Longer Licenses, Fewer Ministers

2009-10-19T04:11:00.000-07:00

The Institute of Director's dinner was held on Thursday 8th October 2009. It was an extremely interesting evening with a lively debate, an inspiring panel and an engaging moderator.
Four topics were focused on for the evening, and the first one, perhaps predictably since most of the room had some interest in the finance industry was the local economy. Opinions were varied and these were only the views expressed by the panel. All four panellists, Davey, Ozouf, Menteshvili and Neville were agreed that Guernsey can't be complacent. Luckily our economy has fared batter than the UK but its still early days so it all could change.
A topic close to many people's hearts was the issue of tax. Fury has been high within our finance community since Obama labelled us a 'tax haven'. Actually we are a low tax jurisdiction - big difference! Many solutions were offered but the one that personally carried a promising result was the idea of Guernsey and Jersey having a representative to speak out at EU and world conferences to stress the importance of low tax areas such as us, and to remind the world that we are not the enemy! Rather than berating our 20% tax rate, the UK and its Government need to consider how they are going to survive being a high taxation area in this competitive climate.
Following on from this discussion, was the topic of Pan-Island Issues. This could have gone horribly wrong since it was debated in a room mostly full of Guerns. However there was one prominent visitor from Jersey, Senator Ozouf, which helped to keep the balance and the Jersey-bashing to a minimum, at least where the panel was concerned!
When a room vote was taken by Alistair Stewart, over 90% of the 400 guests agreed that Guernsey and Jersey should aid each other through the recession. Being so geographically close and similar in structure, it seems only sensible to pool together our resources.
Minister for Commerce and Employment, Deputy McNulty Bauer spoke of the beginnings of better cooperation. She updated the room on the success of the appointment of a joint director of civil aviation, resulting in huge savings. The next area that warrants further investigation is the situation of energy. Both islands get their energy from the same source but there isn't a shared regulator. A new group recently established hopes to change shared issues like this in the future so there is hope yet.
After the intense two hour session, supper was served; late I might add since views had flown thick and fast. This for me reflected the degree to which the audience and the panel got 'stuck into' their subjects of interest. My head was spinning, albeit in a good way. i definitely felt more informed than I had done arriving two hours previously!
After supper, we moved onto Social Issues within Guernsey. For this, the question centred more on us students on the De Putron table. Feeling a little bit braver, (which had nothing to do with liquid courage since I'm only 17!) i posed the question of why we allowed such valued members of our workforce, mainly teachers and nurses, to stay for such brief periods. Our housing licenses mean that people in these professions who come to work in Guernsey, can only stay here for 5 years. At best this means we retain their attention for maybe 3 years before they start searching for a new job elsewhere. How can this be helpful for young students? During the evening, the need for more entrepreneurs and those with strong business acumen was stressed countless times. Yet good teachers, who bring out these qualities, disappear quickly leaving promising students without a degree of continuity. Longer licenses are needed to rectify this sooner rather than later.
The last issue was Government and here a notable contribution from the audience stood out. The speaker in question had been a former States member and in his opinion, we simply need fewer ministers. In an island of around 60 - 65 000 people, we have 3 ministers per parish alone. The money spent supporting them could be spent better elsewhere. Reducing the number of deputies would allow those left serving to be better paid and more focused on running Guernsey. Interestingly, many of the audience would not like to run to be a deputy, which shows that something about the state of the current system.

Longer licenses, fewer ministers

Longer Licenses, Fewer Ministers