Jackie Weaver encourages young people to get involved in Guernsey politics

Friday 17 September 2021

You don’t have to change the world, just work on your local environment, says Jackie Weaver, in a call to younger people to use their passion to improve the community they live in.

The internet sensation - fresh from Handforth Parish Council fame - told Express of the importance of making a difference at a ground roots level during a sit-down interview.

The Chief Officer of the Cheshire Association of Local Councils and star of the viral parish meeting was in Guernsey this week to deliver a talk entitled 'You DO have the Authority' at the Performing Arts Centre as part of her book launch. 

She said parish councils in the UK are not dissimilar from the Bailiwick’s Douzaines, and encouraged younger people to get involved with island politics to influence local matters. 

“The important thing is not the council itself, but want you want to use it for,” said Jackie. 

"If we're going to attract younger people, we're never going to do it on the basis of somebody waking up one morning and going, 'I need to be a councillor. Suddenly, I just kind of feel I've got to do it now.' 

A delightful lunch with .@jackieweaver who inspired a new movement to reclaim authority and ignite interest in local politics.

- a few tickets left to her talk tomorrow, don’t miss out https://t.co/RDy1fjooyB@womenpubliclife https://t.co/oKKkaQdum9 pic.twitter.com/6NMbgwkWe1

— Sasha Kazantseva-Miller (@sashakmiller) September 14, 2021

"What you will do is find somebody wakes up and says, 'it's about time we did something about that, it's ridiculous that that hedge is overgrown, surely somebody can see that we need to do this?'

And if that's you, then that's the kind of person that we need to get involved in our local councils, because then they become the tool that they're intended to be for making changes locally.

Jackie added that anyone with ideas should collaborate with people who are open to change, then “let the change speak for itself.”  

Watch: Highlights of the infamous Handforth Council Meeting.

Having infamously been told by one angry Handforth councillor to ‘read the standing orders, read them and understand them’, Jackie underlined the importance of reading the rules and understanding them, in order to make them work for everyone. 

Jackie explained that Aled, or as we know him: Aled’s iPad, was actually making an excellent point, if only he’d delivered it differently.

“Because you tar everything with the same brush, you don’t learn the basics and you’re constantly back-footed," she said of his approach to the meeting, which Jackie was brought in by the council's monitoring officer to oversee. 

“We need to follow the rules, but we need to learn how to make rules work for us.”