By Richard Digard
WHAT’S Jersey going to look like by 2030, the landmark date by which the island’s carbon footprint has to reduce by 68%? Or, more to the point, how much will it cost its beleaguered citizens to reach that target and the more challenging one of 78% five years later?
I ask for a simple reason: Jersey’s already a pretty bleak place to be if you don’t have a lot of money. So’s Guernsey. The gap between the haves and have-nots is widening, worsening and more apparent than ever – on a par with Turkey and Bulgaria, according to the latest household income figures.
Since the CO2 reductions are measured against a 1990 baseline they’re unlikely to be as severe as the official figures I’ve just quoted might sound. But the point is, they won’t be achieved without significant lifestyle changes and, particularly, in energy use and transport choices.
Heat pumps and extra insulation don’t come cheap, even with a government grant, and green taxes on oil to ‘encourage’ transition to low-carbon alternatives have to hurt to be effective and justify the expense of re-boilering. The cost of property, in short, is about to get even worse.
And that, from the latest Household Income Distribution report, is the last thing thousands of Jersey people want or need on top of a cost-of-living crisis, falling real incomes and already unaffordable housing.
To be clear, Guernsey is in exactly the same situation so I’m not looking to contrast the islands or point-score any differences between them. Both are failing thousands of their citizens equally. You just happen to have some more up to date figures highlighting that.
At the root of this is our old friend – home ownership. Or, more specifically, the lack thereof. Just under a third (28%) of all pensioners here – that’s about 6,250 over-65s – have a relatively low income after housing costs, which is significantly worse than in the UK. Another shocking finding is that just shy of a quarter of all households (24%) are struggling. They, too, are on relatively low incomes, which is an international measure of hardship based on just 60% of average household incomes. That’s around 11,000 homes affected.
It’s a reflection of how many jobs are comparatively low-paid, despite a recent increase in minimum wages, and, particularly, the cost of accommodation, either through mortgages inflated by crazy house prices or rents.
There’s a double whammy here, too. Home ownership figures are falling in Jersey and Guernsey. Unsurprising, given house prices, it means more and more people are dependent on private landlords. Fine when you’re working perhaps, but a recipe for financial hardship for many when you’re not – which explains the rise in pensioner poverty figures here and in Guernsey.
This property pauperisation of a significant proportion of each island is a growing and largely under-recognised blight on both, although this newspaper did front page the income report under the heading, Can You Afford to Stay in Jersey?
Politically, however, the ‘just managing’ are of little interest to most Deputies because States Members are (by and large) insulated from the relatively low income trap and don’t appreciate the spirit-sapping grind of accounting for every penny each week. Plus, those struggling tend not to draw attention to themselves (…did you know, Chief Minister, that I’m on my uppers and can’t feed the kids…) or form lobby groups.
As a result, they are entirely dependent on the political classes to spot there’s a problem and respond to it. Which, of course, they have resolutely failed to do, and is why so many islanders are affected – the invisible barely managing.
The Council of Ministers’ reaction to all this was, firstly, to blame the previous administration and, secondly, to say we’ll build a robust economy. Well, thanks. That’s going to save a trip to the food bank or get the eldest to a dentist.
The point is, both islands have been ‘building robust economies’ since the Occupation ended, but what used to be called relative poverty has worsened, homes have become even more out of reach and so disposable incomes have fallen even further.
An unconscious example of this is the definition of ‘affordable’ housing – 80% of market rents or prices. So in Jersey’s case, that would make buying an average two-bed house a snip at ‘just’ £508,000 – far from what most people would view as either within reach or affordable.
So what are the islands going to look like in seven years’ time when that first Carbon Neutral Roadmap deadline cuts in? In brief, less local and more divided. The drift off-island of bright young islanders, disenchanted would-love-to-be first-time buyers and priced-out pensioners will be more ingrained and have gathered pace.
Guernsey and Jersey can’t wait to get rid of their geriatrics, of course. Regarded by many as unproductive and a drain on the health system, but taxpayers nevertheless, they’re less of an issue. Losing your young people is a problem, however, because there’s already a staff and skills shortage problem, recruiting overseas is increasingly difficult and local birth rates are plummeting.
Guernsey, for instance, is hiring from Kenya and becoming delightfully multi-cultural as a result, while bureaucrats, blissfully removed from the real world of earning a living, insist that domestic staff (desperately needed) have to speak English, require two years’ relevant experience and can stay for just nine months, despite the high cost of getting them here.
Deputies, so wrapped up in big picture politics, will continue to ignore ordinary Islanders, their hopes and aspirations and concentrate instead on ensuring finance gets all the staff it needs, with consequent implications for house prices, so a robust economy can be chased.
Climate-change targets will tighten as the global-heating crisis worsens, along with the required behavioural changes demanded of Islanders, but without equivalent financial support. So inevitably the cost of living rises further, encouraging (forcing?) more to leave.
Yes, it is a bleak picture, but one that’s emerging now and is being documented by this newspaper and others. That’s at the same time as those supposedly on your side, the Deputies, make the cost of living here even worse by clamping down on shopping on Amazon. We all support local retailers, but government siding with business rather than the simply struggling shows how disenfranchised fully one quarter of all Jersey households have become.
And that’s a terrible price to pay for being invisible in a complacent political system.
