Thanks to the dramatic arrival of grandchild number one and some unexpected but happily successful interventions by a highly skilled NHS team, I’m putting this together a week earlier than usual. And courtesy of Harold Wilson’s famous quote during the sterling crisis in 1964, we all know a week is a long time in politics.
And many other things as well, as we’ve just discovered. Not least because the GST debate seems to go from bad to farcical, with even ratings agency S&P Global – wrongly – being used by Policy & Resources to justify its VAT-lite package of tax reforms.
And more or less at the same time, its own Data and Analysis Service people were producing the clearest evidence to date, via their household expenditure survey, that now is probably the worst possible time to be whacking an additional tax on the very things islanders need to live their lives.
Unless, that is, you as a deputy really don’t care about those you were elected to look after.
Yes, it’s a grave charge to make, so let me explain. As we all know, the primary duty of States members, quote, is to act in the public interest and to represent the interests of those who they have been elected to serve conscientiously.
And they swear an oath in the Royal Court to the King to that effect.
But for at least the last 10 years they’ve failed to do so, which is why so many islanders are hurting and approaching half of those living here (41%) have no money saved or less than a month’s income to fall back on in an emergency.
There’s been quite a bit of coverage and comment on how savagely the cost-of-living crisis is biting but it is, I’m afraid, only half the story. The shock reveal in the latest reporting of the household findings was that incomes have fallen in real terms by 12% in five years.
But go back a full 10 years and this pauperisation of islanders, from what I can work out, is actually nearer 20%. One fifth. While prices have increased by more than 30%. No wonder islanders are struggling.
At the same time, government’s inability or unwillingness to provide enough homes mean rents have gone through the roof – and so have other States-controlled prices, with electricity now accounting for 14% of household expenditure and even Aurigny’s fares being flagged.
But this is based in the survey on average (mean) incomes of £77,619. And that’s a figure distorted by a few very high earners, and a metric generally avoided in other data by government as misleading. Look at the more meaningful median figure and the latest available (2022, released in 2024) is £55,116 (£51,877 in 2014).
A much more believable figure for ordinary island households, so losing nearly a fifth of that value in a decade is clearly going to hurt.
But while incomes have been falling in real terms, house prices have risen by around 30% and rents by 50% over the last 10 years. A perfect storm of less money to spend with rip-off rises in the cost of a basic right, like somewhere affordable to live.
So tell me, has your deputy really been acting in your interest and that of the public over the last 10 years while this decline in real living standards has been happening?
Which brings me back to baby Orin Emile Digard. Of his dad’s teenage cohort, very few are still in Guernsey. I spoke to all of them prior to university. No chance of returning – never buy a house and rent is extortionate, they said.
All bright lads, doing well, many of them dads now and lost to their home island, forever priced out. Wasted assets for the island, I’d say. Victims, you might say, of a broken system and a political class that has never properly valued its own young people.
I didn’t know my grandfather, Alfred Auguste. He died in 1951 before I was born, but he was also a Press man – office boy, company secretary, chairman – like his two lads, Emile, my old man, and Alfred.
What I didn’t know until recently, when a cousin got in touch, was that my great-great-grandfather also had ink on his fingers. Eugene August Digard was a printer who gave celebrated Guernsey poet Denys Corbet a break by publishing his works and received a special poem A L’Amie Digard by way of thanks nearly 200 years ago.
I mention this simply because we’re a comparatively recent local family. Master mariner Jean-Bapiste Digard brought his wife and four kids here as refugees in about 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war. So yes, immigrant boat-people. But nevertheless we have Guernsey roots. Or had. I’m the last of our immediate line living here.
As son Alex said from Bristol, where he too is successfully in the creative and publishing sector: ‘I wonder if the nipper will ever know Guernsey like we do?’ Unfortunately, we all know the answer to that.
‘We wish we could come back because it’s lovely and a great place to raise offspring,’ he said, ‘but there’s no chance in hell because of the cost – and the cost of getting there [nearly £200 one-way from Bristol next week].’
Well, forget us. We’re just one family. This is simply meant as a real-world illustration that States policies – or the lack of them – impact people, their hopes, dreams and aspirations.
The decline in living standards, however, is real and recorded by bureaucrats so that States members can, in theory, respond to the data they’re receiving. But they haven’t. Business, for them, as usual. While islanders become worse off.
Actually, I’d go further. The depth of the fall in real incomes plus the length of time it’s been going on means it’s structural. Not a blip. There in plain sight, year after year, and ignored by a States that cares more about maintaining its own expenditure than it does about the pound in islanders’ pockets or their ability to live in their own island.
From what I can gather, because some care is needed in getting direct comparisons, the States’ expenditure rose by nearly 75% over the decade from 2014. In real terms, after allowing for inflation, that’s a rise of 25% while islanders’ effective household income fell by about 20% over the same period just as a housing crisis was allowed to develop.
So in short, that is why your own kids and grandkids are priced out of what should be a place they call home – and why baby Orin won’t grow up here either.
PS: Mum and babe doing fine.
Early warning
Although there are difficulties making direct comparisons on States’ expenditure over the last decade because of the change in accounting policies, red flags were there at outset.
As the States Treasurer stated: ‘The operating surplus for 2004 shows a marked decline compared to that of 2003 and previous years. The main reasons for the fall in operating surplus are:
Ongoing revenue expenditure increased by 8.4% in cash terms or 3.5% in real terms (2003: 3.0%). This is a continuation of the trend of year on year above inflation increases in expenditure.
A shortfall of £14m. in income tax receipts, against budget. Although the majority of this shortfall as due to non-recurring issues, income levels have levelled out in recent year.’
Yes, we were warned a decade ago.
