IoD Guernsey Annual Debate- My View

   My name is Emma Snell; I’m studying business studies, economics and maths. I attended the IoD Guernsey annual debate on Thursday 3^rd October 2013.

   Now when I arrived at the debate I had a rough idea of what it would be like. On stage the panellists sat at the front of the hall, just debating the issues between themselves.

   But actually the debate was completely opposite to that. Although the panellist did get their say, there was much more audience involvement especially from our table- the student table, on the issues that we believe strongly in. But the mains things that surprized me the most about the debate was the amount of people attending, the way you could text the answers to questions and the live twitter feed.

   The panel was made up of 7 business men: Chris Brock, Wayne Bulpitt, Stephen Lansdown, William Mason, Peter Mills, Robin Newbould and finally Steve Williams.  However if I’m going to talk about the panel then I have to mention the moderator Sarah Montague. Why? Because without her the debate wouldn’t have been as good as it was. Sarah was energetic, passionate and able to get the audience speaking and getting them involved in the debate. 

   Some of the topics where of interest to me and others where difficult to understand. Education and the broadband issue where of interest to me as well as my fellow students, as it is something that is affecting us daily. Why? Because the wifi allows us to do a lot of school work but also allows the teachers to show us things to help us understand the topic that we are doing. One of the biggest issues is the time taken for the laptops to login, and therefore teachers do avoid using them.

   However it wasn’t just that I believe the internet speed is an issue, the audience and panel did as well. This is because good internet connection is key to the success of the island in being competitive, and but businesses need it for the day to day running of their business.

   Education on the other hand was a spilt topic, this was because of the fact it was talking about Guernsey having its own university. Now I don’t want to go to university, but I know people that do. And I feel that most not all go for the experience, the partys and to be away from parents. However I know some that do go just for the degree. This is why it was a spilt topic; also there is the £6 million deficit to consider. But would a local university be worth the money? Okay it would help to keep students on the island and there they are more likely to go into jobs in Guernsey rather than the UK. But it would also encourage foreigners to come to Guernsey for the university. Therefore increasing the already overcrowded Guernsey. However when the audience were asked to vote for a Guernsey university or not the majority said yes.

   The evening was spilt into two halves; the first half was on the internal factors affecting Guernsey and the 4 in the panel were; Chris Brock, Wayne Bulpitt, Peter Mills and Robin Newbould. While the second half was the external factors affecting Guernsey with the remaining 3 panellists: Stephen Lansdown, William Mason, and Steve Williams.

   Personally I think that the first half of the evening was much better. This is mainly because there was much more audience involvement and more topics. But I felt that the panel where much better in the way they handled the topics and the way that they answered them. Whereas in the second half, quite a bit of the time the panel would say “no comment”, “Not enough knowledge on the subject” and “I’m unable to discuss this”. Okay the last point was a fair one. Some of the topics were sensitive, but by the panel not answering them it didn’t really allow the debate to get going, so it was very much stop and go. Whereas in the first half the topics got into depth with a lot of audience involvement and the panel sharing their views.

   Overall the evening was a great experience and I was glad to be a part of it. The panellist where good and were open to questions, and gave good points, they also reacted well to the topics and questions that they were posed. I personally think that some of the issues raised like the broadband connection will benefit our generation. This is because you have raised the problem before it can be sorted. However I do believe that other topics raised like the University in Guernsey and the deficit will not really benefit our generation, but hopefully future generations.