Diddle Deemail

The Diddle Dee Telegraph still works – some would say more effectively than Cable and Wireless - and occasionally brings good news from unexpected quarters. The Beak was cheered last week to discover by this medium that Sharon Halford, as one of the elected members for the Camp in this Council is now emailing all her constituents with regular reports on what she is doing on their behalf. Whether or not Sharon’s reports make riveting reading, the fact that she is sending them is a praiseworthy acknowledgement of her accountability to the people who put her where she is and, incidentally, dispels the belief held by at least one member of the previous assembly that such communication is “elitist.”

For too long, it seems, government has been constructing a hierarchical heap, presiding like a spider over a web of bureaucracy and regulation, more appropriate to the UK than to the Falklands. Let us hope piously that Sharon’s initiative is a sign that the tide is turning and is an acknowledgement that we are still living in a country where it is possible to deal directly with people rather than ciphers. Our population’s small size, at a tenth of the capacity of some football stadiums elsewhere, is often represented as a stumbling block to progress and development. This it may be in some respects, but it is also part of what makes this a community and not a vast multitude of strangers.

There has been no recent mention of the promised and long-awaited discussion forum, which was to have been part of the FIG web-site, but if the Penguin News report on last week’s public meeting is to be believed, and The Beak sees no reason not to, then it would appear that some members of our fledgling Council (FLEDGCO?) are beginning to take telecommunications seriously.

Nothing less was expected from “Cherno” Bill Luxton, whose seismic rumblings from foreign parts via the PN letters page have often touched upon the subject with the delicacy and tact we have come to expect from him. Nor has Dick Sawle made any secret of his feelings about what he considers to be the inadequacies and pocket-picking tendencies of our monopolistic internet service provider. At the public meeting Bill stated that getting out of what he described as our present “stone age” with regard to communications was “one of the most important things that’s facing this assembly” and Dick offered the opinion that if he and his colleagues did not act upon the Doyle report then they should be sacked.

A less positive chord was struck by Cllr Edwards the Elder with his rather strange outburst about "bloody email" during his motion for adjournment speech on Friday. Amusing though it was to hear him get a verbal slapping from the Speaker of the House, it is worrying that he regards what is arguably one of the single greatest leaps in communication since Mr Bell hollered "Watson, come here!" as a scourge which must be stamped out.

Improvement in telecommunications is not just a matter of allowing even more Westers to communicate via Facebook, should that be possible. Good and affordable islands-wide connectivity is of vital importance for there to be any hopes of commercial development, particularly in Camp, and councillors need to embrace every facet of modern communications if we are to have any hope of progressing past the antediluvian stage we are in now.