Just to spread this as widely as possible. I made a bet with Frank Walker, by email, while the incinerator debate was going the wrong way.
The JEP printed my letter mentioning the bet on Saturday 12th mostly untouched apart from a couple of slight "tidy-up" edits.
This is what I wrote: "I have offered Frank Walker, as Chief Minister, this bet: “I bet you £10 that the incinerator will be seen as a disastrous decision within 10 years max (July 9th 2018). Deal?” He has graciously accepted with the single word “deal!!!” Watch this space…!
Actually, I think it will be clear within five years who is going to win - and I mean from today - so that means only a couple of years after the incinerator is commissioned...
The whole affair was like a slow motion re-run of the Harcourt legal case fiasco inasmuch as the Ministers and most politicians accepted what they had been told by their advisers despite energetic efforts by outsiders, including yours truly, to set them straight. Ironically, one of the clearest speeches against the proposition was from Deputy Gerard Baudains, who had clearly done some independent homework just like his Internet discovery of the pending Harcourt Las Vegas legal case which was ignored by the "Establishment," before the Waterfront vote, to their great embarrassment later on. They never seem to learn because, only a couple of weeks later, 30 of them made the very same error - the only difference being that it will take a few years for it to become obvious how we have just wasted at least £106 million.
