Flights of fancy from the so-called experts

I got that feeling the other evening when I read the letter from Michael Dryden, who happens to be chairman of the ornithology section of La Société Jersiaise. As such, he probably knows more about birds – the feathered variety, although for all I know he might well be an expert on the others also – than the average bloke you bump into while digging bait.

As an aside, and to keep Herself and her like-minded mates sweet, she always says that the only reason women are called birds is because they pick up worms. But I digress.

Anyhow, Mr Dryden wrote to suggest – actually, he didn’t suggest, he unequivocally stated – that the experts at the Airport were well wide of the mark when they decided to support the idea of filling in the pond at Ossie Simon’s sandpit down near the Five Mile Road in order to reduce bird strikes on aircraft using the Airport.

When I read something like that I always get this sinking feeling in my stomach that perhaps the writer is so anxious to pursue – or indeed defend – his point of view that he can lose sight of the reason why that which he is criticising has either been done or, as in this case, is being mooted.

However, that certainly doesn’t appear to be the case with Mr Dryden. Not only does he know a fair amount about our feathered friends – indeed, a regular little Mike Stentiford if I can lob in the name of this small rock’s best known twitcher – but he also seems to know quite a lot about the potential for danger when a natural flier gets too close to the man-made variety.

You see, Mr Dryden worked at the Airport for almost a quarter of a century. Not only that, his work was in the very department directly concerned with bird strikes and their effect on aircraft. In all that time, he cannot recall a single incident of a bird strike involving wildfowl – the species, I presume, which tends to gravitate towards Ossie’s sandpit and the nearby St Ouen’s Pond.

Furthermore, the main species involved in the bird strikes he can recall have no direct reliance on the sandpit. As he said by way of an example, herring gulls would be a feature of the Island whether the sandpit existed or not. Indeed, some of the ones I see are more likely to be town dwellers, thanks to the idiots who sit in the Square (and elsewhere) feeding the damn things.

Much as I oppose more legislation in an Island weighed down by largely useless statute, if there’s one thing that lot in the Big House could do to get themselves some Brownie points, it would be to make feeding what are fast becoming dangerous vermin unlawful.

All that said, I reckon that the score so far is one-nil to Mr Dryden. It will be interesting to see what the people at the Airport (and now that they’re shredding good money it will be years before it finally belongs to us) say about that.

ACCORDING to one of our resident experts, that lot in the Big House have failed so miserably to clean the gutters, unblock the drains and keep everything shipshape and Bristol fashion with the vast property portfolio that they are supposed to be looking after for us that it will cost £100 million to put right what amounts to years of penny-pinching neglect.

Well, as my old granny might have said, had she been here, it’s not much if you say it quickly. What a complete and utter shambles – 24-carat at the very least. Mind you, there’s nothing new about that. Does anyone remember how what was Martins Bank (now Morier House at the top of Halkett Place) when I was a lad was allowed to rot until it had to be pulled down rather than adapted for use?

And how many properties round the Dumaresq Street area are in public ownership and should have been put to good use – or flogged off – decades ago? I’m sure that those who study these things can come up with scores more if they put their minds to it. That actually might be a useful Freedom of Information exercise – finding out precisely what we (rather than that lot) actually own.

All this really begs the question of why all these places are actually in public ownership. After all, many of them could easily be sold off without hindering the effectiveness and efficiency (in my dreams) of the public sector’s hired help one little bit.

I haven’t been around the Gas Works car park lately, because it makes me weep when I look across at those once useful buildings a benefactor left to the people of this Island, and I daresay they are still in the same dilapidated state as they were the last time I saw them. If I was married to the Big House I’d almost certainly be able to get a divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty just on the issue of their wilful neglect of the family property.

It really does need someone bold enough in there to get the blue pencil out and order the sale of all the property that is not needed. Not only will that boost the rainy day fund, it will also make sure that the current budget for maintenance is used for something more than papering over cracks.

AND finally . . . Let’s get it right once and for all. Terry Le Sueur did not impose GST on anyone. Our elected representatives did.