I'm not entireely sure that Francis Le Gresley's Senatorial success is a victory for the 'establishment'

While it may clearly be interpreted as a rejection of the sort of party politics as espoused by Deputy Geoff Southern and his supporters, I’m less certain that Francis Le Gresley’s success is a victory for the so-called establishment.

I may be wrong, but my recollection of the often critical public pronouncements over the years from him wearing his Citizens Advice Bureau hat suggests that if there is such a thing as the establishment – and few people can come up with cogent enough arguments to convince me of it – then he is as likely or not to be a thorn in its side.

I know nothing of the new Senator other than what I’ve read, but I reckon that on issues where there is an element of social justice under discussion, then ministers who believe that they can automatically count on his vote may well be in for a nasty surprise.

If there’s one thing this now largely discredited system of ministerial government has conveyed to the public, it is that they often – not always, but often – operate as if there is an air of complacency about them. Perhaps Senator Le Gresley will rattle a few cages over the next 18 months or so. I certainly hope so, because Alan Breckon can do with a bit of help on the Senators’ benches.

By the way, and while I’m on the subject, I sometimes read BBC Television’s Teletext pages and I am getting tired of seeing – in stories reporting on the recent election — that the 12 Senators ‘make up the States Assembly’. Perhaps someone should tell them that there are also 29 Deputies and 12 Constables in the Big House as well. As well as being irritating, it’s also lazy not to get it right.

As a sort of addendum to the election, I don’t know whether it’s true, but down at the pub the other evening I heard that when one of the Jurats – acting in his capacity as Autorisé (I refuse the Anglicise the term into ‘returning officer’) – made a pre-election visit to check arrangements at a country parish hall, he found that because of work being carried out on the premises, there was no water supply, thus forcing parish staff to use toilet facilities at the nearby pub.

Needless to say, once he had given his ‘no water, no election here’ ruling, the precious commodity arrived, as they say, at the turn of a tap, or perhaps even the flush of a toilet.

As an aside to that – I’m getting a bit sidetracked here, but that’s probably old age – I also heard that new Jurats are obliged to buy their own robes after their election. If that is true, and bearing in mind the time and expertise they give the community for little in the way of reward, it’s time it stopped.

The robes should be provided to them rather than purchased (and they are not cheap, by any means) by them.

COMMENT on court cases is rarely a part of this column, principally because no matter how detailed newspaper reports of such happenings are, it is often unwise for people like me to offer observations on someone else’s perhaps incomplete account.

I break that self-imposed rule this week simply to register my revulsion – shared, I would hope, by everyone who views such offences with abhorrence – at the plea by convicted paedophile Leonard Vandenborn’s lawyer to reduce the 12-year prison sentence asked for by the prosecution and thankfully imposed by the Royal Court.

Vandenborn had been convicted, readers will recall, of what the trial judge described as terrifying and repulsive sexual attacks against children – 12 counts of indecent assault and one of rape over a period of 12 years, starting when both victims were young.

I quote from the report in this newspaper of the lawyers mitigating plea: ‘He is going to be deprived of the joy of the early and formative years of his daughters’ lives. By the time he is released, he will not be in a condition to play an active role in their teenage years.’

Given the nature of the offences and the age of his two victims when the offences were committed, I find it difficult to imagine a more utterly crass and wholly inappropriate plea against this revolting man getting his just desserts.

In the same context, I also offer the observation that with his track record, perhaps that’s just as well. Thankfully, the Royal Court ignored the plea and Vandenborn will serve his time, although my understanding is that he will be released some considerable time before anything like 12 years have elapsed. Not a happy state of affairs, in my view, but that’s the way ‘punishment’ is applied these days.

Given that he has a previous conviction for indecent assault and has charges of child pornography against him which have been allowed to remain on file, it’s a pity that these were not pursued and the sentence imposed – if he was convicted – made to run consecutive to that imposed last week.

It is also appropriate to praise his two victims who, in a court room full of strangers and with him sitting just yards away, were made to relive their ordeals solely because Vandenborn chose to deny the allegations. Their courage was of the highest order.

AND finally … Can it really be true that because passengers are usually bussed on and off the Commodore Clipper, there was no other way of getting them off until they had spent over 24 hours on the vessel after a fire broke out on the vehicle deck? Not a very satisfactory (or safe) state of affairs, I’d have thought.