Don't flush peoples hopes for sanitation down the drain

They have remarked at the beauty, how lucky we are to live in such a wonderful place, they have even, perhaps some would say surprisingly, commented on how well kept our roads are compared to their pothole-riddled ones back home.

Then, over a cup of tea and slice of cake, we get on, somewhat randomly, to the subject of drains.

Something to do with another member of the family living in a remote mountain village in Canada that only recently was hooked up to the main sewer in the area.

And I tell them how we, beautiful, rich, tiny Jersey, with our multi-million-pound homes on every corner and expensive sports cars parked in multi-storey car parks, still have nine per cent of homes that aren’t connected to mains drains.

You can imagine what happened next: the questions, the sheer astonishment and finally the acceptance that no, I wasn’t winding them up.

If I hadn’t heard so much on the subject over the years in the States Chamber and lived for a time in one of those homes not connected to the main sewerage network, I might have joined them in their disbelief.

But the sad fact is that Jersey continues to let hundreds of families and home owners down by failing to get the entire Island on to mains drains. Instead, taxpayers who are charged exactly the same as everybody else (including the bit that is used to look after the sewers and the drains) are being made to pay again to have their septic tanks emptied and other similar solutions to the problem of not being on mains drains. And such a process isn’t cheap: some have said they pay up to £100 a month for the privilege.

It is also has an environmental impact and can lead to sewage entering the ground and water supplies.

St John Constable Phil Rondel – who has been harping on about the subject since before he entered politics in 1994, estimates that it would cost £70 million to get the whole Island on to mains drains.

And after Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf called on politicians and departments to come forward with what he called ‘shovel-ready’ projects he could spend cash on right now to get the economy moving, Mr Rondel was quick to point out that connecting a few more homes to mains drains would be a good place to start.

Yet the Treasury Minister’s response was this: ‘Don’t be so unrealistic. But I’ll have a think about the whole issue over the next 20 years.’

So that’s another opportunity to do the right thing down the drain, then.

We are an Island nine miles by five with a GVA of £3.6 billion in 2011, where banking profits total something like £840 million a year, where States spending is around £600 million a year, income tax receipts totalled £409 million in 2011, we have a financial services sector that makes profits of £1,096 million a year, there are more vehicles than people (118,838 as of 31 December 2012) and a there is a seemingly endless budget for million-pound financial reviews, film grants, pay-offs and emergency-in-case-we-get-hit-by-a-hurricane funds.

We live in an Island where every home and business will soon have the option of superfast broadband as part of the fastest residential network in the western world, where new Porsche garages and fine-dining restaurants that cost £100 a head continue to open in the middle of an economic downturn, and where the latter is fully booked for months on end.

Yet we also live in an Island where nine per cent of homes aren’t on mains drains, and have no hope of being any time soon. How out of kilter is that?

I’d bet if a few of those beloved multi-national corporations or Chinese banks or whoever it is we want to fill our offices with next knew just how backward we were behind the shiny surface that we love to shove down their throats, they’d be more than surprised.

ON a happier subject, in case you hadn’t heard, Hollywood is coming to Jersey on Friday in what can only be described as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our little (though drainless in places) Island.

It’s exciting that not only is Superman from Jersey, but that he is actually taking the time to come back for a special appearance, and he’s bringing a couple of his very famous mates with him.

But I have realised something: I just don’t fancy superheroes. It’s not just that they wear tights and their pants over their trousers, but they often fly too, and I don’t trust things that can fly, however big their biceps may be.

I seem to be in the minority of women on this one, given the amount of swooning that has been going on the past few weeks since news broke that Jersey’s very own Superman Henry Cavill would be flying in.

Don’t get me wrong, Henry is a lovely looking bloke and I’ll be stopping by to try and catch a glimpse of the man himself on Friday. But I’m probably one of the few people in Jersey hoping that he will be wearing a suit of the Savile Row kind rather than the red and blue number he sports in the film, however much of a makeover it’s had.