'Sport has the power to change the world'

From David Eves.

WE can afford to spend about £100 million on the new incinerator. We can absorb another few million because some incompetent didn’t buy forward in Euros. We can talk about a sewage plant that ‘could cost as much as £250m’.

We can offload a couple of civil servants at a cost of about £½ million, to the taxpayer. We can afford to offload another one for about £130,000, because he doesn’t fancy living here any more.

We allocate millions of pounds to the Tourism Department even though hotels, tour operators and transport operators spend their own money to market the Island themselves. And when the occupancy figures don’t look like coming up to scratch by July we miraculously find another half a million quid to try to boost late season bookings.

We can find £45,000 a year for each of the 52 States Members, a budget of around two and a half million when a population in England of similar size can be represented by one member of the House of Commons and two councillors.

We can afford a fortune in legal fees conducting witch hunts against the likes of Graeme Power and Stuart Syvret and we can afford umpteen independent enquiries which have no teeth, like the Haut de la Garenne fiasco.

Yet we can’t afford to give £176,000 to the Sports Council. It is an absolute disgrace. It is only because of the dedication, enthusiasm and voluntary work of so many, who freely give of their time that the likes of Brett Pitman, Peter Vincenti, Elizabeth Cann, Maria Agathangelou, the Guthries and others have been successful in the UK in their chosen sports.

It is little thanks to the States that, on the one hand, we are continually bleating on about how many billions our banks have on deposit, how we all live on such a wealthy Island, how we have such a high standard of living and yet half the time we behave like paupers.

At the very first Laureus Awards Ceremony in Monaco in 2000, none other than Nelson Mandela made a speech that eloquently underlined that organisation’s philosophy. He said, ‘sport has the power to change the world. Sport can awaken hope where there was previously only despair’.

If we don’t heed the great man, who do we take heed of?