“To prosperity
and Beyond- Unlocking Health, Wealth and Happiness for Guernsey.” It echoes the
Star Trek mantra “Love Long and prosper”, and with a title like that, who would
not expect to leave this year’s IOD convention feeling inspired and energised? Guernsey
does notoriously tend to have a “glass half empty” outlook- in the last month,
Guernsey Press headlines have roared “Condor over-priced and unreliable-
Survey” and “Population Regime will finish us off” ….so it’s safe to say, some feel-good,
happy talk is well overdue on our island and it’s really refreshing to have a
forum which aimed to take a positive approach.
However, the
evening was much more than happy talk. Policy and Resources president, Gavin St
Pier, took advantage of the opportunity to introduce his “happy and healthy”
vision for the island, which is going to be debated in the States as a 20 year
vision “Future Guernsey”. Its headline vision is the belief that, if Guernsey
is going to offer its children and grandchildren a better quality of life than
we enjoy today, we need to look beyond economic growth and consider social
development. Wait a minute I thought- we are in a room of 400 of Guernsey’s
leading business representatives and Gavin’s telling us that our focus should
be on, not the economy, but social policy? But all around me there was a lot of
nodding and his comments did make a lot of sense. After all, the end goal of
any economic objective is ultimately to achieve a better quality of life for
everyone. And Mr St Pier’s list of aims to achieve this all seemed very sensible,
if a little familiar, along the lines of “we will ensure the provision of
reliable, sustainable and affordable transport links.”
No one could
argue with the ultimate goal of happiness, but more importantly how are we
going to achieve it? Using Mr St Pier’s analogy, it’s no good booking the
luxury hotel if you don’t know how you’re going to get there. I realise that
the evening was not the venue for the detail, but Mr St Pier did say the vision
depended on “nimble, collaborative government.” Oh dear- is it my “glass half
empty” Guernsey genes, but I was worried by this statement. Just the right time
for the next guest speaker Jonathan MacDonald to come on the stage- an expert
in maximising future opportunities in an environment of change and uncertainty.
I really loved his message that in response to the winds of change, that we all
experience in every sphere of our lives, whether it be the departure of a well-
loved A level teacher, right up to the challenges of Brexit, rather than
building strong walls to try and protect ourselves from the change, what we should
all strive to build are windmills, powered by that wind- an inspirational image
that fitted very well with the positive message of the evening.
Carrying on with
this positivity theme, one of the most pertinent points of the evening was Mr
St Pier’s closing request that the post-dinner debate not be taken over by
those bores who just spout what they think the problems are. Rather they should
think about what responsibility they can take for solving those problems. Good
advice and this was largely followed in the ensuing post-dinner debate, where
the speakers were joined by Peter Ferbrache, Chris Atkinson, who has recently
settled in Guernsey from a career at Microsoft, and Meriel Lenfestey, an expert
in the digital industry.
So can
we base a policy on achieving happiness? Coincidentally, I noticed in the
following day’s Guernsey Press on the same page as the convention write up,
this advert for a Happiness course. I don’t think you can teach happiness, and
in the same way I don’t think government can directly make a community happy,
but by following closely defined objectives, that put the well-being of the people first,
rather than the creation of wealth, I do think happiness can be a by-product.
Did the evening
deliver its happy pill as promised? I got the impression that most people left feeling
inspired- with thoughts of how fast their windmill blades would be spinning when
confronted by the challenging winds ahead! The evening might have been a bit
vague on the detail of how we would achieve this vision, but in the words of
one of my favourite musical numbers “Happy
Talk”:
“You’ve
got to have a dream,
if
you don’t have a dream,
how you going to make that dream come true?”
