Notes on Composting at La Collette

A few comments on the residents' problems associated with the composting site at La Collette. This is coming up again, with calls for it to be closed.
 
1) "Just a smell"
 
Smell is due to minute particles in the air being picked up by the olfactory system of the human body. To say that something is "just a smell" as has been reported in the JEP by some authorities is misleading; if you can smell something, some kind of particles are in the air. The question is whether those particles are sufficient to cause allergic reactions in some individuals.
 
2) Bad use of statistics
 
To say that workers at the site have experienced no side effects is again misleading. Workers are fit, healthy individuals who engage in this kind of work precisely because they are not susceptible to allergic reactions! They are not representative of the population as a whole. It is like checking to see how many gardeners suffer from hay-fever; if you suffer severely from hay-fever, gardening is unlikely to be your profession of choice!
 
3) The link between compost and allergy
 
That composting can cause allergic reactions in workers (who are not normally susceptible), can be seen at the Arkenas site on composting and solid waste management. Note the conditions - such as allergies or asthma - which should be avoided by those in proximity to compose. Clearly the effect of airborne particles is diluted by the wind, but nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out as a cause.
 
http://www.adeq.state.ar.us/solwaste/branch_technical/compost.htm#Precautions

Just as individuals vary in their resistance to disease a few individuals may be particularly sensitive to some of the organisms in compost. The high populations of many different species of molds and fungi in an active compost process can cause allergic reactions in sensitive individuals, though most experience no adverse reaction. Conditions that may predispose individuals to infection or an allergic response include: a weakened immune system, allergies, asthma, some medications such as antibiotics and adrenal cortical hormones or a punctured eardrum. Workers with these conditions should not normally be assigned to a composting operation.

4) Seasonal evidence

It would be interesting to see if any the medical profession have noted any increase in patients attending surgeries from the areas possibly affected by La Collette. One aspect of composting mentioned by a House of Commons Select Committee (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmenvtra/903/903m47.htm) suggests that this is dependent on climate and seasonal factors, and this should be borne in mind for any testing of emissions or reports of sickness.

Good control of aerobic composting sets optimum conditions for efficient decomposition. That creates an ideal habitat for the growth of micro-organisms including fungus. Fungi include pathogens and allergens harmful to people, livestock, wildlife or crops. Frequent lifting and turning is necessary for good management to aerate the mass of material. That causes fungal spores and fragments to be spread abroad and scattered in the wind. Some will remain aloft for days and travel many miles. They are subject to Stokes' equation and other physical factors and will not obey edicts from the Environment Agency anymore than the waves would retreat for King Canute. We are unable to verify the claim of the Composting Association that the concentration of bioaerosols reaches background level at 200 metres from the source. Some more independent people put it at 1,000 or 1,500 metres. Our own observation is that much depends on climatic conditions. It is seasonal and that is especially evident when fungus is carried with the Autumn mists. Remnants can establish new colonies on naturally decaying vegetation thus moving out more slowly but surely or they may contaminate the exposed finished compost.

5) Reducing odor - why it happens and best practice

There is an excellent site on composting facilities and odour management at:
http://www.epa.state.oh.us/dsiwm/document/guidance/gd_497.pdf
 
This explains how a properly run composting site can reduce the odours to a minimum. It would be interesting to note which of the methods explained in this report is used by the States at the La Collette site to reduce foul odours (click on the link for the full report and details of procedures used).
 
A frequent problem encountered at composting facilities is the generation of foul odors. This fact sheet is intended to provide guidance and answer some questions about the origin of foul odors and how to prevent and manage them.

How are anaerobic odours generated?

Anaerobic odours can originate with the incoming feedstocks or bulking agents, which may have been stored without aeration for some time before transport to the composting site. Once those feedstocks or bulking agents are incorporated into the composting system, subsequent odor problems are usually a result of anaerobic (low oxygen) conditions. These odors include a wide range of compounds, of which the most notorious are the reduced sulfur compounds (i.e. hydrogen sulfide, dimethyl sulfide, dimethyl disulfide, and methanethiol), volatile fatty acids, aromatic compounds, and amines.

Ammonia is the most common odor that can be formed anaerobically as well as aerobically, and is usually more
noticeable on the composting site rather than off-site. This is due in part because it is lighter than air and rapidly rises up into the atmosphere. Noticeable ammonia losses are primarily a result of low carbon to nitrogen (C:N) ratio. However, pH is also a contributing factor. If the pH is around 9, there is a reasonable equilibrium. A higher pH forces more ammonium into the gas form which you can smell.
 

The Hungry Jumper: A Story for Children

(this is the only children's story I've written)

It was Harry's birthday. He was five years old. He had lots of presents. He unwrapped a big parcel. It was a jumper. It was a bright blue colour. "Try it on" said his mum. The jumper was a little large, but warm and cosy.

Then Harry opened his other presents. One was a box of chocolate sweets. Harry had the sweets. But he was rather messy. He wiped his hands on the jumper. "Yum, yum!" said the jumper. It was feeling very hungry.

Harry enjoyed wearing the jumper. He wore it at breakfast. Harry was a messy eater. He spilt cereal on the jumper. "Yum, yum!" said the jumper.

At lunchtime, Harry had chips with tomato sauce. So did the jumper! "Yum, yum!" said the jumper.

At tea time, Harry had jam sandwiches. The jam squeezed out of the sandwich. It fell on the jumper.
The jam was sweet and sticky. "Yum, yum!" said the jumper.

Mum looked at Harry. "What a mess" she said. After that, the jumper had to go into the wash. But soon it was back on Harry, and enjoying all the food he spilt. "Yum, yum!" said the jumper.

Years passed, and Harry was now nine years old. He was not so messy, and the jumper did not get so many tasty snacks. It was now a very hungry jumper. But sometimes he still wiped his hands on the jumper. "Yum, yum!" said the jumper, when that happened.

Mum looked at Harry. "The jumper is too small", she said. She took the jumper off Harry. She washed it.
Then Mum took the jumper to a jumble sale. The jumper was very sad, and very hungry. What would happen to it now? Would it ever eat again?

"Will this fit Peter?" said a lady, picking up the jumper from the table. "Try it on, Peter" said a man. And the jumper was put on a young boy who was five years old. "It fits well. I'll buy it" said the lady. She paid for the jumper, and Peter went off wearing it.

Peter was eating some chocolate biscuits. They melted in his hands, so he wiped the sticky chocolate on the jumper.

"Yum, yum!" said the jumper, happy again.

The Importance of Philosophy

Watching the final episode of Richard Dawkins "The Genius of Charles Darwin", I was struck by the way in which he and his opponents both bandied the word "evidence" about without considering the philosophy of evidence, that branch of thinking called epistemology. They kept on at each other, the creationist Wendy Wright saying "We want to teach the evidence", and Dawkins saying "no that's not what evidence is", and producing lots of examples of what he considered evidence, indeed evidence so obvious to him that he just could not understand why they didn't understand what scientific evidence is.

Personally, to state my own position, I do believe there are good evidential grounds for believing that evolution is true, and that the earth is 4.6 billion years old. On evidential grounds, that is, on grounds of well-attested historical evidence, I do believe that there may be grounds for believing that what are today called "miracles", but which the ancients termed "signs and wonders" have occurred. I will not rule out something in a narrative source on the philosophical principle "'If miraculous, then unhistorical" as an a priori rule, on the grounds of my own scientific omniscience. I keep an open mind on dowsing, despite Dawkins' experiments, because experimental designs can be flawed. Like a doctor testing hypotheses for an illness, experiments often are restricted to a narrow range, and the blood sample on the way to the Pathology Lab has a specific focus. A world of blind men would find it difficult to understand the nature of light, of day and night, but patches of darkness in trees, caves, and houses, where the rare sightedness of a few failed, in each case for different reasons. Tests in the dark would produce futile results. But this is to digress.

Philosophy matters because it exposes assumptions, and considers the different means by which we evaluate what we call "evidence". Historical evidence for unique events is obviously of a different order for the repeatability of scientific experiments. Dawkins mentioned the existence of Napoleon as something backed up by evidence, but did not go into any detail, or show how this was a different kind of evidence. But how we understand the different nature of evidence is important, and avoiding that kind of question leads to all the slippery conflicts between Dawkins and his opponents. But there is a parable of G.K. Chesterton which illustrates all this far better:

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good-" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.

Harcourt Nevada - August Briefing

More on Harcourt in Nevada. The two "account states" claims remain outstanding. Under United States law, account stated is a statement between a creditor (the person to whom money is owed) and a debtor (the person who owes) that a particular amount is owed to the creditor as of a certain date.

Moreover, it seems the existing claims were dismissed on legal technicalities rather than because they had poor evidence to the claims - at the heart of the judge's decision is that Nevada law provides few if any protections to members of LLCs (limited liability companies), which is how the development partnership was set up. The most notable comment relating to that is below:

John Manley, the lawyer for Glen, Smith & Glen, tells GlobeSt.com that there will be another round of complaints filed on behalf of his client that addresses the fact that Nevada law does not recognize fiduciary responsibility within an LLC.

So if you've read anywhere that Harcourt's case in Nevada is over, don't be too sure, despite their press releases on the same.

http://www.propertyweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=297&storycode=3120600&c=1

Harcourt Developments has had two claims filed against it in a Las Vegas court dismissed after a US judge ruled that the complaints could not be supported. Glen, Smith & Glen (GSG), a local US developer, was contracted as a 40% minority partner and was to sell the properties while Harcourt secured the finance. GSG alleged there had been a breach of contract and of fiduciary duty and that Harcourt was attempting to dilute its involvement in the scheme.

Harcourt said there was now only one claim remains against Harcourt Nevada which refers to its alleged failure to fund expenditures made by the manager of GSG Development Company in the sum of $2.1m (£1.1m). It said that it 'unequivocally denies these claims were within the approved budget and approved business plan' and said a detailed response and counter claim was being processed. The Court said it could not for now dismiss the claim and is awaiting proof of the allegations from GSG.

http://www.globest.com/news/1225_1225/lasvegas/173144-1.html

LAS VEGAS-District Court Judge Mark Denton has dismissed five of the seven causes of action in Glen, Smith & Glen Development's lawsuit against Dublin, Ireland-based Harcourt Development and its local subsidiary over Sullivan Square, a failed 1,300-unit luxury residential-over-retail project at Durango Drive and Interstate 215 valued at $1 billion. At the heart of the judge's decision is that Nevada law provides few if any protections to members of LLCs, which is how the development partnership was set up.

The lawsuit alleges two forms of "breach of contract" and two forms of "breach of fiduciary duty," as well as two forms of "account stated," the latter meaning Harcourt's project-specific LLC allegedly has not paid in full its share of the costs to date. After reviewing Harcourt's motion to dismiss, Judge Denton dismissed all but the two "account stated" claims.

"With respect to the [defendant's] contention that the Complaint fails to state claims for breach of fiduciary duty, Defendant is careful to point out that it is based on the relationship between a non-managing member, on the one hand, and the LLC and the other members, on the other. This would distinguish the LLC situation from a close corporation one where the law has become well established that ordinarily, and in the absence of a statute, organizational provision, or shareholders' agreement to the contrary, shareholders in a position of control do have a fiduciary responsibility to minority shareholders. "

"In this case, the operating agreement…does not state the existence of fiduciary duties of members inter se or to the LLC. The Court is thus persuaded by the line of cases cited by Defendant to the effect that under the circumstances alleged by Plaintiff to exist in this case – with reference, again, to the operating agreement and to the managerial role of the Plaintiff Glen, Smith & Glen Development Company, LLC – there is no claim stated by Plaintiff, either directly or derivatively, for breach of fiduciary duty."

In not dismissing the "account stated" claims, Judge Denton says "the Court is not at this time called upon to go beyond the face of the Complaint and items that can be properly considered on a motion to dismiss, and so the fact that, as the defendants put it, "the [plaintiff] does not allege any facts indicating that the parties agreed to a fixed amount for the debt or that Harcourt Nevada acquiesced to the amount claimed by the company," does not mean that the court cannot give effect to Plaintiff's allegation that "Defendant Harcourt Nevada became indebted to Plaintiff…on an account stated. Thus the Court Denies the motion…and will not for now dismiss the same."

Ryan Lower, one of the lawyers for Harcourt Developments, sent a letter to GlobeSt.com stating that Harcourt "unequivocally denies that it agreed to an account stated and then did not pay." John Manley, the lawyer for Glen, Smith & Glen, tells GlobeSt.com that there will be another round of complaints filed on behalf of his client that addresses the fact that Nevada law does not recognize fiduciary responsibility within an LLC.

"The significant thing is the court refused to dismiss the case as they asked and we are going to have a series of amendments. These types of arguments over the pleadings are pretty typical but what's really clear to us is this case is not going away until jury gets to decide it and that's the most important thing. The decision has to be a disappointment for Harcourt."

The Genius of Charles Darwin: A Review of Part Two

Another chance to see Richard Dawkins confronting an African bishop, and posing the deliberately provocative question: "I am an ape. Are you an ape?"

The presentation of apes to humans via skulls suggested that brain size was the deciding factor in our evolution. In fact we know that this is again a simplification, and not a good one. If Dawkin's had taken some time to look at Alfred Russell Wallace's work, rather than merely considering it the same as Darwin's, he would find this problem. Another biologist, Professor Ramachandran, states it succinctly:

The hominid brain reached almost its present size - and perhaps even its present intellectual capacity about 250,000 years ago . Yet many of the attributes we regard as uniquely human appeared only much later. Why? What was the brain doing during the long "incubation "period? Why did it have all this latent potential for tool use, fire, art music and perhaps even language- that blossomed only considerably later? How did these latent abilities emerge, given that natural selection can only select expressed abilities, not latent ones? I shall call this "Wallace's problem", after the Victorian naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace who first proposed it.

To consider this problem when looking at human evolution would have been more interesting that suggesting that brain size alone was the contributory factor, which is what Dawkins tended to do with his presentation of skulls. Skulls are all very well, but they are rather unformative in showing what was going on within them. That is where the cutting edge of work on human evolution is becoming focused, and that was entirely missing from the programme.

There was the usual muddle about self-genes, which according to Dawkins may contribute to acts of altruism towards members of one's own family, but only do so with humans towards the wider world because they "misfire". When he says that genes strive to make more copies of themselves, he means: "selection has operated to favour genes that, by chance, varied in such a way that more copies survived in subsequent generations." But when he says we can overcome our selfish genes, and considers selfish behaviour to be the outcome of the selfish gene, he is perpetuating the same muddle over the use of the word "selfish" that an animal specialist accused him of earlier in the programme. He stated that most biologists now accepted his notion of the selfish gene, which from a brief survey of the academic literature, looks more like wishful thinking than anything else.

In fact, to promote his idea of the selfish gene is not to celebrate the genius of Charles Darwin, because for Darwin, natural selection had to act on individuals. The reason for this Stephen Jay Gould makes very apparent:

No matter how much power Dawkins wishes to assign to genes, there is one thing that he cannot give them-direct visibility to natural selection. Selection simply cannot see genes and pick among them directly. It must use bodies as an intermediary. A gene is a bit of DNA hidden within a cell. Selection views bodies. It favours some bodies because they are stronger, better insulated, earlier in their sexual maturation, fiercer in combat, or more beautiful to behold.

If, in favouring a stronger body, selection acted directly upon a gene for strength, then Dawkins might be vindicated. If bodies were unambiguous maps of their genes, then battling bits of DNA would display their colours externally and selection might act upon them directly. But bodies are no such thing. There is no gene "for" such unambiguous bits of morphology as your left kneecap or your fingernail. Bodies cannot be atomized into parts, each constructed by an individual gene. Hundreds of genes contribute to the building of most body parts and their action is channelled through a kaleidoscopic series of environmental influences: embryonic and postnatal, internal and external. Parts are not translated genes, and selection doesn't even work directly on parts. It accepts or rejects entire organisms because suites of parts, interacting in complex ways, confer advantages. The image of individual genes, plotting the course of their own survival, bears little relationship to developmental genetics as we understand it.

The philosopher David Stove showed just how deficient the "selfish gene" argument actually is with his witty and erudite demotion job on the concept:

The truth is, 'the total prostitution of all animal life, including Man and all his airs and graces, to the blind purposiveness of these minute virus-like substances', genes. This is a thumbnail-sketch, and an accurate one, of the contents of The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins. It was not written by Dawkins, but he quoted it with manifest enthusiasm in a defence of The Selfish Gene.... His admirers even include some philosophers who have carried their airs and graces to the length of writing good books on such rarefied subjects as universals, or induction, or the mind. Dawkins can scarcely have gratified these admirers by telling them that, even when engaged in writing those books, they were 'totally prostituted to the blind purposiveness of their genes Still, you 'have to hand it' to genes which can write, even if only through their slaves, a good book on subjects like universals or induction. Those genes must have brains all right, as well as purposes. At least, they must, if genes can have brains and purposes. But in fact, of course, DNA molecules no more have such things than H20 molecules do.


Moreover, to suggest that genes alone are responsible for wider altruism is to completely ignore matters like "mirror neurons", which Armand Leroi, himself an evolutionary biologist, has explored, looking at the neurology of altruism, imitation and empathy.

Mirror neurons were so named because, by firing both when an animal acts and when it simply watches the same action, they were thought to "mirror" movement, as though the observer itself were acting. These neurons have been directly observed in primates, and are believed to exist in humans and in some birds. As Professor V.S. Ramachandran observes:

Mirror neurons can also enable you to imitate the movements of others thereby setting the stage for the complex Lamarckian or cultural inheritance that characterizes our species and liberates us from the constraints of a purely gene based evolution

Dawkins cannot find a place easily for altruism alongside his selfish gene hypothesis, so he postulates that altruism is because of "misfiring selfish genes". Genes would have been capable of promoting kin selection, but on a global scale kin selection cannot differentiate between close kin and strangers, hence altruism, acts of generosity to complete strangers. Why this occurs in some case, such as the kindly Professor Dawkins, who is clearly a caring man, but does not occur in other people, such as Robert Mugabe, is not satisfactorily explained; instead it seems more like an "explaining away" difficulties with the theory, or what Karl Popper called "immunising the theory" against any possibly falsification.

But to return to the Bishop, who said "I am a human being" and asked why monkeys were still around if evolution was true, Dawkins then went on to explain that in evolutionary terms, we shared a common ancestor, and we both had evolved. He also went on to comment that with the number of shared genes, it might be possible for human and genetically close ape relative to breed. In fact, this has occurred, but not in Oxford, so that is why Dawkins probably did not know about it.

The Soviet Union, in its effort to stamp out religion, was determined to prove that men were descended from apes. In 1926, a Soviet scientist named Ilya Ivanov decided the most compelling way to do this would be to breed a "humanzee" - a human-chimpanzee hybrid. Ivanov set off for a French research station in West Africa. There he inseminated three female chimpanzees with human sperm. Not his own, for he shared the colonial-era belief that the local people were more closely related to apes than he was. He stayed long enough to learn that his experiment had failed.

With regard to "social Darwinism", in a fascinating section, Dawkins concentrated on "big men", the Rockefellers etc, as promoting "the business survival of the fittest", which led to cases like Enron where a blanket policy of firing employees who were not ruthless enough led to people with no business ethics at all running the company to financial disaster. But he overlooked in his interview with a businessman, the idea that companies diversify and then see where the consumer buys, and expand on that, and cut back on other areas of their business. This kind of "corporate Darwinism" fits an evolutionary paradigm rather well, but it was just ignored, and not explored at all with Dawkin's focus on the Herbert Spencer school of Social Darwinism.

Lastly, apart from the incessant tinkly music (from a glockenspiel?), what also seemed most odd was Dawkin's anthropomorphisms. Repeatedly, again and again, he thrust at the viewer - alongside footage of predators catching and eating prey - the idea that nature was "brutal" "savage" "cruel". Perhaps he should read some Mary Midgley - in "The Concept of Beastliness: Philosophy, Ethics and Animal Behaviour". She notes:

We have thought of a wolf always as he appears to the shepherd at the moment of seizing a lamb from the fold. But this is like judging the shepherd by the impression he makes on the lamb, at the moment when he finally decides to turn it into mutton. Lately, ethologists have taken the trouble to watch wolves systematically, between meal-times, and have found them to be, by human standards, paragons of regularity and virtue. They pair for life, they are faithful and affectionate spouses and parents, they show great loyalty to their pack, great courage and persistence in the face of difficulties, they carefully respect each other's territories, keep their dens clean, and extremely seldom kill anything that they do not need for dinner. If they fight with another wolf, the fight ends with his submission; there is normally a complete inhibition on killing the suppliant and on attacking females and cubs. They have also, like all social animals, a fairly elaborate etiquette, including subtly varied ceremonies of greeting and reassurance, by which friendship is strengthened, co-operation achieved and the wheels of social life generally oiled. All this is not the romantic impressions of casual travellers; it rests on long and careful investigations by trained zoologists, backed up by miles of film, graphs, maps, population surveys, droppings analysis and all the rest of the contemporary toolbag.

She comments on the trap which Dawkins, alongside others, is falling into:

Actual wolves, then, are not much like the folk-figure of the wolf, and the same goes for apes and other creatures. But it is the folk-figure that has been popular with philosophers. They have usually taken over the popular notion of lawless cruelty which underlies such terms as "brutal," "bestial," "beastly," "animal desires," etc., and have used it, uncriticized, as a contrast to illuminate the nature of man. Man has been mapped by reference to a landmark which is largely mythical.

In the old days, Disney used to put on supporting items to the main feature, which were a kind of nature documentary which false attributed all kinds of human like motivation to animals. Although Dawkins is very selective in his examples of predators, it is not apparent whether he is not indulging in little more than a Film Noire version of Disney. He doesn't show how cruel and savage pandas are, or how brutal the average cow is, or indeed any one of a dozen herbivores who are present only as illustrations of carnivores at work.

If only in his contempt for theology, Dawkins had not been so dismissive of the notion of anthropomorphism when it has occurred - and been rejected - with respect to ideas of God, perhaps he would be more aware of it occurring in his own work.

And if I had to answer the question ""I am an ape. Are you an ape?" I would be inclined to say that I was a perpendicular hairless tree shrew. If you are defining lineage by past speciation, why stop - arbitrarily - with the ape? Why not go back to when we were common cousins with the vole?

Links:

The Genes That Make Us Human by Dr Armand Leroi

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/563/

The Nature of Normal Human Variety by Armand Leroi

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/leroi05/leroi05_index.html

The Concept of Beastliness: Philosophy, Ethics and Animal Behaviour by Mary Midgley

http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/midgley02.htm

Human Evolution: From Tree Shrew to Ape

http://www.wwnorton.com/college/anthro/bioanth/ch10/chap10.htm

Human Evolution

http://www.dorak.info/evolution/human.html

Barking up the Wrong Tree

An interesting extra snippet of information in Sky News:

Mr Harper's leaked memo gives an insight into methods of justice and governance on Jersey. It reveals that the island's Attorney General, William Bailhache, wanted to appoint an independent lawyer to assist the inquiry. Mr Harper quoted Mr Bailhache as saying this was "in order to prevent you from barking up the wrong tree at an early stage". Mr Harper wrote: "There was some discussion over his wish to have the lawyer placed within the incident room. I, the Association of Chief Police Officers, and others saw this as a highly unusual step, and objected to that situation." It also reveals that the Attorney General questioned the publicity that the police were giving to the investigation. Mr Harper claims in the memo that Mr Bailhache was of the view that "the circulation list for... police press releases is too wide and encourages wider comment". In response to that concern, Mr Harper wrote: "What would happen if we did indeed cut our circulation list? (The media) would... ask why. "When we gave the truthful answer that the AG thought it a good idea to curtail circulation and a wider coverage they just might, in the light of the many allegations of cover up against his office, think that they had here positive evidence of the 'wilful obstruction' which he was recently accused of. "No matter how unjust that might be, it would be an obvious outcome." Mr Bailhache told Sky News: "I can assure you that I am not going to discuss with the media any memoranda going to and fro with me and the police." He added: "The position is that Jersey has been delivering justice week in, week out for centuries. "There is no reason to think that it will not be delivered in any of the cases that are part of the current investigation."

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Jersey-Abuse-Investigation-Obstruction-Claims-In-Leaked-Memo/Article/200808215078407?lpos=UK%2BNews_2&lid=ARTICLE_15078407_Jersey%2BAbuse%2BInvestigation%253A%2BObstruction%2BClaims%2BIn%2BLeaked%2BMemo

Should the Attorney General be effectively directing the course of the enquiry? It seems that the phrase "in order to prevent you from barking up the wrong tree at an early stage", which I have not come across in any other media reports on the leaked memo, would indicate precisely that!

It is also interesting to see the comment that about police press releases being "too wide and encourages wider comment". Why should there not be wider comment? I think Lenny Harper's observation that this might just be considered "wilful obstruction" are very sharp and to the point.

Can we really rely on William Baillache's word that "There is no reason to think that it will not be delivered in any of the cases that are part of the current investigation", or if cases come before the jury, will he be issuing notes from the bench ""in order to prevent you from barking up the wrong tree at an early stage"? This is a strange notion of justice!

As for the note that "The position is that Jersey has been delivering justice week in, week out for centuries.". I suggest that he decide instead of going by what appears to be received hearsay, look into Jersey history. Here is an interesting example from Ragg's "A Popular History of Jersey", which I think is precisely pertinent to the present situation:

A curious case, too, occurred in the April of 1822, concerning the relationship of Lieut.-Bailiff Sir Thomas Le Breton, to John W. Dupre and J. Poingdestre, two complainants in a trial for forgery held in the Royal Court, which appears to have caused no little stir on the Island, and resulted in an appeal to higher powers, the plea being that the Bailiff, as both brother-in-law and nephew to the persons defrauded, was thereby not a fitting person to act as presiding Magistrate in the case. At least, such was the opinion expressed in Court by a Jurat named Anley, who proposed that the matter should be referred to the whole body of the Court. This was done on April 22nd, 1822, with the result that the full Court decided against the Bailiff. " From which extraordinary decision," says Le Quesne, "John Dumaresq, Procurator General, and Francis John Le Couteur, Advocate-General, appealed ; upon which it pleased His Majesty that the said order of the Royal Court be rescinded and the trial proceed with Sir Thomas Le Breton as presiding Magistrate.

So not much change then about "justice" either! How would Mr Bailhache comment on that case? Does he think the outcome - that Sir Thomas Le Breton should try the case - was just - given the clear conflict of interests? Was this one of those examples of delivering justice "for centuries", or was it more obviously a case where a principles of disinterested jurisprudence were overruled? I feel that if this happened today, the Attorney General would absent himself from the case because of a perceived potential conflict of interests, but in those days, justice - this is the "centuries old justice" - ran on different lines.

How would Mr Bailhache comment on that case? Answers on a postcard to the : The Bailhache Foundation for Historical Ignorance.

Weekend Musings

The existence of social evils, that is to say, of social conditions under which many men are suffering, can be comparatively well established. Those who suffer can judge for themselves, and the others can hardly deny that they would not like to change places

- Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies


http://www.thisisjersey.com/2008/08/16/poverty-states-call-on-charity/

A CHARITY that helps Islanders in urgent need has been receiving letters from States departments asking for help for children and families whose needs cannot be met through the new income support system. Colin Taylor, of the William and Helena Taylor Trust, says that many people are falling through the benefits net. He regularly receives official letters from childcare officers, social workers and youth workers who work for the Heath and Social Services department asking for help for families with nowhere else to turn. He also receives letters from school heads requesting help for children. 'The people making these requests are professionals in their fields and must feel that there is nowhere in the system for them to go to help their clients. That is a situation that needs to be addressed,' he said.

The article in the JEP went on to say that - a year ago - Senator Paul Routier had sat down with Colin Taylor, and concluded that there was not a lot that could be done within the existing Income Support law, that most of the cases who were coming to Mr Taylor could not in fact be helped through the States system.

It strikes me that if you are a politician whose responsibility this is - like Senator Routier - and the law is not sufficient, then it is your duty to amend to law in order to prevent all the avoidable suffering and misery that this situation occurs. One year down the line, and it seems that nothing much has been done, and by all accounts the new income support scheme is worse than the old patchwork quilt. To say when people are falling through the cracks that "this is the law" sounds like the pitiless motto of Inspector Javert in Victor Hugo's Les Miserable:

Jean Valjean: You never temper justice with mercy?
Inspector Javert: No, we might as well understand each other, Monsieur Madeliene. I administer the law - good, bad, or indifferent - it's no business of mine, but the law to the letter!

Now that might be excusable for a civil servant, who after all, has to apply existing laws. I see no grounds for the law being used as an excuse to hide behind by Senator Routier. It is politicians who are responsible for policy, and they are responsible for reforming an existing law if it is not working as well as it might. The income support law was a reform on a grand scale, and it would be surprising if there were not problems arising which need to be addressed. As Popper notes:

Bearing in mind the general principle of learning from mistakes, and the function of experiments in science, social reforms can be viewed as experiments and sensible politicians will monitor the results and look out for unexpected complications, unintended consequences...

Why has Paul Routier done so little? Does he think that this is acceptable?

It often seems to me that many of our politicians need a grounding in the work of the philosopher John Rawls. In his "Theory of Justice", Rawls posed the following

no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance

According to this, a just society is the one you would construct if you did not know where you fitted into the society - rich or poor - but had to decide how to organise the society based on this "veil of ignorance". As Rawls argues, if you do not know how you will end up in your own conceived society, you are not likely to privilege any one class of people, but rather develop a scheme of justice that treats all fairly. In particular, Rawls argues that the poorest members of society will be maximised, because you do not know if you will end up there.

That is a rational basis for improving our society when people fall through the cracks in the income support scheme - there is also the way of empathy, of considering the case of other people, and putting yourselves in their shoes, a task which many politicians seem singularly ill-equipped, with a few notable exceptions. It is likely that the reason why many in the States found Senator Syvret's speech at Christmas so disturbing was that it was clearly heartfelt, and called upon them to feel enough to make an emphatic response as well.

Simon Baron-Cohen, one of the psychologists who made the breakthrough about "theory of mind" in autism, is convinced that lack of empathy is at the root of many political problems, and in how they are shaped. This is his "dangerous idea" from the Edge Foundation "big question" of 2006:

Imagine a political system based not on legal rules (systemizing) but on empathy. Would this make the world a safer place?

The UK Parliament, US Congress, Israeli Knesset, French National Assembly, Italian Senato della Repubblica, Spanish Congreso de los Diputados, - what do such political chambers have in common? Existing political systems are based on two principles: getting power through combat, and then creating/revising laws and rules through combat.

Combat is sometimes physical (toppling your opponent militarily), sometimes economic (establishing a trade embargo, to starve your opponent of resources), sometimes propaganda-based (waging a media campaign to discredit your opponent's reputation), and sometimes through voting-related activity (lobbying, forming alliances, fighting to win votes in key seats), with the aim to 'defeat' the opposition.

Creating/revising laws and rules is what you do once you are in power. These might be constitutional rules, rules of precedence, judicial rulings, statutes, or other laws or codes of practice. Politicians battle for their rule-based proposal (which they hold to be best) to win, and battle to defeat the opposition's rival proposal.

This way of doing politics is based on "systemizing". First you analyse the most effective form of combat (itself a system) to win. If we do x, then we will obtain outcome y. Then you adjust the legal code (another system). If we pass law A, we will obtain outcome B.

My colleagues and I have studied the essential difference between how men and women think. Our studies suggest that (on average) more men are systemizers, and more women are empathizers. Since most political systems were set up by men, it may be no coincidence that we have ended up with political chambers that are built on the principles of systemizing.

So here's the dangerous new idea. What would it be like if our political chambers were based on the principles of empathizing? It is dangerous because it would mean a revolution in how we choose our politicians, how our political chambers govern, and how our politicians think and behave. We have never given such an alternative political process a chance. Might it be better and safer than what we currently have? Since empathy is about keeping in mind the thoughts and feelings of other people (not just your own), and being sensitive to another person's thoughts and feelings (not just riding rough-shod over them), it is clearly incompatible with notions of "doing battle with the opposition" and "defeating the opposition" in order to win and hold on to power.

Currently, we select a party (and ultimately a national) leader based on their "leadership" qualities. Can he or she make decisions decisively? Can they do what is in the best interests of the party, or the country, even if it means sacrificing others to follow through on a decision? Can they ruthlessly reshuffle their Cabinet and "cut people loose" if they are no longer serving their interests? These are the qualities of a strong systemizer.

Note we are not talking about whether that politician is male or female. We are talking about how a politician (irrespective of their sex) thinks and behaves.

We have had endless examples of systemizing politicians unable to resolve conflict. Empathizing politicians would perhaps follow Mandela and De Klerk's examples, who sat down to try to understand the other, to empathize with the other, even if the other was defined as a terrorist. To do this involves the empathic act of stepping into the other's shoes, and identifying with their feelings.

The details of a political system based on empathizing would need a lot of working out, but we can imagine certain qualities that would have no place.

Gone would be politicians who are skilled orators but who simply deliver monologues, standing on a platform, pointing forcefully into the air to underline their insistence - even the body language containing an implied threat of poking their listener in the chest or the face - to win over an audience. Gone too would be politicians who are so principled that they are rigid and uncompromising.

Instead, we would elect politicians based on different qualities: politicians who are good listeners, who ask questions of others instead of assuming they know the right course of action. We would instead have politicians who respond sensitively to another, different point of view, and who can be flexible over where the dialogue might lead. Instead of seeking to control and dominate, our politicians would be seeking to support, enable, and care.


http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_4.html

Culpability and Respectability

The second blind spot in the Gaffer's make-up was that he, with an eagle eye which could pin-point a boy throwing a stone at two hundred yards, who knew every trick his charges could perpetrate, failed to understand that we had both resident and visiting pederasts.

Two gentlemen, always welcomed by The Gaffer and matron, shared a house in the town and asked the boys there for tea on Sundays. More than tea and cakes were involved however. I went to the house only once (the host's aged mother was blindly knitting while it all went on around her) and left quickly through a window when I could not dodge around the rooms any more. Others described how they had made similar getaways. One of these genial householders used to come to our home to play the piano for hymns on a Sunday evening and he later attained high civic office and sat as a magistrate.

- Leslie Thomas, In My Wildest Dreams: An Autobiography

I am not suggesting that any of the current Jersey judiciary is compromised in the Jersey child abuse enquiry to the extent given in the quotation above. What it does show - very clearly I think - is how these kind of people can be - to the outside world - devout and upstanding citizens, the kind of people in authority whom no one - especially those in authority above them - would easily believe to be capable of such crimes.

It is notable that with the case of Victoria College, and Jervis-Dykes, that this was very much the attitude of the Headmaster and the Deputy Head - that their colleague was a fine teacher, someone whom they and they boys respected, the head of mathematics, and therefore could not be guilty - it was the boy's word against his. Even when they could see that there was sufficient evidence accumulating of misconduct on off-Island trips, the Deputy Headmaster (now a Jurat) judged (or perhaps misjudged) that Jervis-Dykes should be allowed to resign "with dignity" because Jervis Dykes had served the College "in an outstandingly competent and conscientious way". If this had been so allowed, goodness knows where he might be teaching now.

Similarly, the mention of Wilfred Krichevski as connected with the Haut de La Garenne case has been greeted with considerable derision because he was a notable and respected politician, and therefore - it is assumed - could not be connected with the case. Why someone who was a child at Haut de La Garenne should pluck such a name out of the distant political past, or why someone should have such a grudge against him after so many years, seems to be questions not asked, and make me more inclined to believe that there might well be something in it.

Witnesses are deprived of credibility, and anyone in child care are vouched for by their colleagues, who cannot consider that their own judgement might be in error. More recent cases of this happening was (1) Anton Skinner, a man named in Panorama as being responsible for the child protection services when many examples of appalling abuse were concealed (2) The case of the McGuire's conduct at Blanche Pierre was unacceptable, but - in a report from 1990 - said that "by way of mitigation it was a stressful job...Mrs McGuire agreed to retire voluntarily from running the group-home - and would, instead, come and work in the Family Development Centre." (3) The letter written by Iris Le Feuvre thanking the McGuires on their retirement for their excellent work.

Or take this account by Stuart Syvret which highlights this problem:

I was asking Frank Walker a supplementary question to the effect that when I was H & SS Minister, senior civil servants had lied to me about the case of Simon Bellwood. Did he think it acceptable for civil servants to lie to politicians? Before he could answer, Senator Terry Le Main... interrupted and began shouting that it was "disgraceful" to ask such a question and that "civil servants didn't lie."

It is no wonder that a recent story in the Times notes that:

A furious memorandum from the senior detective in the Jersey child murder and abuse investigation claims that it has been hampered by prosecutors, destroying victims' faith in the justice system...Mr Lenny Harper claims that the island's Attorney-General and his office are held in "total contempt" by victims of child abuse after repeatedly failing to bring offenders to justice. Mr Harper's memo gives warning that potential witnesses are keeping silent because suspects are being freed without charge on apparently spurious grounds.. In another child abuse case, Mr Harper writes, the police experienced delays after sending a file this April to Mr Thomas about Jane and Alan Maguire, who had run a care home. A previous prosecution against the Maguires for assault was dropped for lack of evidence in 1998 by Michael Birt, QC, then the Attorney-General. Mr Birt is now the second most powerful judge as Deputy Bailiff. "Naturally, as I was Attorney-General at the time, I would not sit judicially in any case which may be brought in the future involving the Maguires," he said this week. The Maguires retired to France and no extradition has yet been sought.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4526531.ece

News from Nowhere - The Usual Rubbish

Encyclopedia Insulae, 5th edition, 2005

The Channel Island of Malaisey is often known as the "forgotten Channel Island". Larger than Guernsey, smaller than Jersey, both more southerly and closer to France. The origins of the name, Malaise, are unknown, but the tourism guides commonly joke that sea-sick sailors, suffering from the malaise of stormy weather, named the Island. It has a ministerial government, headed by the elderly First Minister, Gerry A. Trick.

Scribblings from the Ledger of Gerry Trick, 14th August 2008

I was pleased to welcome our new Deputy Police Chief for Malaisey. He is Chief Inspector Desmond Hiccup, from Letsby Avenue, in North Yorkshire, and winner of the Les Dawson Guerning Award, as testified by the only picture that seemed to be available for the Malaisey Evening Star.

Des Hiccup replaced DCI Arthur Wellsey, a bluff Irishman who is going back home after a period of intense detective work he described as his "insular campaign". We all wished him well in his retirement to a small farm in Ulster, where he will be out and about in the Wellington boots that formed part of his retirement present. It is a long way to here from there, so he will have to telegraph any messages to us.

Speaking of Ireland, I heard that Craggy Island Construction (a company blessed by three Irish Priests) is about to start on a new development on Marineland, which they will call Titanic Quay. Craggy Island have done very well under their managing director, a certain Dermot O'Lition, since coming to Malaisey, and have almost single handedly supplied enough rubble from demolishing old buildings to create the reclaimed land which makes up Marineland. Dermot O'Lition, who likes to be known as a good "family man" - or is it "The Family", he is on about - has now managed to knock down all the old hotels and guesthouses we didn't need, and build lots of very expensive luxury flats instead. Wally Frankl, the former First Minister, says they are wonderful, as he has bought one already and plans to rent it out to anyone who can afford it, so that they can see how wonderful it is too. Isn't he such a kind man!

The Marineland Administration Department is under the guidance of its managing director, somebody Izzard, I think, though perhaps I am getting him confused with the comedian Eddie Izzard. I'm not sure what he does, but he must do a lot, because we pay him around £180,000 a year to do it. Perhaps he is related to the comedian, because when Phil Holland heard that, he said "The joke is on us", whatever that is supposed to mean. Anyhow he does lots of discussing matters with the Faust Federation, and Nero Corbusier, and anyone who had to deal with either of those certainly needs danger money.

The saga of Craggy Island Construction's involvement in Marineland goes back a number of years, to the days of Don Mafiosi. Don Mafiosi flooded Windsor Valley to give us lots of water, but there was a fierce battle between him and an environmentalist called Richomme Le Tippe. Le Tippe was a real eccentric, with his mad shock of white hair, and flowery bow ties, which is probably why Sir Robespierre d'Hachet, our esteemed Bailiff, recently made him a Magistrate. Anyhow, I digress. Le Tippe got so fed up that he decided to give up on environmental matters, and get his revenge of Don Mafiosi, and make a lot of money as well. He set up Grede Holdings, and argued that according to ancient rites in ancient records, which Grede Holdings had bought, he had a "droit d'argent", which translates as "a right to coin money". All of Marineland, he said, belonged to Grede Holdings, but if he got just a little bit, enough to sell to Craggy Island Construction for ten million pounds or more, he would retire a happy man. Also happy would be all the other shareholders of Grede Holdings, because they would all share in this good - and large - fortune.

Malaisey's new waste disposal strategy has become a tourist attraction. Recently, a Canada magazine ran a feature on the Channel Islands, and the inside page had a nice picture of a crofter's cottage by the sea, with a backdrop of a mountain. Our Jersey neighbour's newspaper's Under the Clock couldn't work out where it was: surely no Channel Island has a mountain, they said. Malaisey didn't until recently. The problem is the department of Technology, Waste and Transport Services, who for years now has been trying to get a new incinerator for rubbish. When the old one kept breaking down, we had such a backlog that we had to dump it, and it gradually took upon the appearance of a vast rubbish mountain. With a little topsoil added, and a judicious cardboard cut-out of a crofter's cottage, we took a nice photograph to send to the Canadian magazine. Oz Lippy is very pleased, and hopes we can have an artificial ski slope on it sometime; he calls this a "downward planning tourism strategy". Which some of us think rather sums up the parlous state of tourism on Malaisey!

Lastly, we celebrated Malaisey's special tourist day, the Battle of Broccoli, in which exhibitors from all the Island parishes come with floats decorated with a wide variety of peculiar and colourful fruit and vegetables. Vegetables are a special interest of mine in the States, so I am always pleased to see it is such a wonderful success. There were a many good floats, including "Indiana Jones and the Vegetable Marrow", "The Dark Potato Blight", "The Wizard of Orange", and "Cherry Poppins". Some of the vegetables look rather rude, and would have been greatly prized by that Enid Rancid when she had her television show about life's oddities. The best exhibit was a movable service by the Dean of Malaisey, Christopher Syn, who entered with a float called "Lettuce Pray", which he said was such a great success he will do the same next year. If we get enough funding that is, or it will be Lettuce Pay! In the old days, people used to eat the exhibits after the display, but we don't do that now. I think that elderly States members worried that people might not know quite what a vegetable looked like, and eat the wrong thing, so they stopped it.

Our celebrity star, who will ride alongside Miss Malaisey, will this year be Richard Donkey, the celebrated atheist comedian, and star of the recent TV series, "The Selfish Genius of an Oxford Donkey". The battle looks like a lot of fun, and early in the week, the Malaisey Weather department was predicting heavy rain, which means, of course, it will be glorious sunshine. Hurrah!

Ethics and the Finance Sector

Is Jersey acting to high ethical standards in its finance sector?

In order to answer this, we need to look at how offshore/onshore operates, and what business over here are actually doing, how money is flowing through the system, and how this fits into the global economy, and then ask - can Jersey make a difference in any way, and what ethical standards can apply?

Client confidentially does not help, as it tends to obscure what is actually going on, and lends itself to accusations of "secrecy" and "tax evasion". I think that there is an awful lot of nonsense talked by those who should know better, but possibly have their own hidden agenda, on the basis of far too little information, and a good deal of supposition and rumour which is treated as fact. One book on offshore practice by a U.K. academic suggests a parallel between Jersey's privateers and what he calls modern day piracy. That sort of approach does not strike me as unbiased or objective.

I have been looking just at banking, which is only one aspect of offshore business, and have the following preliminary notes, which shows how complicated matters are.One fact which appears evident is that tax evasion is possible by going "offshore" from one jurisdiction to another (which does not just mean Jersey and small offshore centres, but any place where banking takes place outside the jurisdiction in which someone lives), but that does not form the only part, or even a significant part, of offshore services. In other words, an American citizen can go offshore by placing money in a Canada bank. He might do this for tax evasion, but he might do this simply because of other considerations - he may have a better rate of return on Canadian investments, he may have property or business in Canada, and wants to avoid losing money on exchange rates, etc. This means that the money goes out of the American economy, and out of American banks, and they lose money from that, and this effects the American money supply, but that has nothing to do with tax evasion.

Because of lower overheads and operating costs, and lower internal tax regimes, offshore banks in places like Jersey can provide cheaper services and higher rates of return. An analogous economic system would be the difference between high street shops in Jersey and internet buying. Because of lower overheads (town rent, staffing, town rates, etc), internet shops can often provide cheaper prices that local stores, so tempting people to buy "offshore", but no one would suggest Jersey people should therefore "buy local" or be forced to do so. "

High ethical standards" have nothing to do with "shopping around", and while Jersey shopkeepers and tax authorities will lose money over internet shopping, I do not know that they could make claims that internet shopping is "unethical" because it is "harmful competition"!

So tax evasion is not the only issue in looking at ethics, there is also the issue of larger governments (who quite happily run their own offshore operations, e.g. the USA with its "International Banking Facilities (IBF)." ) using the excuse of tax evasion to bully smaller jurisdictions into making changes to their tax regimes that have nothing to do with tax evasion, but everything to do with protectionism. If you examine how the IBFs operate in the USA, it is exactly what Jersey is told it cannot do with exempt companies! In Europe, despite the drive towards tax harmonisation in the EU, even France still supplies special tax rates for particular entities with offshore links (i.e. they benefit non-residents!) - one example is the "patent holding company".

In this respect the EU's slogan of "unfair tax competition" looks as if it needs the phrase "from outsiders" added to it!Obviously this is only one aspect of offshore. There is also labour outsourcing, and the reasons why offshore trusts and fund management can provide better vehicles than onshore - but we can see that there are grounds for not taking "offshore" as a euphemism for "tax evasion", and when one begins to examine what is actually going on, the idea of "money stolen from other jurisdictions" while very emotive, is not true to the realities of the economy.

Going back to my internet shopping analogy, the competition means Jersey high street stores have a harder time making ends meet, but to say that internet shopping was "stealing money from local traders and the local economy" is to abuse the word "stealing". If one is a Marxist, that would be fine, and they often use such loaded phrases, but if one holds that a market economy should be open to competition, then it is not.

Is Jersey acting to high ethical standards in its finance sector? Probably, with the new Tax Information Exchange Agreements, better than before, but certainly not much worse than other countries. There is scope for all of them to improve their act. To single out small jurisdictions while avoiding larger ones that are more difficult to tackle - e.g. the U.S.A. - is more suggestive of a strategy of picking on easy targets than making an ethical stance.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Useful site for details on low tax vehicles - the link gives France, but other jurisdictions are available from the index.

http://www.lowtax.net/lowtax/html/offon/france/fraspec.html

Book of the post:

International Tax Competition, editor Rajiv Biswas

Setting Bad Examples

Oliver Finegold: Mr Livingstone, "Evening Standard." How did tonight go?
Ken Livingstone: How awful for you. Have you thought of having treatment?
Finegold: How did tonight go?
Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment?
Finegold: Was it a good party? What does it mean for you?
Livingstone: What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal?
Finegold: No, I'm Jewish, I wasn't a German war criminal and I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go?
Mr Livingstone: Arr right, well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard, you are just doing it because you are paid to, aren't you?
Finegold: Great, I have you on record for that. So, how was tonight?
Mr Livingstone: It's nothing to do with you because your paper is a load of scumbags and reactionary bigots.
Finegold: I'm a journalist and I'm doing my job. I'm only asking for a comment.
Mr Livingstone: Well, work for a paper that doesn't have a record of supporting fascism

In a previous blog, and on his site, I asked Stuart Syvret to make an apology for his anti-Semitic remark. See:

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2008/08/apologies-please-stuart.html

Now this is Stuart's response to my call for an apology.

My e-mail exchange with Freddy Cohen, in which I had accused him of gross hypocrisy for his betrayal of an unambiguous election promise to support exempting medical services and supplies from the Goods & Services Tax. He responded by, essentially, arguing that he resiled from his election promise because he was "a team-player". [The "team" being the Council of Ministers] To which I responded that the "need to be a team-player" may well have been used as an excuse by Nazis on trial at Nuremburg. He responded by saying he had never been so insulted in his life - and would never speak to me again (great). What - of course - one won't read in The Rag is the rest of the correspondence. I replied by saying that my remarks were intended to be insulting; as I knew exactly what such things meant. This because my mother's maiden name was Gould, and she was borne in a Nazi internment camp following my grandmother's deportation by the occupying Nazis. So, unsurprisingly, this latter part of the correspondence has still not appeared in The Rag. And people think I'm paranoid about that wretched journal? So, Tony - you want me to apologise to Freddy Cohen?

Yes, how you act gives the lead to others. Behaviour has consequences, and other people may not have what you see as a very nuanced approach to these matters. Look at one effect of Ken Livingstone's comment.

A concerned primary school teacher who, after telling off one of her pupils for who calling a Jewish child "a Nazi", was given the excuse that "The Mayor said it was OK, so why can't I do it

Also part of the exchange with Cohen is now fairly public, and sounds as presented like a general anti-Semitic remark, which must cause offense to members of the Jewish congregation in Jersey. They have good cause to feel touchy about such matters. Neo-Nazi movements are still around, and a recent Channel 4 Dispatches showed London newspaper vendors selling "Mein Kampf" - in Arabic. It doesn't take much to set the ball rolling, and when a culture exists in which remarks like that are taken as acceptable, we have gone a long way back towards the kind of culture which was a fertile soil for anti-Semitism.

Why use an anti-Semitic insult, when Philip Zimbardo, in "The Lucifer Effect" shows how situations shape the way people respond, which is what may well have happened in Cohen's case? A better case - might be to argue that as an outsider, being Jewish, he may have been desperate for acceptance, to the extent of betraying manifesto promises for existential gain, that of being part of the "inner ring".

C.S. Lewis comments on this kind of desire

I believe that in all men's lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside. This desire, in one of its forms, has indeed had ample justice done to it in literature. I mean, in the form of snobbery. Victorian fiction is full of characters who are hag-ridden by the desire to get inside that particular Ring which is, or was, called Society. But it must be clearly understood that "Society," in that sense of the word, is merely one of a hundred Rings and snobbery therefore only one form of the longing to be inside.

This is a slippery slope, and notice how well it fits as a motivation for betraying manifesto promises. It is not to do with illegality but with a moral decay, with the gradual erosion of those ideals for which people enter politics. I think the following passage fits very well the phenomena which we have all observed, of a high minded individual going into politics, with the best of motives, and then - a year or more later - we wonder where those ideals have all gone, and why.

Over a drink or a cup of coffee, disguised as a triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still... the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which is not quite in accordance with the technical rules of fair play: something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which "we"-and at the word "we" you try not to blush for mere pleasure-something "we always do." And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man's face-that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face-turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude: it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

In his reply to my comments, Stuart commented:

Firstly, as explained elsewhere, I have Jewish ancestry myself - and my maternal family suffered internment by the Nazis. So "anti-Semitic"? Sorry - it just won't wash.

That is a nonsense. Some Jews have even set up an anti-Semitic cartoon contest (http://drawn.ca/2006/02/14/israeli-anti-semitic-cartoon-contest/): "Amitai Sandy, the publisher of Tel-Aviv, Israel-based Dimona Comix, and founder of the contest jokes, "We'll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published! No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!" So, I'm sorry, your argument won't wash either!

More seriously, consider also the case of the Irène Némirovsky controversy - a Jewish writer, who tried to dissociate herself from other Jews in her life as well as being extremely unpleasant about Jews in her work, at least in the early novels she wrote and which secured her fame. The idea that somebody Jewish cannot be alienated from their roots to the point where they made anti-Semitic remarks about other Jews is quite possible. It has happened before. Look up "internalised oppression", for a good start on Google!

Secondly, "giving offence"? Just what & why should that be any big deal in societal discourse - at least if one comes at things from a post-enlightenment perspective? Sometimes offensive things need to be said - as part of debate - as part just getting at the truth. Indeed one of the banes of Jersey politics is that people attach so much importance to "politeness" - rather than the truth.

If by "post-enlightenment perspective", Stuart means "an excuse to be insulting when I feel like it", then I am sure he can do this very well. Postmodernism - which is what I assume he means by post-enlightenment - is really often little more than rhetorical posturing which avoids argument. In fact, a good deal of debate is conducted today at a shallow and trivial level... We are all used to, and tired of, the heated exchanges which consist simply of name-calling. If one wants an Occupation analogy, debate is avoided because the combatants merely want to dig into worn out positions and lob shells at "the other side" from the safety of their own bunker. I'm not saying that everything Stuart says is like that, but when he descends into insults, it is a case of out with the hand-grenades and mortars, and fire them off in the hope of provoking some response. To paraphrase him, I think he often writes a lot of sense, but it is obscured, because one of the banes of Stuart Syvret's politics is that he attaches so much importance to "insults" rather than the truth. He should consider how Leavis attacked C.P. Snow with a vicious ad hominem attack, and how the dignified way in which Snow responded left Leavis looking almost pathological in his insult.

Thinking about it - how could any sensible person look to politicians as a specie for "moral guidance"? Isn't "morality" and "politicians" an oxymoronic concept?

A good joke, but don't always paint the picture too black. Look at those politicians who have actually made changes which have benefited ordinary people's lives. At random, in no particular order, Nye Bevan, William Wilberforce, Lord Shaftesbury, Phillip Le Feuvre, Norman Le Brocq, Abraham Lincoln - to name a few.

Now let me give you a joke. I've yet to find a local politician apologise - even Stuart resolutely refuses to do so - "Isn't "apology" and "politician" an oxymoronic concept?

Links:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4746016.stm

London's mayor has been suspended from office on full pay for four weeks for comparing a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard.
The Adjudication Panel for England ruled Ken Livingstone had brought his office into disrepute when he acted in an "unnecessarily insensitive" manner.
The hearing followed a complaint from the Jewish Board of Deputies, which had not called for the mayor to be suspended over the comment he made to the Evening Standard's Oliver Finegold outside a public-funded party. The chairman of the panel, David Laverick, said it had decided on a ban because Mr Livingstone had failed to realise the seriousness of his outburst. He said: "The case tribunal accepts that this is not a situation when it would be appropriate to disqualify the mayor. "The case tribunal is, however, concerned that the mayor does seem to have failed, from the outset of this case, to have appreciated that his conduct was unacceptable, was a breach of the code (the GLA code of conduct) and did damage to the reputation of his office." Mr Laverick went on to say that the complaint should never have reached the board but did so because of Mr Livingstone's failure to apologise. In a statement, the Board of Deputies of British Jews said it regretted the guilty result, but said Mr Livingstone had been "the architect of his own misfortune" by failing to recognise the upset caused. It added it had never sought anything more than an apology and an acknowledgement that his words were inappropriate for the "elected representative of Londoners of all faiths and beliefs".

The Inner Ring, C.S. Lewis
http://www.geocities.com/bigcslewisfan/

Article on Irène Némirovsky
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/22/secondworldwar.religion

Books:
The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo
The Two Cultures, C.P. Snow

Blaze destroys wooden outbuildings

Breaking news from Channel Report:

http://www5.channelonline.tv/news/templates/jerseynews2.aspx?articleid=16033&zoneid=1

Blaze destroys wooden outbuildings

Wooden outbuildings at a light industrial site in Jersey caught fire this evening. At one time a plume of acrid black smoke was blowing over the St Brelade's Bay area. Two units were severely damaged - they contained cars and fishing gear - but a team of 20 firefighters managed to prevent the blaze spreading to other nearby buildings. The fire was in the La Moye Farm area and the cause has yet to be established. Nearby residents were advised to keep their windows closed. The fire was spotted at around 6.45pm and was under control within an hour. But had it not been for the prompt action of the first firefighters at the scene removing acetylene gas bottles, the blaze could have been far worse. Two crews from St Helier and a crew from St Brelade attended the blaze.

I was in the vicinity at the time, and noticed an ambulance also going to and from the scene, so perhaps some firefighters needed to be treated for smoke inhalation. The honorary police turned up promptly and directed traffic away from going towards the area - for some reason fires bring out the voyeur (or vulture?) in people, and the narrow road to Beauport could have easily become blocked for emergency services. Don't people think?

I spoke to a chap (a retired States' Chief Officer) who lives along the start of the road, and he told me that he had complained several times to States departments about how this light industrial estate was not properly monitored, and was a health and safety hazard. The same seems to have been true of the Broadland's area, which was also described as "a disaster waiting to happen". I do wonder how well regulated business like this are, and how often health and safety go to inspect them. Where acetylene gas bottles are concerned, regulation needs to be tight, and it appears to be extremely lax.

The Health and Safety Inspectorate enforces wide-ranging and effective legislation which sets standards for health and safety at work. It forms part of the Social Security department, and is already looking into the fairground accident which happened despite inspections.

The Minister for Social Security is Senator Paul Routier, standing again for election. The Assistant Minister is Deputy Peter Troy, hoping to try for Senator. Perhaps the forthcoming elections will help them to see that the Health and Safety Inspectorate ensures that fires like this are minimised, and ramshackle businesses, especially those who leave acetylene gas bottles on the premises, are properly monitored, and closed down if they pose a significant risk.

They do issue prohibition notices at:

http://www.gov.je/SocialSecurity/HSI/Whats+New/Noticedetails.htm

but there are not a great many, and you have to go back to 2004 to find "inappropriate storage of highly flammable liquids".

I've also - out at St Martin, near the chiropractor on the road down to St Catherine - seen people digging up the road with hammer drills, with no protective clothing, not even eye masks. That was only last year.

Please post any incidents where health and safety is definitely flouted on the comments area. Perhaps we can see the scale of the problem.