Via Media on Jersey

There is an interesting and "middle way" comment on Jersey in the Independent. It is I think a fair and balanced comment, although I notice that Frank Walker comes in for criticism yet again for "a number of rather insensitive comments", the journalist none the less noted that " islanders were unfailingly courteous, helpful and in general as keen to see justice done as anyone else."

 

He is also quite astute in noting the disparity between rich and poor with regard to the housing market, although I'm not sure that what he says is fair to all States Housing. Some of it - especially outside of St Helier - is very clean and pleasant.  Having delivered leaflets to around 4 housing estates in St Helier for the last election, I would say that most of the St Helier ones certainly could do with paint, and some definitely have urine smells in the public access spaces, and broken windows on the odd floor. A few were pretty pleasant. Going around, door to door, at election time is definitely one way to see the poorer sides of St Helier, and one wishes a few more politicians did their own leg-work rather than relying on supporters to do it for them.

 

 

 

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/independent/2008/03/jersey---as-cul.html

 

Minority Report: Jersey - as culturally, ethnically and financially varied as anywhere else
 By Jerome Taylor

 

Last week I was in Jersey covering the rather grim child abuse story at the Haut de la Garenne former children's home. The only other time I'd been to Jersey was as a tourist in my teens and like most people I left with images of a well-healed idyll filled with playboy millionaires, Jersey cows and picture-postcard rural scenes.

 

That's very much the image that the island's government would like us to see, not an island steeped in secrecy where decades of horrendous child abuse was allowed to go on uninvestigated and unpunished. I imagine, as always, the reality lies somewhere in the middle (although a number of rather insensitive comments from the island's Chief Minister Frank Walker haven't exactly helped the island's desperate bid to restore its rather tainted image).

 

But my week on the island also allowed me to do some digging on the people of Jersey and to discover a people just as culturally, racially and financially mixed as anywhere else on the mainland.

 

Using a UK mainland mobile phone on Jersey is pretty costly. The main networks are Jersey Telecom and Cable and Wireless which means you get charged roaming fees like on the continent. So deciding to buy a local sim card I ended up chancing upon a member of the island's tiny Muslim community.

 

"Aki" worked in a mobile phone store in Jersey's capital St Helier and told me that about 40 Muslims lived on the island and worshipped in a small mosque not far from the city centre. He said most of them were mainlanders with Bangladeshi heritage who came to the island and set up curry restaurants (the two "Indian restaurants" I ate in that week offered distinctly Bengali cuisine).

 

I shouldn't really have been surprised that Jersey has a small Muslim community. After all, why should this small island in the Channel be any different from the mainland? In fact, since World War 2 Jersey has assimilated all sorts of different communities.

 

Take five taxi rides on the island and there's a fair chance that at least three of the drivers will be either Irish or Scottish, one will be from London and the other will be an islander. Over the past 50 years Scots, Irish and Londoners have come in their thousands and the island's population has grown from around 65,000 in the 1960s to at least 91,000. "Old Jersey" families are probably outnumbered by newcomers nowadays and the indigenous "Jersey patois" language has all but died out.

 

There is also a sizeable Portuguese community which came over in the 60s and 70s to work as farm hands in the island's crucial potato farming industry. It's not uncommon to hear Portuguese spoken and many of these families' children are bilingual.

 

The enormous expansion of the tax haven's financial industry (the world's super rich have an estimated  £247bn hidden away in Jersey) has also led to another type of immigrant - the blackberry wielding mainland bankers who fill the planes flying daily between the island and London City Airport.

 

These people have bought up vast swathes of the island and property now easily commands London prices. A small two-bedroom flat in St Helier will set you back at least £450,000 judging by some of the estate agents windows I looked in.

 

But the super rich have effectively priced the indigenous population out of the housing market, particularly those living on low incomes. Jersey might have the third highest per capita income in the world (after Bermuda and Luxembourg) but 70 per cent of the island lives on less than £34,000 a year.

 

I went down to some of the council estates (known as "States Housing") and found grim tower blocks just as rife with drugs as anywhere on the mainland. Residents complained that the cost of living has shot up over the past ten years whilst owning a house is now all but impossible.

 

But despite the horror of what has unfolded at Haut de la Garenne and the understandable question marks over why no-one spoke out sooner, the one thing that will stay with me is just how friendly the island is to outsiders. Considering the world's media descended en masse last week and began uncovering an extremely unpleasant chapter in Jersey's recent history, islanders were unfailingly courteous, helpful and in general as keen to see justice done as anyone else.

 

There's a real feeling that the abusers will now be locked up and equally importantly that those who may have conspired to ignore or cover up what happened at Haut de la Garenne will finally be forced to answer why they kept quiet.