WHILE making predictions is a mug’s game, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that population and migration will get a good airing in the run-up to your elections, particularly since Scrutiny has raised the spectre of 230 new Le Marais high-rises being needed in the next 17 years.
That should be resisted on grounds of taste alone although, looking at the hash being made of the new general hospital, I’m not sure planning is Jersey’s strongest hand.
Anyway, the head of the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel says that if immigration continues at its current level, not only will you need more Le Marais-type accommodation, you’ll also need ten new primary schools.
Hmm. Before you do anything rash just remember that the horror scenario only develops if people keep coming to Jersey at the same rate until 2035. Personally, I’d be asking why they would still want to.
You see, Guernsey went through similar anxieties a while back. Rising population, pressure on infrastructure, soaring house prices, nowhere to park… you get the picture.
So we got our brainiest boffins in the public sector – and there are a lot of them, believe me – to labour away on producing the dream population management regime. Years later they announced they’d cracked it. Loud cheers, and it was introduced.
By then, of course, the world’s economy had crashed, no one was coming to the island anyway, the housing market was collapsing and you still couldn’t park.
I could go on, but you get the drift. See, the thing is – and please don’t take offence, Jersey – not even proper countries, you know, big ones, with millions of acres and serious numbers of people, can really manage migration or immigration.
You can never get it right. Alderney has no restrictions on who can live there but it practically has to lasso and drag new residents in. Brexit, sterling plunging and better opportunities elsewhere mean Guernsey’s struggling to get staff and our shiny new management system has been a disaster for the hospitality sector.
Sark… Well, let’s just say you can have it back.
Not even Britain’s been able to crack population/immigration issues and the prospect that, post exit from the EU, it might do something meaningful has sent shockwaves through various industrial sectors.
That’s why it’s more helpful to look at the benefits of an increasing population. Particularly why people are drawn to your shores. After all, the main beneficiaries of job creation are Jersey people.
They like having a selection of good, well-paid work – in clean, warm offices or elsewhere – and they thank you by distributing their earnings back into the local economy, help to maintain transport links, hold back tax rises and ensure your house keeps rising in value.
And if you cast your minds back seven or eight years ago, you’ll recall how miserable it was post-crash when many Islanders didn’t have jobs and the States of Jersey went vengefully after the wallets of those who still did.
This circle of virtue goes a little further too, thanks to something known as the dependency ratio. That’s wonk-speak for measuring the number of people in a population who are (very broadly) reliant, like children and pensioners, compared with the number of people of working age and therefore theoretically working.
The lower the ratio the better, not least because it helps to keep down the tax burden on those in employment.
Currently, for every child or OAP in Jersey there are two workers looking after them. Yet even if the current level of migration continues – the 1,000 per annum that so worries Scrutiny – the ratio will have worsened to 63% by 2035.
So instead of each worker supporting half a child or pensioner as they do now, their taxes will have to stretch to 0.63 of a dependent individual. Reduce immigration and the burden rises even more.
In Guernsey, for example, the ratio is 55% and has steadily been worsening as the population ages and fewer younger people arrive to work there.
So, realistically, if you want to manage your population the best thing is to get rid of all those over 65. Nippers you can tolerate because you’ll get some productive, tax-taking, years out of them after a bit of nursery care and education.
Equally, the better you train them, the more they earn and the better off you all are.
Pensioners, though, they’re the pits. Costing money, clogging the hospitals and demanding more and more home help and mobility scooters and wreaking merry hell with that all-important dependency ratio thing.
So, get rid, Scrutiny’s fears are removed and you’ve got Jersey back to yourselves again. Well, until you turn 65, I suppose. But never mind that. Population and immigration’s a today thing for the Young Turks in the States to sort out.
And they will, won’t they? It will be so glib, so believable on the doorstep and at the hustings that the Assembly will convince itself freezing the population is A Good Thing and certainly doesn’t mean Jersey’s closed for business.
Never mind. Pretending you can do something is better than culling the elderly, I suppose. Werther’s Original, anyone?
