A Week in Politics

Attending the Royal Wedding today (CHECK DAY!!!!!!!!) are: the Chief Ministers of Montserrat (pop. 4,655), Gibraltar (pop. 29,431) and the Falkland Islands (pop. 3,140); and a politician from St Helena (pop. 4,255).

Not attending the Royal Wedding: the Chief Minister of Jersey (pop. 92,500 and rising).

The reason, according to those in the know, was that we’ve got a Lieutenant-Governor and those other places don’t.

And that’s fine, except that the Lieutenant-Governor is the Queen’s representative in Jersey. If you look very closely, the order of those words slightly gives the game away doesn’t it?

He’s not at the Royal wedding representing Jersey, he’s there representing the Queen. Now I’m not entirely sure about this, but I think she’s probably going herself.

Doesn’t that seem a little redundant? And what happens if they bump into each other? Do they have to share a pew?

More to the point, having gone to the trouble of electing a Chief Minister to represent us, wouldn’t it make sense to have him actually represent us?

Here’s something you didn’t think you’d see today: a reasonable sentiment about immigration, neatly expressed.

‘I don’t mind, Jersey is a great place to live. My mum came here from somewhere else, and so did my wife.’ – the words of Deputy Paul Le Claire, who revealed last week that immigration had been running at more or less twice the States-approved target for the last five years.

It’s a sentiment that’s hard to argue with.

It’s also hard for politicians of any hue to hold the line that we’ve been too lax on immigration, when the cohort of States Members who came off the boat rather than out of the Maternity Hospital includes prominent Members from either side of the House: Senators Freddie Cohen, Alan Breckon, and Alan Maclean; as well as Deputies Judy Martin, Geoff Southern and Ian Gorst.

But it was the first sentence – the one about Jersey being a great place to live – that came to mind 48 hours later, when a story appeared on the front page about new draft maternity leave laws.

If you missed them, the proposals entitle new mothers to two weeks off paid leave, and 16 weeks unpaid.

You may want to read that last sentence again, and reflect on how easy it is for most people to take four months off without pay.

You don’t even have to look at the UK rules on maternity leave (26 weeks paid, 26 unpaid) to know that the Jersey proposals are an absolute disgrace. I’ve known colleagues – and I suspect everyone knows people – who have had more paid leave than that to get over a sports injury.

The message from the States: we’re happier to help out young blokes who knacker their knees playing football than to help out young women bringing children into the world.

None of this is to say that the proposals – or the fact that at this point in the year 2011 there is no statutory maternity leave provision – mean that Jersey is not a great place to live. It is.

But it’s the fact that it is – that the sun shines, that the water sparkles, that the crime is low and the pay is high, and that the Blue Note exists – that breeds a kind of complacency.

And that complacency allows things like questionable school results, an incinerator spewing unhealthy smoke in defiance of EU standards, GPs having to be bailed out from contributory funds to meet basic standards and insults to sanity like the maternity leave proposals to just slip through the net.

Every community has problems, and no service is perfect all the time. It would be ridiculous to think that it could be. Those things aren’t the problem – the complacency is.

A reader calls to pose a question: given that the four Senators elected in October will serve a three-year term, and given that there’s no ‘safety net’ allowing them to stand again, why would any sitting Deputy or Constables go for promotion to the Senatorial bench when it means taking a big chance for no reward?

It’s a fair question – and the only answer is that it doesn’t really matter, because the Electoral Commission will sort it out over the next year or so.

More to the point, the last few Senatorial elections have seen someone come out of nowhere to arrive pretty high up the list: former Citizens’ Advice Bureau head Francis Le Gresley in 2010, former Magistrate Ian Le Marquand in 2008, former Senator Dick Shenton’s son Ben in 2005, and the late Advocate Christopher Lakeman in 1999. Who’s it going to be this year?