How the phone fat cats can have their cake and eat it

Here we have one States-owned utility making a fifth of its workforce redundant, and another saying that it wants a slice of a cake that, because people say competition is wonderful no matter what, already seems to be cut into bite-sized pieces.

Furthermore, with the recession biting as it is, not to mention the increasing regularity of finance industry shake-ups, the odds are that for one reason or another the cake is going to get markedly smaller in any case.

It’s all well and good for people to say that competition is absolutely wonderful, but surely that view cannot be right when the shareholders of the two competitors are exactly the same people.

Whatever Jersey Post manage to prise away from Jersey Telecoms in the way of profit is simply money being prised away from taxpayers in order to be given back to taxpayers – a meaningless exercise, in this simple country boy’s view, unless of course the all-important issue of the fat-cat bonuses is placed in the equation.

I know things have moved on a bit since Noah was a boy, but I doubt that a futile exercise (leaving out the question of bonuses for the time being) such as this would even have been contemplated in the days when the Telecommunications Board and the Committee for Postal Administration existed and people directly accountable to the public at election time had control.

Knowing how easy it is for people to play silly so-and-so’s in situations like this, what odds would I get against some nitpicking jobsworth sticking his or her oar in and deciding that the postal service must open itself up to more competition – and Jersey Telecoms then starting a delivery service?

I went to the quack the other day, just for a bit of a check-up and not, as my mate put it, to collect three months’ worth of prescriptions redeemable at Dunell’s at Beaumont for some particularly fine samples of calvados. (Actually, there’s a thought. I wonder if I can make that an election issue next time around?)

Anyway, while he was doing the blood pressure bit he asked me how I felt about having a swine flu jab. We joked for a minute or so about the ability of calvados to kill off most things but agreed eventually that the particular variety of germ to which he referred would probably be unaffected by distilled apple juice.

My considered opinion, as I told him, was identical to my view to Herself years ago when we were queueing up on the Albert Pier on our way to France to examine the calvados trees and a gale and a half was forecast.

‘If the Solidor’s skipper is happy to sail, then I’m happy to be on board because he’s the expert and I’m not,’ I said. ‘If you are recommending that I should have the swine flu jab, then you’re the expert and I’m not so let’s be having it while I’ve still got my sleeve rolled up and before I change my mind.’

Before I get criticised for relying on ‘experts’, can I say that I am well aware that there may be an element of risk involved in taking my doctor’s advice and agreeing to the jab, but for heaven’s sake, he knows more about these things – and about my state of health, if it comes to that – than I do. And besides, I knew damned well that there was an element of risk each time I drove on to the Solidor, even when it was flat calm, but if the skipper was happy to go, so was I.

Thankfully, and despite all people say about this place, we can still make a choice about things such as this, although I hope too many people are not influenced by some of the more outrageous things they read or hear about this swine flu and the vaccine.

One of the online comments I read stated that the vaccine contained mercury ‘and that is one of the most toxic chemicals known to man’, while another, about the same element, said: ‘Mercury is poison no matter how you try and dress it up.’

I am trying really hard not to give a wholly non-expert assessment of the likely mental age of the authors of those two observations, and will limit my comment to not having to take my shoes and socks off (although that is insulting to a couple of nine-year-olds I know), but it all reminds me of the late Senator J J Le Marquand many years ago. That lot in the Big House were debating whether or not to put fluoride in the mains water supply and J J, bless his heart (although not on this occasion), managed to persuade a majority of them that it was ten times more poisonous than arsenic, kicking that particular idea so far into touch that they are still looking for the ball.

And all that was despite the fact that several of his political colleagues pointed out that depending on the concentration of the chemical, much the same could be said of the tannin in tea.

The end result, of course, was to make entry into the profession of dentistry in Jersey very nearly as lucrative as becoming a lawyer. And before the dentists put pen to paper, can I stress that I only said ‘very nearly as lucrative’.

AND finally … While some people may well be pleased (although it’s hard to imagine who) that there has been a ‘breakthrough’ in the case of the body of a baby found on a Weymouth beach 29 years ago, can someone please tell me what will be achieved even if the mother is found?