Eyes wide shut

Among the significant dates which may have passed unnoticed by readers of The Beak is February 2nd, which is celebrated in the USA and Canada as Groundhog Day, when the emergence from hibernation of a small beaver-like creature is taken as an excuse for all sorts of craziness. Since 1993 and the screening of a film called Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray as a TV reporter who gets stuck in time while reporting this event, the expression has come to mean something akin to a rather severe case of déjà vu.

Something of the sort may have happened recently at Penguin News, which in dewy-eyed enthusiasm for a British Antarctic Survey director’s suggestion that the Falklands should be marketed to tourist as a gateway to the Antarctic recently gushed, “A fresh pair of eyes is often all it takes to identify improvements or opportunities, which may otherwise have been obscured by the clouds of over-familiarity”.

While not wishing to pour the ice-cold water of reality on any proposal which might support the urgent need for the development of the Dockyard site, The curmudgeonly and cynical Beak, takes a different view of the BAS proposal.

The sad fact is that since Argentina banned charter flights from carrying expedition ship passengers to the Falklands, unless you belong to the British Antarctic Survey, have enough money to charter a yacht, or are a VIP on a jolly, getting to the Antarctic from the Stanley is well-nigh impossible and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise.

True, a very small percentage of the thousands of cruise ship passengers who spend a day in Stanley may be bound for the Antarctic, or have just returned from there. Those that go to the Antarctic on expedition ships, as opposed to sailing past in floating gin palaces, have already paid thousands of dollars for the privilege. They not only get to set foot on the White Continent, but also, on the way, those that are not laid low by sea sickness, are lectured on its every aspect, by world-class experts. The creation of an Antarctic interpretative centre in Stanley, while of educational value to school children and of possible interest to local residents, would make very little or no impact on tourist numbers.

Another sad, but inescapable fact is that for Antarctic tourists, who may or may not pass through the Falklands, the principal gateway to their icy dreams is Ushuaia in Southern Argentina, which has the advantage of being accessible by means of frequent daily flights and is also a whole day’s sailing nearer, a significant cost-reducing factor for ship operators in the current economic crisis.

If the Falklands had an opportunity to be a gateway to anywhere, it was to South Georgia, a magical island, stuffed full with wild life, history and romance, with which the Falklands has real historical connections. South Georgia is also a full day’s sailing nearer to Stanley than Ushuaia. Before Kirchner’s jackboot descended on charter flights some success seemed to be being achieved in the development of the Falklands as a departure point for South Georgia cruise ships making Stanley a real and economically very significant gateway.

A fresh pair of eyes may be all very well, but as is being discovered in many aspects of Falklands life, if these new eyes are blinkered, simply ignorant of the realities of our situation, or determined to ignore the lessons of past experience, they may as well be shut.

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