Want to avoid trouble with the USA? Don’t deal with it

However, people like me – and particularly those of us who are getting on a bit – tend to read newspapers as creatures of habit. For example, I read the news pages first, skip through the features pages – either reading bits or making a mental note to do so later (after Herself has read the whole thing from cover to cover) and then on to hatched, matched and despatched, pausing only to glance at La Gazette and to see how many jobs that lot in the Big House are advertising and which hardly used vehicles they are flogging at Glencoe.

I don’t know what it is about the business pages but unless a headline really catches my eye they seem to pass me by, or perhaps it’s the other way round and I pass them by. Anyhow, what did catch my eye was the bit published one day last week headlined ‘Learn how to avoid extradition’ and, just as I expected, it referred to the good old US of A or, as someone with a quicker wit than I have once said, everyone’s idea of an interfering neighbour.

Talking of quick wits – and I know that I am digressing – I have to hand it to the person from the Jersey Institute of Law (they’re the ones holding the event) who dreamed up the seminar’s title. ‘How to avoid an all expenses paid holiday in the western district of Texas’ is a nice way of drawing attention to the perils of doing business with outfits in the United States.

People with better brains than I am ever likely to possess have spent much time in recent years criticising the somewhat one-sided extradition arrangements which a clearly subservient British Government reached with America and I’m not minded to rehearse those arguments here.

That said, I reckon I could easily advise the solicitors, advocates and ‘other professionals with an interest in the international reach of US law’ at whom the seminar is pitched, and probably in a less complicated way, I suspect, than the two American lawyers and single Jersey advocate who are down to speak at the event.

In simple terms, lads and lasses, stop looking longingly at the greenbacks with George Washington’s picture on them – his lips are pursed, so I’m told, because he had a lifetime of suffering with toothache – by just not doing business with American entities.

Just as the only certain way of avoiding getting pinched by the boys and girls in blue for drink driving is not drinking – or driving, for that matter – so the only certain way to avoid extradition for business related alleged crimes against US legislation (committed without even setting foot in the country, so I understand) is shunning their business. It’s simple really.

BEING too idle to look it up, I’m not sure who from among our elected representatives sits on the Health, Social Security and Housing Scrutiny panel but can I lob a small bouquet in their direction.

I read the other day their collective view on more needing to be done to promote equal opportunities, social cohesion and supporting vulnerable children and families and they want these measures included in the Strategic Plan setting out government policies for the next three years, which is to be debated next month.

Disregarding the trendy civil service speak – without which, it seems, no report can ever see the light of day – what they have brought forward is a welcome and refreshing change from the nit-picking and often nasty point scoring (and, I suspect, personal vendettas which are totally different to differing views on policies) which used to be a feature of some of the scrutiny panels’ deliberation hearings and reports.

This particular panel seem to me to have done the job that was originally envisaged for these bodies – to assist first the ministers and then the Big House as a whole to bring forward policies, re-examine ideas and issues and generally help this place and its people – and they deserve our thanks.

I might not agree with all or indeed any of the issues their report raises but that is not the point. They have examined issues and commented on them and, quite apart from this being what they were appointed to do, they have contributed to the debate. For that they deserve our thanks.

MY heart didn’t exactly go out to Planning Minister Rob Duhamel last week but he did have some sympathy. He will have to decide whether to allow 17 flats to be built on the site of Keppel Tower at Grouville and then nine flats at a burnt out hotel at St Aubin because the Planning panel – made up of fellow politicians – could not reach a majority view on either planning application.

I know nothing about either application and to be honest have no particular view on their merits or otherwise. My sympathy is with Deputy Duhamel for the predicament he finds himself in. I have no doubt at all that no matter what he does with these applications he will be damned by one side or the other.

I know he won’t run away from making a decision – he’s not like that – but his position is invidious, to say the least. As I keep on saying, there were aspects of the old committee system which deserved a better fate than being thrown out with the bathwater.

And finally,

We are looking for a programme officer for the Energy Efficiency Service at a nice little £713.42 a week. I’m tempted to link energy efficiency with pinstripes but I’ll avoid the temptation.