Richard Graham: It’s a case of, ‘if only’

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! In my previous sketch, I seized on what I thought to be a slip of the tongue by Deputy Le Tissier and proceeded to pull his leg about it. But if there was a joke, it was firmly on me. It turns out that it wasn’t a slip of the tongue on his part, but an inexcusable failure of mine to detect that he had referred to a bloke named Starmer, and not Stalin, when talking about a deal with another bloke named Trump. I’ve apologised unreservedly to Deputy Le Tissier who has accepted my apology with a magnanimity for which I’m most grateful. I’ve now added his name to my list of deputies with an admirably thick skin whom I rate as good sports ... a list which I’m pleased to say is longer than readers may suppose. Few readers take my parliamentary sketches literally, but that’s not the point; I’m cross with myself for not having been more careful in listening to the recording of the debate. I’m happy to repeat my apology publicly.

The final Rule 11 questions of this political term were fired by Deputy De Lisle on the subject of animal and clinical waste incineration, and by Deputies De Sausmarez and Gollop on educational issues ranging from the cost and time scale of refurbishments at Les Varendes and La Mare de Carteret and the uncertain future of International Baccalaureate courses. Some of the most eagerly-sought answers weren’t available from the president of Education, Sport & Culture who promised to supply them in due course. Bookmakers are taking long odds on that being before the general election. We shall see.

By the time debate began mid-morning, the watchword for members’ conduct had been revealed as ‘respectful’. I’d like to believe that this was the result of a genuine cultural shift but in truth it was a response to a demand from an influential coalition of business and charitable associations that prospective candidates for the general election should behave like respectful grown-ups. So with the election now so close, most members were on ‘respect alert’.

A policy letter from Employment & Social Security proposed a modest increase to minimum wage rates to take effect from this October. Deputy Kazantseva-Miller had prepared two amendments. It’s a wonder that she’d found time between her increasingly frequent television appearances now that the general election is close. That her first amendment, which was essentially about delay, was seconded by Deputy Murray came as no surprise; I have a suspicion that his middle name is ‘Manana’. Bearing in mind our desperate need to recruit into the traditionally low-paid sectors of the economy such as social care, hospitality and retail, it was a bit odd that as members of Economic Development and Policy & Resources respectively they were so anxious to prolong a situation in which Guernsey’s message to potential recruits is ‘come and join us, we pay less than anywhere else’. Both amendments failed.

Respect being de rigueur, much of the Assembly’s limited stock of it was paid to retiring members, not least to Deputy Queripel, who treated members to a reading of his latest poem. The subject of excessively noisy motorbikes doesn’t lend itself easily to poetry, but Deputy Queripel relishes such challenges. I must confess that I personally failed to detect when his poem had started and ended, but that probably says more about me than about the poem – I’ve always struggled with any poetry more challenging than ‘Mary had a little lamb’. As for members, they reacted respectfully enough to suggest that it was the best stuff they’d heard since that bloke Wordsworth.

But respect was not universal. A handful of members inevitably let slip that they considered respect was something due to themselves from others but not from themselves to others. Up for debate was a policy letter from Environment & Infrastructure on inert waste disposal and freshwater storage. Essentially it was all about answering two questions.

What’s the best use of valuable inert waste – filling a hole in the ground or creating productive extra land? And what’s the best use of a large hole in the ground – filling it with inert waste, whose potential value is then irredeemably lost, or storing precious drinking water for future use? Readers could be forgiven for thinking them relatively easy questions to answer. Oh such naivety! It took just over five hours of debate. And no wonder. Suddenly, you couldn’t move in the debating chamber for the number of expert climatologists with impressive degrees from the University of Much Diddums assuring us that in decades to come we wouldn’t need to store any more water than we do now. It was going to rain and rain like it used to in Noah’s day. And just in case it didn’t, we’d just have to ration our use of it. So there!

During a cringeworthy, farewell-cruel-world speech from an embittered Deputy Mahoney, his personal commitment to being respectful was revealed by his sneery accusation that this Assembly had too many members who were more interested in keeping their jobs than doing them, in contrast of course to his own stellar list of achievements, knowledge of which, mysteriously, has so far remained hidden from all but himself. I suspect that such hubristic cynicism will not be missed in the next Assembly.

On reflection, Deputy Inder might conclude that he could’ve conducted his playground spat with Deputy Blin more respectfully. Deputy Blin probably didn’t need to reflect long before coming to the same conclusion. In the absence of Deputy Roffey on compassionate grounds, Deputy Blin had been lumbered with the role of playing Aunt Sally to Deputy Inder’s seemingly permanent grumps.

Deputy Parkinson got a disrespectful earful from Deputy Dudley-Owen. All that he’d done, poor bloke, was to advise members that when it came to the serious strategic matter of inert waste disposal and water storage, it would be unwise to vote for a proposal that excluded a holistic approach. Deputy Dudley-Owen, halo glistening in the late afternoon sun, eased smoothly into her self-appointed role as the members’ guide to debating etiquette and accused the Assembly’s ‘Mr Brains’ of patronising members simply by offering his advice on how to vote. She refused to be patronised and clobbered Deputy Parkinson with a bizarre lecture on how not to patronise his fellow parliamentarians, a harangue which some members no doubt considered a bit rich, coming from her of all people. It was all rather weird. Some members far less charitably disposed than me will have reflected that when it comes to the patronising of Assembly members ... let’s put this delicately ... the ESC president is far from being wholly inexperienced. It left me thinking that if urging colleagues to vote one way and not another is considered patronising, then most members are guilty of it, since they habitually conclude their speeches in exactly that way.

Deputy Helyar, urging caution and delay, made great play about the States’ tendency to commit itself to ventures from which there was no subsequent escape when inevitably it was found that costs had spiralled upwards out of control and timelines had been missed by years. Deputies Ferbrache and Mahoney later joined him in voicing similar concern. No doubt they were thinking of how this Assembly, in its early days, had committed itself to a bonkers model for the education of secondary and sixth form students on the promise of costs which were always based on wishful thinking and have since risen sky-high, and on the forecast of a hopelessly unrealistic timeline which is now set to be missed by at least five years, if it’s ever met at all. I suspect that as three members of the Policy & Resources Committee’s first iteration, they must be kicking themselves for having consistently supported such an absurd, damaging and expensive fantasy.

Other observations were less convincing. Some of those opposed to earmarking Les Vardes quarry for the storage of fresh water were so desperate for a remotely credible argument that they resorted to some logic-defying non-sequiturs. One such was the claim that if the owners of the quarry knew beforehand that the States required it for water storage – which of course they already know – the asking price would rocket skywards, whereas if they knew that the States intended to make heaps of cash from the quarry by charging tipping fees for inert waste, the owners would somehow sell it for practically nothing. It’s scary to think that some members holding this quaint view of the commercial world have held high office in our government.

On the last day, Assembly members and officials gathered for a final group photograph for the media. It’s always interesting to note who grabs an attention-seeking place in the front row on such occasions, especially with a general election just around the corner. With but one exception, front-row prominence was predictably hogged by members standing for re-election. And guess who claimed the most eye-catching central positions. You’re right, there they were, three of the Assembly’s most persistent and shameless look-at-me members. Pure coincidence, of course!

When all was done and members had left the debating chamber, some for the last time, I relaxed in my garden at Albecq, gazing out across fields, headland and reefs to an infinity of shimmering sea while also watching and listening to two great piano concertos being played by a brilliant young woman. Magical! The concertos were composed by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, the piano played by Anna Federova. Russian music performed by a Ukrainian. I found myself thinking, ‘if only’. And then my thoughts turned back to our own departing Assembly, which wasn’t short of talented people but was so often at war with itself that it ended up more barren of solid achievements than it might have been and, in some cases, having made things worse. And I again found myself thinking ‘if only’.