IT’S good to get away. Much as I love the Island, the thought of shortening the grey and damp of winter grows stronger as I get older. Having escaped to some sunshine, I returned on the last day of February to cold but dry weather and headed to the supermarket to replenish basic food supplies. To my astonishment, the shelves were
almost bare.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked a shop assistant. ‘Has war been declared?’ She smiled. ‘No, something equally shocking – someone mentioned the word “snow”.’ Not a single flake had fallen, but panic-buying had been triggered and, predictably, at first mention the announcement came that schools would be closed the following day.
Sure enough there was some snow on 1 March, officially the first day of spring, but not enough to stop public transport, and I wondered what all the parents whose children should have been at school were doing. Presumably many had no alternative but to take a day off work at a cost to themselves and the economy.
My other half accused me of being a grumpy old man when I told her that a bit of snow didn’t close schools when I was a kid; if the bus didn’t run we walked. She said: ‘They’re wrong if they close the schools and wrong if they don’t.’ True, but my point is that we have become a nanny-based society in which all risk, however minor, must be avoided. We’ve gone soft.
The big news story on my return was the resolution of the long-running saga of the St Lawrence church lavatory. A fierce debate raged between those who supported the rector’s view that the church should provide adequate facilities for its congregation and those who considered that breaching a wall to create the loo was a barbarous attack.
Seeing both sides, I didn’t form a definitive view on the matter. If pressed, I suppose I would have defaulted to the belief that buildings, however venerable, are made for the use of people. That said, I was hugely impressed by the turnout of about 500 parishioners on a very cold night to listen to or express a view at a parish assembly. Well done, the people of St Lawrence – clearly democracy is alive and kicking at a parish level.
Not so well done, some of those who were on what turned out to be the losing side. A leader of the opposition, parishioner Marcus Binney, appeared gracious and accepting in defeat, but some of his supporters, who it is alleged had not behaved particularly well during the campaign, took the defeat badly and responded with bitterness. I suppose they had become used to the tail’s ability to wag the dog.
There has been a growing trend for pressure groups, often SIFs (‘single-issue fanatics’), to reach for a petition at the first sign that something they don’t like might happen. There are protest meetings and marches at which a few hundred gather together with the sole purpose of persuading our elected representatives to make or reject a certain proposition. More often than not they claim the moral high ground and boldly state that they speak on behalf of the people of Jersey. Worryingly, it often works. It’s the politicians’ job to represent all the people, but so timid have they become that pressure groups often seem to get their way. While the majority stays silent, the minority will continue
to exercise undue influence.
When I started writing this column I had just ended a four-year involvement with tourism, and inevitably my first article was on that topic. Having said I’d do my best not to bang on about tourism, I have since largely concentrated on other issues – so, no apology for briefly returning to it now. When the Tourism Shadow Board proposed the target of a million visitors a year in 15 years there was considerable scepticism, despite the fact that it would only take annual increases of about two and a half per cent to achieve. Last week we learned that the number of holidaymakers increased by 16 per cent last year, while total visitors rose by five per cent; visitors injected £250 million into the economy, up ten per cent, not including the trickle-down effect.
While it’s still too early to be certain that the target will be hit, it’s not too soon to underline the advances that can be made when work previously undertaken by government is outsourced.
A damning report by accountants EY on collapsed mega-company Carillion has revealed excessive layers of management with an aversion to change; there was a lack of professionalism, a lack of accountability and short-term benefit preferred to sustainable performance. Where have I heard that before?
