An Island benefacter who is up with the best of them

Even by the extremely high standards he himself has set with a catalogue of gifts – predominantly but, I understand, not exclusively – to the elderly, his most recent act of selfless generosity is extraordinary.

Not that this should in any way be deemed competitive but he has set the bar at a level which not only at least matches the generosity of benefactors like Lord Trent – better known perhaps as Sir Jesse Boot – and TB Davis but one which will almost certainly last for the foreseeable future and indeed may never be surpassed.

I would not dream of offering any advice to Mr Kirch on how best to manage his financial affairs as far as this particular act of generosity is concerned – the fact that he has amassed such a fortune is evidence of his undoubted skill. What I will do is hope that he has tied up his charitable trust in such a way as to prevent that lot in the Big House from getting their grubby little mitts on it.

We all know how they manage the money we all give them – as I keep on saying, governments don’t actually have any money, they use ours – and quite frankly I wouldn’t like the same to happen to Mr Kirch’s.

The only thing I have to add is that, along with many others who have expressed this view in this newspaper and online at thisisjersey.com, I fervently hope that the treatment he is about to have is successful and that he is with us to many years to come to witness first hand the good he is doing.

While on the subject of generous benefactors, I see that my suggestion last week that TB Davis Avenue had a certain ring about it met with the approval of regular correspondent Barrie Bertram, despite the fact that it seemed to stick in his gullet to have to say so.

Can I say in response that, without any churlishness whatsoever, I wholeheartedly agree with his suggestion that the wholly inappropriate (at the Georgetown end at least) name of La Route du Fort would be the ideal candidate for such a name change. As Mr Bertram pointed out, not only is Howard Davis Park along that thoroughfare but St Luke’s School (where TB Davis was educated) is also along there.

Incidentally, the name La Route du Fort replaced was Plaisance Road – the bit between the roundabout at the tunnel exit and the junction with Roseville Street was never a road but an area which housed, among other things as I recall, the old JMT bus workshops. Plaisance, of course, was the name of the house – formerly owned by his first boss – which stood in the grounds of what is now Howard Davis Park.

A BOUQUET now for the person at the Health Department who dreamed up the idea of sending a text message to out-patients reminding them of their clinic appointments. While the fact that missed appointments cost close to a million and a half quid a year is of concern, more worrying – and selfish on the part of those who can’t be bothered to tell the hospital they can’t make it – is the fact that the missed appointment could have been used by someone who was waiting and wanting to attend, sometimes with every waiting day often adding to the stress.

The fact that annually there are 20,000 missed appointments – with the aid of the electronic abacus I reckon that’s about 80 or so for every working day of the year – is an indication of the scale of the problem facing the Health Department.

As they say, even if a small percentage of the 4p a throw texted reminders reduce the figure, the money will have been well spent. It would have been even nicer for someone like me to report that Jersey Telecoms, who levy that charge, had in fact waived all costs as a public service.

Damn it, I didn’t think. That would probably have made too big a dent in the management bonus scheme and we can’t have that, can we? Not when it’s a publicly owned company. As the late Sir John Junor used to say in his weekly column, pass the bucket.

AS an increasingly regular bus user – proof of my philosophy if you like that if you make bus travel attractive enough (as it is for pensioners) they’ll leave cars at home – I was interested in a couple of the Facebook comments about what can be done to improve the service.

One person suggested making it more buggy friendly, pointing out the difficulty of being rushed along by drivers while trying to cope with a couple of kids and folding the buggy. That’s strange, I thought, because on my route the drivers – without exception – wait until the elderly and those with kids are seated before even moving off.

The other, about giving drivers the authority to demand that youngsters give up seats for the elderly, reminded me of the old story about the brat who got home and told his mum that dad had made him give up his seat for an attractive young woman.

There’s nothing wrong with that, said Mum, to which the brat replied: ‘But I was sitting on Dad’s knee at the time.’

And finally,

Referring to those of almost 40 years ago who developed Fort Regent, Modern Hotels boss Jonathan Segal said: ‘They were smarter than we are today and we didn’t learn from them.’ He’s right – just a series of missed boats since 1976.