St Helena goes back to the 1990s.

This morning SURE’s UK service provider disconnected our island’s connection to the Internet at 05:45h for “an hour”. The connection was not actually restored until just after 10am.

In those four hours the island had no Internet, or anything that depended on it.  No external email; no Skype; no ‘distance learning’ (a problem both at PAS and the Community College); no social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whatever; no Wikipedia; no Google.  For all of that time we were living back in the 1990s (though then we all would have had fax machines – does anyone still use these in 2019?)

This disconnection demonstrates how vulnerable St Helena is to breakdowns in our tenuous connection to the outside world.  Physically we only get one flight a week and one ship a month, but in recent years we have been able mostly to get around that with an, admittedly slow, but at least operable real-time link.  We found out this morning how dependent we are on that link.  It was not nice!

Imagine what would happen if a big rock fell off the hillside are bent that great big satellite dish up at the Briars into a heap of twisted scrap metal?  How would we all cope for the many months it would take to replace it?  It doesn’t bear thinking about, but I hope that is something our Disaster Planning people HAVE considered, and I hope they’ve come up with a workable solution too.

Otherwise we’d better start breeding long-range carrier pigeons......

Exports from St Helena

It occurred to me this morning that, contrary to what we are always told, St Helena does have exports. I don't mean small quantities of fish and tiny quantities of coffee, I mean something much larger and more valuable.

Skilled workers.

There are Saints working on every continent (even the Antarctic, if he still goes there). They are skilled willing workers who make a positive contribution to the societies in which they reside.

If you are one of St Helena's exports, be proud!

Collective Responsibility

ExCo needs to abandon the shield of "collective responsibility" which forces all members to publicly support a decision even if they argued and voted against it. Collective responsibility is not open and transparent. We need to know what arguments ExCo considered and how it voted. The published minutes and the published "ExCo report" should reflect this.

ExCo is about to reconsider its rules, so now is the opportunity to propose a change. 

I can't see that the current rules benefit the ExCo members themselves - as it is if a member disagrees strongly with the majority they are required to stand behind and publicly support a policy that they and their electoral supporters disagree with. It would be better for their chances of re-election if they could speak out.

Lets hope the new rules support openness, transparency and democracy.

Small, but not insignificant

On this day in 1770 (249 years ago) an item appeared in the London Chronicle stating:

"Advice has been received of a dreadful earthquake at St Helena, which has entirely sunk the same in the sea.”

This was, of course, a hoax - not uncommon in British newspapers of the time, but it does raise a few questions about how history might have developed differently if the story had been true.

Firstly, of course, this posting and the entire Saint Helena Island Info (http://sainthelenaisland.info/) website would not have existed, but that aside:

1)            Where would they have put Napoleon?  Might they have instead sent him, as he wished, to America (always assuming recently-independent America would have accepted him)?  Might he have consolidated his power base and had a third attempt at leading France?  Maybe France and America would have allied, taken over from Britain as the predominant Empire and we would now all be speaking French?

2)            Where would the Liberated African slaves have been taken?  Indeed could the Royal Navy have operated a successful slave-trade interception operation from only Ascension Island?  Might the history of slavery have been different?  Maybe Napoleon would have sided with the slave-owners and the American Civil War turned out quite differently?

3)            What about the Boer Prisoners and the various other exiles placed here since Napoleon (http://sainthelenaisland.info/exiles.htm). Putting all of them somewhere else would probably not have dramatically changed world history, but where else would have been so conveniently isolated?

4)            And lastly, from where would the Falklands and Ascension Island have got their skilled and willing labour forces? (And Swindon would have been a lot smaller too!)

On the whole St Helena has made quite a significant contribution to world history, so it’s probably just as well it didn’t disappear into the sea around 250 years ago.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I agree with the opinion piece in this week’s Sentinel (p4) – and therefore disagree with our current Governor (not, sadly, an uncommon occurrence).  If you are not allowed to know how your elected members voted on an issue then how can you make a meaningful choice at the next election?

Prior to an election candidates make lots of promises about what they will do, what they will support and what they will oppose.  For example, let’s say a candidate promises to improve healthcare on the island.  They get voted in and then spend the rest of their four-year term voting against anything that might result in improved healthcare.  But at the next election they, again, promise to support and promote healthcare.

In a developed democracy (UK, Europe, USA and most others) you can find out how your member voted on every single issue.  In the UK you consult a publication called Hansard (it’s online). If you find s/he didn’t vote the way they promised they would you can demand an explanation and, if you are not satisfied, not vote for them again.  But to do this you have to know how they voted.

It is completely against everything I understand about democracy to keep members’ votes a secret.  Secrecy in this benefits nobody except the dishonest.

Maybe one of our more honest members would like to put forward a Bill to remove the shroud of secrecy and bring democracy to our island’s governance.  Obviously not one of the ones who hides behind the veil of silence to do his or her underhand dealings; one who actually votes the way he or she promised the electorate they would.

I assume there is at least one.....

International Politics Explained!

North Korea is an undemocratic regime that tortures and kills its opponents and poses a military threat to its neighbours.

Saudi Arabia is an undemocratic regime that tortures and kills its opponents and poses a military threat to its neighbours.

Any yet North Korea is an “evil empire” while Saudi Arabia is a friend and ally. Why is this?

The answer is that Saudi Arabia supplies the US and UK with oil, and buys armaments from us, and hence helps our rich get richer. North Korea does not.

International Politics is not about justice, fairness and Human Rights – it’s about preserving and expanding the wealth of our leaders.

MI5’s current list of active secret agents

Hands up all those who know what The Gazette is, and how to access it?

I ask because Governor Honan claims that it is “open and transparent” if an announcement is published in it (Letters, today’s Sentinel). 

I must disagree. 

Nobody reads the Gazette.  Most people have never heard of it and very few know how to get a copy (you have to find it on the notoriously impenetrable SHG website, but to find it you first have to know it exists and it’s there).

Something put in the Gazette can hardly be said to have been ‘published’, and certainly not either openly or transparently.  A letter in both newspapers counts as published (it has to be both because many people only read one).  Or an announcement on the radio (again, both stations), run for at least three days because people sometimes miss one night.  If you want people to know something you publish it where people will see or hear it. 

In my opinion, claiming something to have been “openly and transparently published” because it was in the Gazette is like the Vogons (in “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) saying their plans to destroy Earth had been “on display in the local planning office in Alpha Centuri for 50 Earth years”.  About as open and transparent as MI5’s current list of active secret agents.

All of the people, all of the time

Don't you just love it when you read a SHG Press Release that begins "SHG is disappointed ....."

It always reminds me of my old headmaster. He would be "disappointed" that boys had been caught smoking. Disappointed that only twelve had got into Oxford/Cambridge. Disappointed that somebody had burned down the school hall. Etc. Etc. He was never "angry" because that would have involved him leaving his high place of superiority and descending to our level. Instead he remained aloof.  Just as SHG tries to do.  SHG should not be patronising the people of St Helena, it should be listening to what we have to say and engaging positively.

SHG was "disappointed" that the Sentinel "misunderstood" the "facts" about coffee plants, according to their press statement.  One wonders how it will react when it reads this week's edition which proves that the information the Sentinel used in its story came by email from SHG!  More 'disappointment', or just plain "Oh, shit, we f@$£ed up, we'd better say nothing at all"?  An apology would of course be out of the question because that would involve admitting they got something wrong.  SHG believes it, and everything it does, is axiomatically correct and reality must be adjusted around it.

It will be fascinating to read the results of the recent "What do you think of SHG Information" survey.  Everybody knows that what they publish is crap, but I'm sure the results will show that 105% of respondents believe SHG's information to be reliable, trustworthy and completely accurate (just like when 100% of the people of Iraq voted for Saddam Hussein).  I'm sure it will turn out that there will have been many "spoilt" submission papers; spoilt with errors like not ticking "the best" for every box which meant they had to be disqualified.

Who do they think they are fooling?  Certainly not me or any of the other people of St Helena.

Until we get some reality from SHG the gap between Government and People will continue to widen.