Dear David,
My answers below. Please confirm receipt.
1a/ The way it was done without proper public consultation was not right especially as surveys have shown the public are keen on the Island wide mandate. It might be acceptable to reduce the number of senators as part of a complete package put to and supported by a referendum.
1b/ Lobby the electoral commission once it is set up.
2/ Yes with 1 proviso. I would not be totally against allowing an agreed graduated tailing off of hours for people over say 65 where the employer hires a school leaver or unemployed person and gives them training to take up the vacancy that is coming up. I suspect in the case of many manual workers they will be genuinely on sick benefits before reaching retirement age.
3a/ Yes
3b/ It cannot do so sustainably.
4/ Bob Hill.
5/ Oh Yes.
6/ GST is a regressive tax and I believe in progressive taxation. I campaigned against its introduction because of that. I would rather have consumption taxes on inessential, planet and life damaging, and luxury items. There is no sign of that happening soon locally, so I support the next best option on the table - removal from essentials like food, domestic power and water.
We could have avoided increasing GST if we had found a way to tax non resident non finance companies. That imbalance with locally resident non finance companies is unfair. Correcting this is key to reducing or removing GST, unless we introduce the consumption taxes above.
7a/ The key rationale for ministerial government was to get faster decision making compared to the committee system. It does that, but at a very heavy price. We are close to what John Stuart Mill called the tyranny of the majority.
The current Chief Minister proposed political friends and allies for ministerial and assistant minister positions, thereby breaking the consensual approach the committee system allowed. The excluded members were consigned to scrutiny or oblivion so scrutiny has become a sort of opposition. That is not what scrutiny was intended to be.
7b/ Ministerial government will only work if there some mechanism to hold the COM to account. As Clothier pointed out ministerial government only works in a party oriented system. My preference short term, assuming Clothier is not going to be implemented in full, is to have constables take on leading the scrutiny role, but lose their vote on propositions in the house. That would stop scrutiny being seen as an opposition, and allow the factions in the house to organise politically in formal or informal parties.
8/ This is not an area I know well enough to give a definitive commitment, but it seems a reasonable proposition.
9/ Yes, there should be more work done on career development for local civil servants. J-cats in general were intend to enable short term skills to be brought in so locals could be trained to take on the role once the J-cat expires. It does not seem to be working like that. I proposed in 2008 that we charge fees for J-Cats and use that ring fenced fund to support the education and training of locals with the skills to take up those positions.
10/ The communications unit.
11/ Any social security contributions certainly have to be ring fenced to protect them from being raided by the Treasury. We clearly do have to plan for a future where people are expected to live longer. However I am unconvinced that increasing social security contribution is enough. Increasing building quality so people have to spend less on heating and changing the tariff structure of utilities so consumers of small quantities pay less per unit overall would also help. We also should do a great deal more on preventative health care to avert some of the projected problems.
regards,
Mark Forskitt
http://www.linkedin.com/in/MarkForskitt
http://st-ouennais.livejournal.com/