the 2020 island wide elections will be critical for the future of this island and the battle for its identity. Not in the sense of guernseys, grey flannels and night-time steaming of greenhouses, but whether islanders wish it to remain an international finance centre, with all the vibrancy and dynamism that entails, or slide into obscurity, zero wage growth, depopulation and higher taxation.

It’s claimed in some quarters that island-wide voting will put policies ahead of personalities, but it’s not that simple. Yes, group manifestos will emerge, but in the absence of true political parties with voting discipline they will be meaningless.

Useful if you want to get elected more easily and gain more visibility as a newcomer, but potentially a means to an end for those with firm views on how the rest of us should lead our lives. You have to gain power before using it.

Most of us care about the plight of orang-utans. We’re probably more exercised about why a supposedly civilised country like India hasn’t the decency to allow the Groves family proper court process in the name of Sarah, but recognise our limited ability to influence such things.

Full employment, peace and security, affordable housing, the absence of poverty, a proportionate public sector providing the services we need (not want) and the ability for us and others to get on and off the island at reasonable cost are matters we – or our elected representatives – can, however, address. Yet the split in the Assembly’s ranks and the mindset of certain members means they haven’t, which is why the performance of this States has been so sclerotic, dragging the economy along with it.

Rather like animal welfare being the underlying issue rather than vegetarianism or veganism or any other -ism, this Assembly of independents has failed to agree and act on the central matters vital to this island’s future and wellbeing and which are meaningful to islanders.

What seems a given at the next election is that a significant number of experienced members will be calling it a day, so who replaces them will be crucial, both in populating the committees and leading them.

As we’ve seen with Education, Environment, Home Affairs and others, members are all important in setting policies and aspirations irrespective of the overall States business plan.

If, as expected, policies more than personalities dominate the election in 2020, the choices islanders face are likely to boil down to two main ones: growth and prosperity v. nanny knows best, however they’re presented.

How best to see through the window dressing? Adopt that 1984 US catchphrase used to sell burgers and later to test policy substance. Simply ask candidates, ‘Where’s the beef?’

Without growth, we have no future.