A change of thinking might lead to a change for good

That’s not because they are always particularly complex issues, or because we don’t try or want to understand them, but rather that we are never given the chance to. We simply aren’t given the information.

We aren’t told about the contexts, the background, the legalities and what exactly it means to us. We aren’t told about the relationships that go on behind the scenes between departments, jurisdictions and organisations.

Sure, we are told some of it in some cases, but my question is: is it enough? I don’t believe it is.

Take, for example, the issue of immigration. The JEP’s pre-election survey of readers showed that there is a massive issue here that Islanders want addressed.

A huge amount of people think that the States don’t have a grip on immigration, are letting too many people into the Island and are causing countless problems for us and for themselves.

But how many of us fully realise what ‘closing the door’, as many readers said they wanted the States to do, would mean?

Being a part of the UK common travel area, we enjoy all the benefits of a European Union passport without being part of that union and the controls in other areas it brings with it. ‘Having our cake and eating it’ is the phrase, I believe.

So, we can’t stop people from certain countries coming into our Island. If we tried to, we too would have more controls placed on ourselves and would even have to show a passport every time we visit, say, London for business or Manchester for shopping. Would you want that? I think ‘no’ would be the common answer.

Of course, we do have some controls, but these are in the form of housing and working restrictions, and the question about their effectiveness is a whole other area altogether.

But what would you think, for example, if your son or daughter, friend or relative fell in love and decided to bring their other half to live in the Island they grew up in, the Island they love and the Island they want to help, in whichever small way, to develop into the future.

You would want their other half to get a job, right? You wouldn’t want them to struggle, would you? And I’m sure you certainly wouldn’t want them to move elsewhere because Jersey is just simply too difficult a place for them to live together.

And do we realise the importance of making sure we have enough people of working age in the sectors in which we want to flourish in the face of an ageing population?

These crude examples show just a few areas relating to just one issue in which I believe we are poorly informed.

I am not saying that our beliefs would necessarily change were we given all the information in the world about a subject, but rather that we need to be offered some of the important stuff to make informed judgements.

Other topical areas similarly suffering in the current climate include the finance industry (do we truly realise how important it is to everyone who lives in this Island?), zero-ten (too big and controversial an issue to even contemplate contending with in this limited forum) and the public sector, among many others.

And nowhere has this failure to equip the public with the information we deserve to know been so plainly played out as in the election hustings currently taking place throughout the parishes.

Countless questions have been asked on these very areas, frequently based, I have to say it, on hearsay and pub chat rather than on hard facts and information.

And, I’ll say it again, that’s because we just do not have the information.

In that way, the States have failed us, particularly the Council of Ministers. And the result? A lack of trust between the public and politicians (because we always feels like there is something they aren’t telling us) and an ill-educated electorate.

Another side effect is, in some cases (though I hasten to say not all), an ill-educated cohort of election candidates. They are, after all, members of the public for the most part, going on the same information as the rest of us.

So what’s the solution? Teamwork, actually.

First, our new States and, importantly, our Council of Ministers need to commit to keeping us informed on a much greater scale than in the past. And I don’t mean just promising to do it, but actually doing it – laying their cards on the table, making us feel a part of it and answering the questions that the public want answering.

Second, we in the the media need to do a better job of presenting more in-depth information about issues in conjunction with departments who are willing (and perhaps who need to be more willing) to share that information.

And you and I, the voting public, need to take more of an interest in knowing all that stuff because otherwise we will be back to square one and it will look as though no one cares.

If they are going to tell us and the media are going to report it, then we have to digest it. We have a duty to ourselves, to each other and to future generations to fully understand the issues on which we are voting, commending or criticising or pushing our elected representatives to sort out.

As a final thought, consider how different the golden handshake scandal of earlier this year could have been. We found out that the States had paid obnoxious amounts of money to two senior civil servants who left their posts, and we felt cheated, felt let down and felt angry.

If, years before, our government had been open and transparent about the way in which such people were employed, contracted and attracted to the Island, the story would have been very different.

In fact, from a journalist’s point of view, there probably wouldn’t have been a story at all.

But to this day we still feel lied too, we still feel as if we don’t know the whole story and that’s because we don’t.

So why didn’t someone tell us? Damage limitation, I think they call it. But no, our same old States stuck to their same old ways of making us feel like there is some big conspiracy. Okay, I might be generalising here, and I appreciate that occasionally there may be legitimate reasons why we can’t know the finer details about everything, but I’m sure you get my point. The date of 19 October is a fresh start – let’s just hope it will be more than a few of the Members who will change.