Swedish, your raise some good points, I won’t cover them all as I don’t know the numbers.
Homogenous,, no offence taken. as we are Island people I understand your thinking process. Guernsey sits in the Bay of St Malo, 40 odd miles from France, 70 odd from England. Many families have French surnames, most of the streets are French named, the laws were originally written in French and there is a Guernsey patois (a form of french) that is spoken and can, on occasions, still be heard today. They are going to reintroduce it into the school curriculum in the near future. There was also a very heavy Irish contingent many years back and obviously many English, Scottish and Welsh have made this rock their home.
Times change though, and now many family names are no longer French, they are East European, Portuguese etc
We indeed have many inhabitants that come from across Europe, many many Portuguese, Latvian, many Polish, a few Russian, many Dutch and German and then of course there a few from as far flung as Australia and Newzealand and the America’s, oh, and let us not forget Africa. and Asia. Since the 1980’s it has become quite diverse in its population. This diversity has occurred mainly to the finance industry, the Islands legal system and in no short part due to very few locals wantImg to work in hospitality. Many of these hospitality workers do work on zero contract hours, many other are paid the minimum wage, so are victims of this pandemic. They have been very well supported by government and by that I mean very well supported.
So I guess, on a smaller scale, we are not so different. I think the one thing we all agree on is we all disagree and that is good for debate. I did follow with some interest Sweden’s handling of the virus as it was brought to my attention through local media. Looking at it it has worked for your country in comparison to other jurisdictions. One thing we should all be aware of is every country is recording data in a differed way.
An interesting article in the FT a week or so ago by Wolfgang Muncheau? A warning to us all perhaps re another lockdown and which supports your mindset I believe. Unfortunately I can’t make the link work
Sorry for the history lesson and keep safe.
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