COMMENT: The road to a trade is lined with sky hooks and striped paint pranks

I’ve known the lad – he’s not a lad, actually, but a family man with teenage children – since he was in short pants and in fact, along with his dad, claim whatever credit there is for encouraging him to set up in business on his own once he learned his trade and got as far as he could as an employee.

Since then he’s built up a nice little business, employing eight people, and he’s recently taken on a youngster – something which he said he now regrets considerably because of what he described as the politically correct hassle he’s just been through.

It transpired that, in what everyone around the pub table agreed was time-honoured fashion, the lad was sent out on an errand by a couple of the older employees who later said it was both a bit of a laugh and part of the learning experience of earning one’s living.

Unfortunately, the teenager’s mother didn’t see the funny side of her little darling being sent out to buy a tin of red and white striped paint for a barber’s pole and marched down to the business demanding not only to see the boss but also that the two pranksters be disciplined, otherwise all manner of tribunals were going to become involved.

He told us that he took some advice and decided that, as he didn’t want to get involved in a lengthy battle royal with the kid’s mother, he would reprimand the two pranksters and, in football disciplinary parlance, ‘warn them as to their future conduct’.

Following a general discussion around the table, he now intends writing to the youngster’s mother telling her that, as her son will be 20 years of age next month, he’s a big boy now and should be well able to fend for himself at work without the need for her or anyone else to fight his battles. He also intends to tell her, ever so politely, of course, that he would prefer it if she stayed away from her son’s place of work.

The serious business of the evening over, there followed a series of recollections about the sort of jokes we’d been the victim of during our first few months of employment. For my own part, quite apart from the tin of striped paint – which virtually everyone had been subjected to – I’d been despatched by older colleagues, including the foreman, for among other things, a set of sky hooks, a three-inch skirting ladder, and a jar of elbow grease.

Moreover, it usually followed that the experienced hands at the retail outlets were well versed in what was going on and, having told you that the items were out of stock, would direct you somewhere else. In my case, with the skirting ladder, I must have been sent to at least eight different places. I know I started off at The Iron Stores and for some obscure reason ended up at Mr Illien’s bike shop in Charing Cross, but can’t member the bits in between. Happy days and no one laughed louder than my mother when I told her about it.

I wonder if it’s crossed the minds of anyone associated with the Big House – and their army of spin doctors and nurses – to get a bit of favourable publicity following yet another case of assets deposited here by a crook being seized and subsequently returned to their rightful owner.

As Attorney-General Robert MacRae rightly said, the sum involved in this latest case was relatively modest ‘but it again demonstrates Jersey’s ability to combat international money laundering’. While it’s useful and informative to release details to the local media, I hope someone had the sense to send press releases to the UK media also. After all, we’ve very many more critics over there than we have here.

And finally… I see we are set for yet another lengthy session in the Big House, where those pulling down nine hundred notes a week in their little brown envelopes will be debating themselves yet again – for the umpteenth time since the last election. This time they will be deciding on the future of Prime Minister Ian Gorst. As Len Norman apparently doesn’t want the job, perhaps it may be ‘better the devil you know’.

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