Yesterday we wrote about the new race discrimination law in the Channel Island of Jersey.  Today, we note a report from the BBC News Guernsey that the Channel Island of Guernsey is “years away” from pasing such a law because it has decided to “prioritise disability discrimination laws.”

Huh?   Passage of an anti-discrimination law — decades after other countries have done so — is so complex or time-consuming in Guernsey that only one can be passed every number of years?

In the clear and unambiguous words of  the island’s chief minister, “a law in itself isn’t going to be the panacea that changes attitudes.  We must be realistic about this; we’ve all got a responsibility that when we come across this we need to challenge it in a civil way and feel empowered to do so.”

That settles that!   Anyone listening?

To clear up any other misunderstandings, the minister stated that “It’s a priority, but at the moment not our number one priority. Generally speaking Guernsey is a civil society and people realise they can’t act in that way.  But we know there are incidents where that does happen and as a result we will in the end need to legislate… but we have to cut our cloth effectively.”

Huh?

One local advocate “said she had experienced racism first-hand with a shop assistant refusing to serve or even acknowledge her due to the colour of her skin when she arrived in 10 years ago. She said attitudes had changed during that time, but needed to change further and this needed to be backed up by the law.”

Maybe someday …