The End (probably)

I don't think I will be maintaining this blog anymore.  Indeed, if you look at the post history you might well have concluded that I stopped maintaining it a while ago.  But, officially, it was still active until I decided what I was going to do with it.  And now I have - close it.

Nobody maintains blogs anymore.  Well, almost nobody.  Maybe if you have a cause and you need to make announcements to thousands of people at once it might be a way but then you could also use Facebook or Twitter/X or Instagram or Whatsapp or any of the other technologies, none of which I've bothered to get my head around.  Maybe one day someone will start a Blog Preservations Society?  It won't be me.

If you want to know about St Helena, one of the most remarkable places to live on the planet, you can read all about it here: https://sainthelenaisland.info/ (or http://sainthelenaisland.info/ if your browser is awkward).  If you want to follow my random thoughts I still update Facebook - I'm here: https://www.facebook.com/JohnTurnerInSaintHelena and if you want to meet in person you'll need a plane ticket .....

The End
(probably)

A brief history of Christianity

 

Jesus (who really did exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus) started preaching inclusivity, peace, love and understanding in Palestine, and picked up a few followers. His teachings upset the religious authorities because it undermined their power, so they conspired to have him killed.

About 50 years later Saul ("Paul") picked up the stories of Jesus and adapted it into a religion, largely by putting all the threats and punishments back in, borrowed from traditional Judaism.  He called it "Christianity".

Missionaries spread this "Christianity" thing far and wide, but each telling a slightly different, and in many cases contradictory version of the story, so in AD340 the Council of Nicea got together and “standardised” it, cutting out the bits they did not like.

The Council of Nicea produced a Bible, but they wrote it in Latin so that ordinary people could not read it, thus enshrining the power of the Church to “interpret” it.  

Seeking to strengthen its power base and finances the Church invented lots of new twiddles not mentioned in the Bible (but as only they could read it, it didn’t matter) – e.g. “Purgatory”, where you go after death until a relative still alive pays the church to release you, and “Papal indulgences”, where you pay in advance before committing a sin – which succeeded in making it one of the largest and richest non-governmental organisations the world has ever known.

Martin Luther came along and actually read The Bible, as created by the aforementioned Council of Nicea.  He realised that the Church was not sticking to it and proposed a new “back to the Bible” version of Christianity, Protestantism (because they were protesting against the Church).

In England, King Henry VIII had fallen out with the Pope, who wouldn’t allow him to divorce his older wife for the younger, sexier Anne Boelyn.  He sided with Luther and created the Anglican Church.  There were now two versions of Christianity: the “Catholic” variant and the “Protestant” variant.

This “rejecting the established church” idea caught on and soon Protestant Christianity was split into many sects, divided over trivial matters of doctrine, each of which claimed all the others was “not really Christian”. 

This is pretty much where we are today.

A poser for any Christians reading this

Imagine there’s a man travelling in the depths of the Amazon jungle, who comes across an isolated village with a tribe of people living happy, mutually supportive and caring lives.  Unbeknown to him, the tribe had never previously encountered anybody from outside their village, and they do not welcome him.  He is armed with an assault rifle and in a fit of rage he slaughters all of them; men, women and children.

When the killing is complete he is overcome by an overwhelming fit of remorse.  There are none left that he can save, so in his anguish he falls to his knees and earnestly prays to God for forgiveness.  He prays for some time, going back over his entire life asking for forgiveness for everything.  Exhausted and overwhelmed he dies as soon as he has said Amen.

Now, according to the Bible as I understand it, two things then happen.

1) The man, who has asked God for forgiveness for all his sins, and who has died before he can commit any more, will be immediately welcomed into Heaven.

2) The people in the village, who have never heard of Jesus Christ, and hence have not accepted him as their saviour, go to Hell.

Is this correct?

2024 has begun well

First we're kept awake until 02:40am by the disco on the Bridge, which we measured at 84dB on our balcony, making sleep impossible.  In the immortal words of Lt. Roger Murtaugh in the film Lethal Weapon: "I'm too old for this kinda shit".

Then we discover that a hit-and-run driver has damaged our car while attempting to drive home past our house.  One can only assume they were drunk, which is why they carried on and did not stop to report the incident and apologise.  And as the incident occurred some time after 2am, we did not hear the crash because of the loud music.

2024?  Things can only get better.

Facebook Friends

I guess if we're all completely honest, we do not actually know all that well many - possibly, most - of the people we are "friends" with on Facebook. I certainly have "friends" who I've never met. Some are friends-of-friends; some are even people who asked to be my friend and I thought "why the hell not" and accepted their friend request. I presume I'm not unusual in this.

Perhaps, therefore, I should have predicted that it would happen, but I saw a post today from a "friend" openly supporting the atrocities being committed in Palestine by the Israeli army. I was shocked to discover that someone with whom I had occasionally exchanged greetings could hold views so completely opposed to mine, and so abhorrent to me.

[For the record, I do not support Hamas, or approve of its use of violence against anybody.]

So when people tell you that Facebook is self-supporting because you only see opinions that you already agree with, it isn't true.

And, incidentally, did you know that you can't block a Group on Facebook? So if one of your "friends" shares posts from the Group with which you disagree, you can't block the Group to avoid being annoyed by the posts - all you can do is block the friend.

What a strange thing Social Media is (surely an oxymoron).

Happy New Year

 According to the BBC World Service news at 10am this morning, there's been a major earthquake in Japan and five nuclear power plants are at risk; the Israelis and Palestinians have this morning continued trading death and destruction; The Ukrainians have continued trading death and destruction this morning with the Russian invaders; and Britain may be about to go to war with Iran in Yemen.

Happy 2024!

3,814 times is the charm ...

I publish an email address on Saint Helena Island Info and people use it to contact me about all sorts of things related to St Helena, most of which I am happy to help them with or to pass on to someone who can.

But I also get a lot of spam.  Some is just tedious crap and some is either mildly amusing or laugh-out-load funny (I’ve listed some of the funnier stuff here: http://sainthelenaisland.info/contact.htm#readmore).  Under the “tedious crap” I include all offers of SEO Services to “make my site #1 on Google” and people wanting to make me a video “about the business” (me sitting at my desk typing does not seem to me an entirely riveting plot for a video, even if it is mildly amusing watching me type one-handed with the more-than-occasional missed key and the resultant swearing).

But one thing always puzzles me about the junk I receive. So, in case it’s not obvious, I would like just point out to any prospective spammers out there, that sending me exactly the same email 1,000 times from different email addresses will not persuade me to read it, let alone take any action on it. 

Clear? 

Isn’t competition wonderful?

 

Imagine a race with only one entrant.  Or a football, rugby, cricket or skittles match with only one team.  What would be the point?  The team wouldn’t bother to give of their best because there would be nothing to fight against.  Nobody would watch because the result is obvious from before the start.  It would be completely boring.

It’s exactly the same in business.  If there was only one shop selling some essential thing they could charge almost what they liked for it and the customers would have no choice but to pay it.  And if they treated their customers poorly they’d still be in business because nobody could go anywhere better.  Competition keeps prices down and improves customer service, because if you don’t like what one business is offering you can go to a better one.

SURE just found this out.

Until recently it could charge pretty-much what it liked for Internet usage because customers on St Helena had no alternative.  As a result, St Helena had perhaps the slowest and most expensive Internet access on the planet.  Then Starlink came along and a lot of SURE’s most profitable customers deserted for the much better package offered by Starlink.  If you want to get a business’ attention you hit it in the bottom line.

My guess is that SURE then pressed SHG to take action against Starlink - hence that “cease and desist” press release - but it soon turned out that a) our 35-year-old Telecoms Ordinance just didn’t give SHG the power to ban something as modern as Starlink; b) nobody on the island had the equipment necessary to prove that a Starlink system was being used, which would be necessary for a successful prosecution; and c) there were already so many Starlink users (and despite the press release the number continued to grow) the courts would have been backed up for years trying to prosecute them all.

So, faced for the first time with a serious competitor, SURE has responded.  It has clearly constructed the new tariffs announced last Friday to allow it to seize the market back from Starlink.  And, for all but a very few extremely high volume users, I suspect it will succeed.

To compare Starlink against SURE’s new top package:

1.      Both offer an unlimited connection.  That means no more being cut off mid-month or charged an arm and a leg for excess data usage.  With both you can allow your machine to update itself (especially its anti-virus) when it needs to without worrying how much data it will use.

2.      SURE’s fastest package is only 1/10^th the speed of Starlink, but most of us don’t need all that speed and couldn’t really use it if we had it.  People I know with Starlink say they never exceed 50Mbps, and then only occasionally (when all their friends come round bringing their laptops and phones).  20-25Mbps is more normal and its usually lower.  20Mbps from SURE should meet most people’s needs.

3.      Starlink costs about £750 to buy and set up, and around £200 per month to run, where SURE’s package costs (I understand) nothing to switch to and only £120 (plus 10% government tax) per month.

A few other things: For Starlink you need access to a UK bank account, whereas for SURE you can pay locally.  Starlink needs unobstructed access to the sky (difficult in a valley like Jamestown) but SURE comes down your ordinary telephone line.  Be aware that if you live in an outlying district, even with SURE’s top package you may not get the full 20Mbps because of the long telephone line, whereas in country districts away from obstructions Starlink should operate at its best.  Don’t think you can share a Starlink system with your neighbours to split the cost– that IS illegal under our antiquated Telecoms Ordinance.  Lastly the Latency on SURE should be much better than with Starlink (if you want to game online you’ll know what Latency is, and if you don’t it probably won’t affect you!)

Unless you really need Starlink’s 200 Mbps speed it’s an easy choice: go with SURE.

Would SURE have done this anyway, once it could connect to the Cable (which is much cheaper for it than the old Satellite link)?  I have my doubts.  SURE is in business to make money and few businesses ignore the opportunity to exploit a captive market.  It is my firm belief that SURE would have improved their offering once the Cable came online but would not have gone this far if it had not been forced into it by competition.

Competition is good.

Now we just need to find a way to deal with the island’s other effective monopolies whose prices are too high and whose customer service is below par - the bank and Connect.

Starlink on St Helena

If you’ve had the opportunity to use Starlink I’m sure you were impressed.

If you’ve only ever accessed the Internet from St Helena then you will have heard that the SURE offering is usually called “slow and expensive” but you will have no real concept of just what that means.  With Starlink you can download data at what will look like unbelievable speed (though to the rest of the world it looks like “normal”).  Using SURE’s free overnight period I can download about 2.4 Gb in a single night (6 hours).  With Starlink that same download takes a minute or two.  And because it is uncapped you do not need to worry about data allowances.  Imagine a bar with three different sports events simultaneously playing in high-definition in different parts of the bar.  Possible with Starlink.  You want to watch a movie?  No longer do you need to set up a torrent and wait a couple of nights for it to download – you can just watch it on YouTube.  You can watch one movie while your kids simultaneously watch another or join in an online game with other gamers around the world.  Struggling to download the data for your online education course?  No longer a problem.  Need Teams or Zoom for your business?  It works brilliantly.  Can’t afford Starlink for yourself (it is pretty expensive, but no more per month than SURE’s GoldPlus package)? Then speak to someone else who can afford it – they will have more data than they know what to do with and will surely be happy to download stuff for you.

Of course, if the Maestro project ever gets finished it will be even faster and even cheaper than Starlink, but we all know the history of major “island-changing” projects here: the wharf in Ruperts that turns out to be too small for modern cargo ships.  The airport which can’t carry anything like the number of tourists it was projected to deliver.  The shipping service that can’t keep the island supplied with basic goods.  I could go on.  When we were told Maestro would be live by 31st December this year how many Saints believed it? Even December 2024 is looking uncertain to me.

Starlink is available now.  Yes, it is technically illegal under our current (1989) telecoms Ordinance, but who in 1989 could ever have predicted Starlink?  Back then Diana was still alive, and still married to Prince Charles.  We still had the First RMS and PAS had just opened.  A Mobile Phone was the size (and weight!) of a brick, could only be used to make voice calls and anyway it wasn’t available on St Helena.  The island didn’t have television apart from imported VCR Tapes and Radio St Helena was only on for a few hours a day (and FM radio had been declared “impossible”).  Cable & Wireless had just taken over the telephone system from the government. The island had 3-digit telephone numbers and you couldn’t make an international call yourself (you had to book it through the operator).  It would be seven more years before the Internet became available here, and then you had to make an international call to Ascension to get connected.  How could the Council approving the 1989 Telecoms Ordinance have imagined what the communications world would be like 34 years later, with digital mobile phones, WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, WiFi, Online Gaming, Video Streaming, Bluetooth and Starlink?  It is insane to regulate modern telecoms by such an out-of-date Ordinance.  

Are you afraid of getting a “cease and desist” letter?  If so, ask yourself this – how can they prove you have used Starlink?  They might be able to demonstrate that you have the equipment, but that in itself is not illegal.  They need to prove you actually used it.  That means either accessing your Starlink account or accessing your bank records to show you are paying the subscription. Neither of these ought to be possible.  Are they going to employ spies to peer through our windows the see Starlink in use?  Or will people “shop” their neighbours to get revenge for some trivial issue, just like how the Stazi operated in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall (also in 1989)?  The whole idea is ridiculous, and with probably up to 300 Starlinks already operating on the island and more coming with each ship or plane our courts would be jammed with the prosecutions.

Our Ministers could have done what Ascension Island did. They didn’t ban Starlink – they just licenced it.  That reduces the cost too, making it more widely available.  But instead they have made what appears to be an ineffectual threat aimed at holding St Helena back from the future.  Shame on them!

Um, y’know?

I first started listening regularly to the BBC World Service around 40 years ago, when I was living in Sweden.  In those pre-Internet days it was the best way to keep in touch with what was happening “back home”.  I actually had the times of “News about Britain” – a program that seems to have passed into history - written up so that I wouldn’t miss it.

And in those days, if a World Service presenter had said “Um” or “Y’know” they would have been instantly dismissed and quite possibly also executed.

Scroll forward to 2022 and it’s everywhere.  Presenters “Um” and “Y’know” their way through news, interviews and all the other content kindly delivered to us on SAMS Radio 2.  Many are pretty good and only do it occasionally, which I notice but can tolerate, but I’m sure there are some cases where the “Um”s and “Y’know”s actually exceed the real words in the item.  And then it drives me bonkers.  I find myself shouting at the radio “if we know then you don’t need to tell us so f@$k off!”

I was discussing this the other day with a friend, much younger than myself.  He did not have a problem with it, but then he grew up in the “Um” and “Y’know”  Era so, like everything you grow up surrounded by, did not even notice it was there.  If you grow up next to the coast you don’t notice the sound of the waves.  If you grow up by a busy road you don’t notice the noise of the traffic.  He initially said “Um” and “Y’know” were no more significant than pausing for breath.  I countered that “Um” and “Y’know” were noise-words that conveyed no meaning whatsoever and you might as well say “wombat”.  “Well, Brian, wombat, it was a game of two halves, wombat, and it could only have had one, wombat, ending.”

But then we discussed it further and realised that, actually, “Um” and “Y’know” DO have a meaning.  It’s roughly the same meaning as that little whirligig that comes up when you are trying watch a video online at a higher resolution than your internet speed can cope with.  It means “I’m talking faster than my brain can handle so I need to pause while my thinking machine comes up with whatever it is I’m going to say next”.

Back in 1984 reading the news took five minutes, and it was read at a measured pace with two second gaps between the stories.  Today it takes two minutes. In this high-pressured world presenters have to gabble to get all the information across within the 30-second attention span of their audience.  If anyone paused for two seconds the audience would tune out.  So it’s hardly surprising that their mouths are forced to operate faster than the human brain can keep up with (and some human brains are clearly more challenged by this than others).  That being the case, the “Um”s and “Y’know”s are entirely explicable.

But for me that still does not make them excusable.

A squandered opportunity

I want to put on record how sad I am that such a great opportunity for St Helena is being squandered by the wholly unnecessary rush to rebury the bones of the “Liberated Africans” in Ruperts.

We should be making an international event of it.  People with an interest in the history of enslavement – and there are many - would have come from all over the world to attend the event.  Slavery is a very hot topic in America at the moment, as it is in Britain, the Caribbean and – of course – Africa.  The international media attention could have been enormous.  The world’s media would have been delighted to talk about St Helena.

In my view we should have delayed the event until March/April/May next year.  By then the rush of Saints coming home for Christmas will be over and there should be the availability on the flights to get people here.  If the event was well enough publicised it might even be possible to charter a flight to bring headline-grabbing big-name interested parties here, and there are plenty of them.

The worldwide attention it would have given to St Helena could have re-launched our tourism industry after the ravages of Covid-19, and the additional income to the island – to our government and to our tourism-related businesses who have suffered so much recently - would not have gone amiss either.

If nothing else, the weather would have been warmer; much better suited for an essentially outdoor event.

Yes, I know the bones and artefacts of these unfortunate people have lain abandoned for fourteen years in the Pipe Store, disrespectfully stored in cardboard boxes, poked and prodded by scientists.  At least now they are respectfully stored in a place that would have been familiar to them during their brief time here.  In my opinion, another six-to-nine months would not have made a whole lot of difference and the respect shown by having a large international attendance to witness and celebrate the event of their reburial would have more than made up for it.

So why just rush them into the ground now with nobody present except the few Saints who will turn up on a (probably) cold, wet and windy August Sunday afternoon at the peak of fear of Covid-19?  I cannot see any logic behind this.

It is perhaps ironic that the reburial is being planned in a way that seems to actively oppose all the reasons these people were dug up in the first place – to encourage tourism by building the airport.

We missed out on the opportunity of Napoleon’s Bicentenary (in 2021) due to Covid-19.  We will miss out on the opportunity from the reburial due to bad planning.

I am immensely disappointed. 

Tactical Voting

 I have been asked if I plan to vote for Andrew and only Andrew.  The answer is NO.

 

While my voting for Andrew and only Andrew might increase the chances of getting him elected, it would also make it easier for the “same olds” to get themselves re-elected.  However much I want Andrew to get onto Council, my overriding imperative in this election is to get a change – to get rid of the old guard who have got us into the mess we’re in today and get in fresh, new thinkers capable of digging us out of it.  Andrew cannot do this alone!

 

So I will be voting for up to twelve candidates.  Andrew will be one of them.  I haven’t finalised my list yet but I already know that only a very few will have been on the last Council.

 

I hope Andrew gets elected but for the sake of the island we need an almost complete change of Council, with or without him.

Sabotage!

 

Anyone who knows me will be aware that I despise violence.  I’ve also always felt that vandalism and sabotage are regretfully negative ways to approach any problem.  But I’m beginning to understand why people might resort to destroying things when they feel they have no alternative.

Take the island’s fishing community.  They have just been told that they have been earning too much money from fishing (yes, really!) and that they should be happy to pay more than twenty five times as much to get their fish processed for market by the new fish processing business.  They may no longer be able to make a living.

However patently ridiculous this may be, what can they do about it?

They can’t just give up fishing.  Apart from the money they have invested in their businesses, our economy (if that’s the right word) is such that jobs for Saints are few and far between.  Unless you are one of the privileged few you face what we all face – prices keep going up (including, it would appear, the price of fish, on which so many families depend) and incomes do not.  You cannot simply find another career.

The Governor certainly isn’t going to do anything to fix it because he is the one who concocted this great fishing sell-off in the first place.

Most of our current councillors are not interested in the problems of the fishing community.  Some of them are behind the outrageous arrangement that has created this problem; most of the rest are too busy sucking up to the Governor so that they will get their BEMs and OBEs; the few who might speak out are in the minority and get ignored.

The staff at the FCDO in London don’t care what happens here.  As long as the Governor keeps telling them everything is under control (which he doubtless does, even if it isn’t) they are happy to ignore what’s actually going on down here.

Complaining in the local media does no good.  People read it; people agree it’s wrong; but nobody actually does anything about it.  Protesting on Social Media has exactly the same lack-of-effect.  The UK press is too focussed on Covid-19, Brexit and who’s going to win Come Dancing to care what happens in a place that half their punters couldn’t find on a world map.

Someone could organise a protest march, but we all know from recent experience that such events generate a lot of noise but no actual change.

We know a petition is useless.  1,191 signatures for the last one was deemed “not a significant number” (although, apparently, 336 votes was enough to implement the new governance system).

What else can you do?

I can neither advocate nor support anyone resorting to vandalism or sabotage, but if somebody does now do something destructive it would not surprise me in the least.  The saboteurs might argue “What else can we do?” – a question I would find hard to answer.  Looking at what makes news in the second decade of the 21^st century it could certainly be concluded that the only way to get anybody’s attention is to destroy things.

I hope it doesn’t happen but I can’t be certain that it won’t.  I’m saddened that St Helena has been brought to this.

Mad Kings

 

Thinking about this week’s Governor-stopping-Saints-installing-solar-panels debacle got me wondering.  Maybe we should not blame our Governor personally for his abuses of power.

 

I have only met the man for about ten seconds when he first arrived so I have no idea what he was like personally at that time, and indeed whether he remains the same now.  But there’s an old saying: “power corrupts” to which is usually added “... and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

 

Give anyone the amount of power that our Governors have and trouble will inevitably result.  Even Boris Johnson and Joe Biden cannot arbitrarily decide to implement a new rule just because they want to; they both have to follow a parliamentary process which, while far from perfect, is designed to stop “Mad King Syndrome” from setting in.

 

“Mad King Syndrome”?

 

It’s where someone in charge has unlimited and unquestioned power and it goes to their head.  King Cnut (“Canute”) trying to stop the tide; Roman Emperor Caligula arbitrarily executing people because they didn’t laugh at his jokes; King Henry VIII making the whole country Protestant because the Pope wouldn’t give him a divorce; and just about every Dictator everywhere throughout history. 

 

If you give people absolute power, a lot of them go nuts.  Not all, but far too many.

 

So perhaps the problem is not Dr. Philip Rushbrook personally.  For all I know, if you get to know him you find him a nice, kind and caring man.  I strongly suspect the problem is the role of Governor.  It just has far too much unfettered power.

 

As I have said many times before:

St Helena needs three things:

 

1) The role of Governor should become purely ceremonial with no power (and, probably, the silly hat should be re-instated for the benefit of the tourists);

 

2) All power and decision-making should be vested in our democratically elected representatives, operating in an open and transparent way; and

 

3) Saints should be able to vote for an MP to represent their interests in the UK Parliament (possibly in conjunction with the other Overseas Territories).

The way forward

 

So it seems we are going to get a “Ministerial form of Government”.  There is no point now in arguing that the poll was invalid and the result spurious because the FCDO has decided and what they say in the Colony of St Helena is final.

 

But what is a “Ministerial form of Government”?  I don’t think any of us is really clear, but from what I can gather it means that some of the people we elect as Councillors in August get to be called Ministers, get large pay rises (at a time when most of us are lucky to keep up with inflation) and get “more responsibility”.  And this is the bit that interests me.

 

Some of our current Councillors do not seem to care much for the people of St Helena.  ExCo, particularly, keeps making decisions that are not in the best interests of Saints, presumably blindly following what the Governor, representing the FCDO, tells them to do.

 

Do we want to give these people a pay rise and “more responsibility”?  I suggest not.

 

If we are going to have a new system of Government, I suggest we also need some new councillors to make it work.  In fact, quite a lot of new councillors.  People capable of understanding the complexities of the decisions they are required to take, not just blindly following what the seconded advisors tell them.  People who, in short, put the interests of Saints first.

 

I hope at the August election we will see lots of new names on the ballot paper.  People with the skills to actually do the new jobs they will be given.  People who will stand up for the interests of the island as a whole, not just their own.  And I, for one, will be delighted to vote for them.

 

I cannot see myself voting for ANY of the current ExCo, who have – in my opinion – consistently sold out the rest of us for the proverbial 30 pieces of silver.

John Turner: no votes

 

After careful consideration I have decided that I will not be voting in the sham “Consultative Poll” on 17^th March.

 

This is a subject on which everyone must follow their own judgement, but my reasons are:

 

1) obody’s vote will make any difference to the outcome.  The Civil Service has already reorganised itself around the “Ministerial Form of Government”.  If people don’t vote for that, do they expect us to believe they are going to un-reorganise?  However people vote, we are clearly going to get the Ministerial Form of Government.  If the conclusion has already been decided why should I bother turning out to vote?

2.       The Ministerial Form of Government is what the FCDO wants.  They have wanted it since 2004 (it was rejected in 2005 by a completely valid poll).  The FCDO funds St Helena and expects to get what it wants, so has charged the Governor with the task to “make it happen”, whatever Saints want.  This is why the whole process to date has been undemocratic and maybe even unconstitutional: selecting Professor Sarkin, a friend of the Governor, to “study Governance” and recommend the required solution; ignoring the inconvenient recommendations of the Sarkin Report; the governor’s personally selected “Governance Commission”; failure to answer any questions about costs during the “consultations”; and now a “poll” with no stated process for deciding if the verdict is meaningful.  The whole process has been fixed from start to finish to deliver the desired result.

3.       SHG only accepts public opinion when it suits it.  As quoted in yesterday’s Sentinel (p8), SHG accepted fewer than 100 positive views expressed in the Governance Consultations as “public opinion”, but ignored the fishing petition (1,191 signatures).  They clearly don’t actually care what the public thinks.

4.       When they declare that the Ministerial Form of Government is the “will of the people” (which they will, whatever the results of the poll), a few Saints will get richer and the ordinary Saints will either see no change, or will lose their jobs to pay for the new system, the costs of which have not been disclosed (it has been asked many times; it hasn’t answered).  I will not be party to this travesty of democracy.

If you do intend to vote I’d be interested to read your reasoning below.

 

So I turned the radio on a bit early for the 7pm World Service news (http://sainthelenaisland.info/samsr2.htm) and caught the end of "Sports Orgy" - or whatever they call the programme that takes over the BBC for the whole of Sunday afternoon.  There was a chap - a footballist I understand - explaining that his team - a leading one, it seems - had lost because "we couldn't find the goal".

 

Now I know rather less about football than could be inscribed on a postage stamp with a marker pen, but I vaguely remember a few things from school days.  Maybe things have changed, but I remember the goal was a big thing with white posts and a net at the back.  Unless you are very severely sight impaired I can't imagine how you could fail to find it?  And surely the other team would give you a clue - if you're going in the right direction they'll try to stop you and if you're not they won't, so even if you can't see this substantial white-painted structure you could at least work out roughly in which direction it is and proceed in the hope that it will eventually come into view.

 

I thought they paid footballists a lot of money and I would have expected that, to earn this bountiful income, the ability to locate the goal would be rather expected.

Call me "negative" if you wish.....

 

During his term Governor Mark Capes adopted a novel way to deal with dissent about his policies.  He dismissed the people who pointed out the obvious flaws by saying they were “just being negative”.

 

It was a moderately successful tactic.  Nobody wants to be thought of as negative.  It did succeed in silencing a few people.  The problem was that what the people were saying WASN’T negative.  They were actually being positive, but their positive vision for the future of St Helena was simply different from his.

 

Donald Trump, while he was still allowed onto Twitter, often did the same.  Anybody who said his policies were racist, divisive, xenophobic, irrational or downright stupid (and sometimes all of these) was “just being negative”.

 

I’ve noticed that this has now spread to groups on Facebook.  Anyone who posts something criticising a policy adopted by the St Helena Government, saying for example that the policy is unlikely to work, or is not factually based, finds comments on their post accusing them of negativity.  It’s almost at the point where everything the St Helena Government does is automatically classed by these people as positive and any suggestion that it might not be 100% correct is “being negative”.

 

It would be nice to believe that the St Helena Government is perfect, and that everything it does is the best possible thing it could have done in the circumstances.  A government that cares for its people and always seeks solutions that provide the maximum benefit for all of its people sounds wonderful.  Perhaps at some point in history such a government did exist for a time, though I must say I can’t remember ever having heard about it.  But I believe you could fit all the people who think that is true of the current St Helena Government into a very small room – possibly a telephone box.

 

I will not dispute that St Helena Government strives to do its best.  The people that work for St Helena Government mostly try hard to do their jobs well.  But somehow it appears that the whole is often less than the sum of the parts.  Put simply – St Helena Government sometimes mucks it up.  Not always.  Maybe not even the majority of the time, but sometimes.  I do not need to give examples because anybody who has lived here for more than a few months will know this to be true.

 

What is wrong with pointing this out?

 

If you go to a business and receive poor service you should complain.  You owe it to the business to do so.  If nobody complains, how can they know they’re not doing it right?  A well-made complaint tells the business what it did wrong and how it should have done it better.  It helps them to improve.

 

Similarly, if nobody points out a flaw in what the St Helena Government is doing, how can it know it isn’t meeting the needs of all its people?  It certainly won’t find out from an occasional Survey Monkey with carefully constructed questions that make it impossible to point out any real problems.

 

Complaint is good.  Complaint is POSITIVE.  Silencing complaint is the prerogative of despots and repressive regimes.  Complaint should be encouraged.

 

So when the St Helena Government proudly announces that it has received “100 doses” of Covid-19 vaccine – enough for about 1% of the population – and when somebody points out that this will have very little effect in protecting the island from the virus (herd immunity requires vaccination for more than 70%) there is a POSITIVE point being made.  The point is that it is not yet time to weaken our quarantine arrangements, and this is a point that needs to be made.

 

Speaking personally it doesn’t bother me when people accuse me of “being negative”.  Mark Capes said it of me too, and look what happened to him[1].  I have the hide of a rhinoceros and have no intention of bursting into tears because somebody wasn’t nice to me.  Maybe it’s a very-much scaled down variation of what journalists often say: “If someone isn’t trying to kill you, you really aren’t doing your job.”

 

Call me "negative" if you wish.  All it tells me is that you can’t think of an argument to refute what I’m saying, and I’m totally happy with that.

 

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[1] For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not taking credit for his downfall.  He achieved that all on his own with almost no help from me.

Open letter to ExCo/IEG: Please cancel the January flight

I beg you to call off the January 11^th flight. The risks are too high and there are no rewards.

If you consult the BBC or any other reliable source it can be clearly seen that Covid-19 is out-of-control in the UK.  The new more-dangerous variant is causing a spike in infections and deaths.  The NHS is struggling to cope.  But at least UK residents have experience of operating social distancing and lockdowns.  On St Helena we have no such experience, and a social distanced environment is completely alien to island culture.  If Covid-19 reaches the island we will not have time to learn.  The virus it will spread even more rapidly than it is doing in the UK.  Our high proportion of vulnerable people will be at risk.

Everybody knows the island’s medical provisions are limited and if Covid-19 spreads here our health service would struggle to cope.  Everybody involved would make heroic efforts to contain it and reduce the death-toll, but they are under-resourced and would quickly be overwhelmed.

And our defences against Covid-19 have been reduced.   The chances that somebody arriving with the virus will be successfully detected and isolated from the community are lower now than they were.

Given all of the above, to justify the extreme risk of running the January flight there would need to be an overwhelming good reason to do so.  What is that reason?  There is nobody on that flight who is essential to island life.  Yes, cancelling the flight would be inconvenient for the people scheduled to be on it, but not as inconvenient as it would be for the island to introduce Covid-19 here.

The costs are great; the benefits are negligible.  I beg you: please cancel the January flight.

Good men, doing nothing

 Some people ask why I comment on "wrongs" that don't directly affect me. The answer's here ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

Something wrong still deserves comment, whether you are personally affected or not.

"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill) -  usually presented as "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing".