In the recent letter from the Ministry of Justice to Sark, the following words are worthy of particular attention: “I turn now to the important issue of the future shape and size of Chief Pleas … You may, for example, wish to consider a smaller Chief Pleas with more support from professionals to take the pressure off the conseillers in your young democracy.”
The first thing that irks is the author’s knowing and wilful misuse of the word “democracy”. There has not been an election on Sark for years – even though there was one held regularly before the so-called “democratic” reforms of 2008. The use of the word “democratic” in this context is typical Orwellian doublespeak: white is black, black is white, democratic is undemocratic, and undemocratic is democratic. There was a thriving democracy on Sark before 2008, there hasn’t been one since.
What the latest letter lays bare (and which was obvious to many of us before) is that the pressure from London to implement the 2008 reforms had nothing to do with human rights or democracy and everything to do with the desire by envious and jealous London bureaucrats to destroy what they see as a “nasty little tax haven on London’s door step” – regardless of how much pain and distress this would cause to those living on Sark.
How is the replacement of an assembly with 54 members representing 650 people, a range of diverse opinions, and regular elections, with one with 30 members, with no elections and no diversity of opinion, promoting democracy? And furthermore, how is advocating reducing the number of conseillers still further promoting democracy?
The true objective clearly being pursued by London is clearly the replacement of a friendly, free, democratic and thriving pre-2008 community on Sark with the bloated, expensive, over-taxed and dysfunctional bureaucratic autocracy more typical in the Western world today. Who do you think the word “professionals” in the MoJ letter refers to? Yes, you got it – over-paid, under-worked, under-qualified, obstructive, imperious, unhelpful jobsworths and bureaucrats.
To achieve, this, London is applying the so-called Fabian “salamy slice” method (the Fabian Society, for those who are not aware, is the closest living relative to what used to be called the Comintern or the Communist International – only that they employ more gradual and perfidious Gramscian methods to the Comintern’s more brutal and direct Stalinist ones). The first salamy slice: replace a popular, lightweight and successful government with an unpopular and meddling left wing one, as per the 2008 reform on some fake and false pretext like “human rights” and “democracy”. Knowing that the seats in the new assembly will not be filled – this was predictable, and predicted – at least by me – and this prediction was communicated to the envious and jealous jobsworths who are behind this swathe of “reforms”, so they cannot pretend they did not know it. Once this transpires, you reduce the number of seats in Chief Pleas, and suggest employing more jobsworths (“professionals” – the only thing these people are professional at is making your life a misery). The next step after that will be to increase taxes to pay the obstructive jobsworths a salary, so that you can pay your good money to these people to opress you even more, and the transition from a friendly, free, democratic thriving community to an oppressive, bloated, expensive, over-taxed and dysfunctional bureaucratic autocracy will be complete.