Senator Ozouf a team player? He must be having a laugh

From Ted Vibert.

YOUR edition of 24 March could be entitled ‘the Philip Ozouf Gazette’ with so much space devoted to the Treasury Minister telling us all what a splendidly efficient fellow he is and what wonderful things he has done for Jersey.

All of this, of course, is calculated to try and deflect the criticism he is getting over the fact that his underhand, spiteful and disgraceful conduct resulted in our top public servant quitting his job and walking away with a large amount of taxpayer’s money.

In his incisive comment article, Ben Quérée rightly says: ‘The truth about someone is going to have more to do with what they have done than what they have said’. He then lists all of the things Senator Ozouf promised to do but hasn’t. It is a list demonstrating serious failures.

He overlooked one crucial failure from his list, possibly because he and, indeed, your newspaper, was misled by the spin from Jersey Finance and the Treasury Minister who hailed the outcome of zero-ten as a victory and that this was due to the negotiating skills of Senators Ozouf and Cohen.

In fact, after the EU declared our zero-ten tax policy ‘harmful’ because of the deemed dividend provision, all that Jersey did was to remove that section and re-submit it. The policy was then approved.

Senator Ozouf had the audacity to claim this as a victory – and the price of this ‘victory’? Removing the deemed dividend section now means that Jersey shareholders in a Jersey company who do not take a dividend from their company’s profits but retain them, pay no tax at all.

How much will Jersey lose? The Treasury Minister doesn’t know, but ‘thinks’ it might be £10 million. Other estimates put the figure at £20 million – more black holes. That’s some ‘victory’ for the Jersey taxpayer.

It would appear that the Council of Ministers did not share this view as they took no action against Mr Ogley and the Chief Minister, the then Senator Le Sueur, supported him.

Was the Treasury Minister acting alone and totally outside of his area of responsibility? It wouldn’t be the first time (the Lime Grove fiasco).

Senator Ozouf claims that he is a team player who is happy to listen to other people’s views and that members should respect each other. My personal experience shows that he is often the cause of a lack of respect by the way he treats other States Members.

When I was on the Planning and Environment Committee under his presidency I wanted to see the committee files on the Trinity infill business in which Senator Walker was involved, trying to speed up the process for a close personal friend.

Senator Ozouf instructed his officers not to let me do this. When I objected, he dismissed the matter with these words: ‘Senator Vibert, I won’t stand for your insubordination any longer’.

This approach led me to being disrespectful to him, as I called him an ‘odious, jumped-up little creep’.

This is the nature of the man who claims that he wants to change the way Jersey is governed by creating better team work. He’s having a larf, isn’t he?