Liberation Day

Liberation Day comes round again with even less people remaining who lived through those dark days. There will be the usual celebrations in Town but what are we really celebrating? Freedom or just another day off?
 
It’s important to remember your history so you don’t repeat it but what is it with WW2 which remains so fascinating? After all, there’s a fair few centuries more of Guernsey’s history worth remembering.
 
Maybe this day is to recall the sorrows of invasion and to ensure that we never go down that route again.
 
Sadly the truth is that the Island has long since been overrun with foreign cultures both British and American and has precious little of the native Guernsey culture remaining. What is left of the Guernsey way is all to often an excuse for insular and backward thinking coupled with a bumbling form of inefficiency together with a tendency to brush all problems under the carpet and ignore them until the bulge becomes elephantine.
 
An excuse not to change because we’ve always done it that way and if you don’t like it then you know where the boat leaves from and I’ll even buy you a ticket.
 
We’re an Island of some 30 square miles yet we still manage to sub divide into 10 parishes and 7 voting districts.
 
Why?
 
Because we’ve always had a parish system and we like to vote for local people to represent us in the States even if most of us couldn’t identify half of them in a police line up. Mind you, out West it’s easier; you just look for the long grey ears and the tail eh?
 
Maybe this all made sense when the annual trip to Town took a whole day but we’ve moved on a bit since then. The world has got smaller but Guernsey seems to think it’s stayed the same size and still needs the same insular and parochial structure which served it so well for so many centuries.
 
Do we really still need the parish structure? I’ve no idea who’s on my parish committee and couldn’t recognise any of them even if I was in the same room and I suspect I’m not alone in this respect. 

I’ve even less idea what role they still provide other than making sure our rubbish is collected by the bin men and that the hedges and streams get tidied up once (or is it twice) a year.

Then there’s the parish churches which we all must pay for and the parish schools we must keep open because they are our parish schools. Neither seem good arguments for perpetuating this antiquated system but its the Guernsey way and seemingly beyond questioning.

Still, there’s a lot to living in a backwater and we should use this day to celebrate the good things of Guernsey and to remember our history. Perhaps we could also spare a thought for the future as well.