Richard Graham: Enough to get your flippers in a twist

If you think Guernsey has problems, you should try to imagine how hard done by the inhabitants of Heard Island are feeling just now. Yes, even penguins and seals and the occasional passing albatross have feelings, you know. Admittedly, there aren’t any human beings to bother them on this piece of desolate, volcanic rock in the Antarctic, but that doesn’t make them immune to the Donald Effect. Just when they thought they had enough to worry about what with the ice melting under their flippers and those pesky orcas getting more aggressive by the year, along comes the new president of the United States who places a 10% tariff on all USA imports of Heard Island exports. It’s not totally clear what those exports are apart from heaps of guano which the United States no longer needs to import since the White House by itself alone is producing enough of the stuff to meet demand.

The island is governed by the five members of the Penguin Reservation Committee. Its leader, an instinctively upbeat bird, is confident that the island’s legendary resilience will be enough to see off this latest blow. He’s written a conciliatory letter to his good friend the USA president with the message that both Heard Island and the United States are strongest when they work together as friendly competitors. But for his deputy, the new tariffs are the last straw. She’s had enough of testosterone-fuelled politics and says she’s off. The island’s foreign secretary was on his diplomatic travels, unavailable for comment; not surprising really when there’s only one boat a week to your nearest neighbour. Just when everyone thought the committee’s fourth member couldn’t possibly get any gloomier, he did. His doom-laden media release was a masterpiece of its class. As for the fifth committee member, scarcely any resident penguin, least of all himself, can understand how he came to be among the governing elite, but since he’s there, he’s promised to submit some tricky searching questions to President Trump.

It all makes our own government look reassuringly normal, doesn’t it?

On the first morning of last week’s meeting, the session allocated for questions to committee presidents under Rule 11 began with attempts by Deputy St Pier to elicit from the president of Education Sport & Culture a better understanding of disappointing school attendance records post-Covid. Several members asked questions during a session which lasted 44 minutes, at the end of which I suspect few were any the wiser, if not, like me, more confused than ever.

Deputy De Lisle then questioned the STSB president about the disposal of the contaminated Pfos soil bunds beside the airport entrance. Residents close to the airport lived in fear, he declared. Hardly surprising, I thought, since the likes of Deputy De Lisle are forever scaring them witless with warnings that the local air and water supply will make their noses grow longer than Pinocchio’s or Cyrano de Bergerac’s.

What with statements by committee presidents, Rule 11 questions and some uncontroversial elections, it wasn’t until 10 minutes before the lunch break that the Assembly finally got round to dealing with business left over from previous meetings. Bearing in mind this was the penultimate meeting of this political term with piles of urgent business ahead, the absence of a sense of urgency was as embarrassing as it was palpable. The Deputy Bailiff was doing her best to hurry things along, but her task was equivalent to powering an oil tanker with a single paddle.

First up was proposed legal reform from Home Affairs in respect of domestic abuse and sexual offences. Since even this weird cohort of deputies contains no member in favour of domestic abuse and sexual offending, the committee’s well-researched proposals to combat them invited a mature, good-tempered debate. Members queued up to tell each other – and of course the electorate – that domestic abuse and sexual offences are a bad thing, just in case anyone needed reminding. In doing so, some members confirmed that they regarded the 15 minutes rule for speeches as a target rather than a limit. A few members, notably Deputies Haskins and Dyke, were bold enough to address the risk of such legislation going too far. I think they were right to do so because setting the threshold for criminality is especially difficult in this area. It is relatively easy and uncontentious to identify unacceptable conduct or behaviour when we see it, but far harder firstly to identify at what point it becomes the business of government to deal with it rather than a matter for individuals whether as members of a community – or especially as parents within a family – and secondly to then nail it down in legislation which by its very nature has to be unambiguous and precise.

There was a time when I had to read the works of Franz Kafka in their original German language. I was reminded of the agony involved, and the difficulty of making sense of it, during the two and a quarter hours spent in further debating how to amend the Island Development Plan, the debate having been carried over after having already occupied an hour at the end of the previous meeting. There’s something about debates involving the Development & Planning Authority and the IDP that makes my eyes spin like Catherine wheels. It’s the combination of the plot and the actors; I just can’t cope with them. All that readers need to know is that the DPA won, although what they’d won wasn’t entirely clear to me. I hope that helps.

Debate of the local planning brief for the St Peter Port and St Sampson’s harbour areas was sailing through calm waters after surviving an initial slip of the tongue by the DPA president who had momentarily relocated them to the west coast. Calm waters and Deputy Inder do not mix well, as was witnessed when he once again allowed his frustration at always coming second-best to Deputy Roffey throughout this political term to tempt him into having another go. Oh dear. Yet again the Assembly was reminded that the more the poor bloke has a go, the worse it gets for him, with the Deputy Bailiff seemingly unable to save him from himself despite throwing him a lifebelt. The Deputy Bailiff enjoys a justified reputation for being able to indicate when a member is making a prat of him/herself without actually calling them one. This time, she came close to not living up to that reputation.

Next up was the future repair of Alderney’s runway. When would it happen? Would it ever happen? With the general election around the corner, the votes of Alderney residents were up for grabs, but so too were those of Guernsey taxpayers who would bear the brunt of the costs.

Tricky, eh? Deputy Murray, who has settled well into his role as P&R’s very own version of the legendary Private ‘We’re doomed’ Frazer in Dad’s Army, reckoned that resolving the issue of Alderney’s runway had already taken far too long, which I suppose explained why he was supporting P&R’s proposal that would make it take even longer.

In an agitated plea for support, an excitable Alderney Representative Hill, who is new to this game, resorted to referring to the Deputy Bailiff as ‘Your Majesty’. All that was lacking was a clameur de haro with our chief minister in the unlikely role of Duke of Normandy.

Alderney seems to have unearthed a rare gem. What’s more, his reaction to being patronised was graciousness itself. Deputy Inder interrupted him to explain at excruciating length that aviation had changed since Aurigny first started flying from Alderney 60 years ago. In reply, Alderney Representative Hill heroically managed to avoid any hint that he might have been able to work out the bleedin’ obvious all by himself thank you.

Deputy Dudley-Owen interrupted Deputy Soulsby (yes, those two again) with a please-listen-carefully-to-me explanation of what another member had said earlier. The Deputy Bailiff, somewhat mischievously, asked her if her interruption was an example of ‘womansplaining’.

I was left thinking that our male Bailiff would have asked that question at his peril.

Debate got a bit tetchy at times, with the Deputy Bailiff having to warn Deputy Trott not to waggle his biro at a member who had irritated him. Dangerous things, biros... apparently.

I end on a positive note. Deputy Burford led a significant amendment that had unanimous support from the 39 members present. Was this a belated sign of harmony? We shall see.