Ten out of ten to current prime minister Ian Gorst

It is a sum of money of Christmas Lottery winnings proportions and probably anywhere between ten and 20 times what most folk living here take home in a year so there’s little wonder people are getting a trifle het up about it, and about the absurd length of time it’s taken for such public expenditure to be disclosed to the public.

I have to say also that I’m not really that impressed with the explanation given by the boy Walker from up the road – who was de facto prime minister at the time – about the circumstances under which Mr Ogley’s quite extraordinary deal came about.

It is doubtful in the extreme that the Frank Walker I thought I knew would ever have entertained someone he personally employed trying on the ‘I’ve had another offer, what will you do to make me stay’ ploy, which is my interpretation of his account of the conversation he had with Mr Ogley, irrespective of the fact that I don’t doubt such an offer was made.

I’m not a mind reader – I leave that to the female of the species who think that such an attribute extends also to men and get irate when we gently explain that it doesn’t – so I have no idea what Mr Walker was thinking at that time. Personally, I’d have asked Mr Ogley if he thought that people in Jersey still lived in caves, wrote on the walls and drank calvados out of stone jam jars.

After that I would simply have said something along the lines of ‘don’t let me stand in your way’, and then waited to see how much weight Mr Ogley himself put on the desire he expressed for him and his family to stay in Jersey. But there again, it is not for a simple country boy like me to advise top businessmen and powerful politicians on how to handle people at the top of the hired help tree.

As I said earlier, all that I’ve read leaves me distinctly unimpressed, other than to say ten out of ten to current prime minister Ian Gorst and his cabinet, and a similar pat on the back to this newspaper for its dogged persistence in the face of a political and executive opposition which made an absolute mockery of the presumption of openness which was intended to be the basic tenet of freedom of information.

I can recall writing some time ago about job descriptions for a handful of jobs at the Gloucester Street Station of the Gravy Train – otherwise known as Health and Social Services – which I had come across on the internet after following up an advertisement in a national daily.

At the time I wrote – certainly with half a smile on my face – about reading that one of the ‘government health warnings’ given to prospective candidates reading one job description was that ‘the local press in Jersey are intrusive’, or words to that effect.

Given the shenanigans over this particular issue, I give thanks that the press are intrusive, even if that doesn’t always meet with the approval of our elected representatives and their extremely well paid hired help. And while everyone’s still talking about this, can someone please hook out the Treasury’s cheque stubs and tell us what all the other lottery winners walked away with.

BEING the simple country boy I often say I am, I hereby confess that I often skip the business pages in this newspaper and move swiftly to La Gazette to see what the parishes are up to before settling down on the hatched, matched and despatched columns, which usually involves me asking Herself why a certain name rings a bell with me.

However, the other day something did catch my eye and it was the warning by some tax expert or other for Jersey to tread very carefully when negotiating with the good old US of A on new tax laws.

I have precious little idea what the bloke was on about and if the truth is to be dragged out of me, I probably care even less, with the hugely important proviso that almost every time I read or hear something about the American nation and its often barbaric system of justice I smell a rat the size of Texas.

As individuals – and with only a small handful of exceptions – the American citizens I have met are polite, charming and genuinely interested in all that they cross the Atlantic to visit. But, as someone once said, as a nation they are everyone’s idea of a noisy, interfering, selfish bad neighbour.

As events with a British citizen showed only last week, deals on legislation with the United States appear to be heavily weighted in favour of the Yanks, rather than any form of the sort of natural justice experienced on this side of the pond.

Of course, that matters little to a nation which effectively kidnaps people in the Indian sub-continent, takes them halfway across the world, subjects them to a form of torture – and they accept that it is but argue that the end justifies the means – called water boarding, and keeps them locked up for years without a trial.

Whoever it was addressing a roomful of finance industry professionals last week was absolutely right to urge the States to exercise caution when negotiating with America. With me it would be very much a case of shake hands and immediately count your fingers.

And finally,

I was always taught never to be arrogant enough to write something which someone needs a dictionary to interpret. I have never heard the expression Third Sector, which I saw in an advertisement, and, having read the advertisement, am none the wiser as to its meaning.