Blogwatch Jersey

http://st-ouennais.livejournal.com/122895.html

An interesting article from "A View from the West" on electronic voting

For those of you who doubt this could be done locally, The British Computer Society membership circa 70,000 show the way.

To vote by internet you will need to enter the following two-part security code:
Security Code part one: ********
Security Code part two: *****
The voting site is open 24 hours a day.
Yours sincerely
Electoral Reform Services

I'm sure that is the way to go, perhaps not yet with regard to Islandwide elections, but regarding Parish Assemblies, when a few people can pass a motion "on the nod", because eight o'clock on a Wednesday night is simply not always possible, especially if you have a young family to look after. Moreover, if all those wanting to vote turned out, health and safety would prohibit their all being in the Parish hall, even if they could all do a "Guinness Book of Records" for most people in a Parish Hall.

Let's not forget how the Parish assembly can easily be packed with those who want to pass a measure, and how Roger Holland was elected as a Centenier by a Parish Assembly. Clearly, paper voting is time consuming and costly, but the present alternative is a nonsense. A footpath can be moved or extinguished, people elected (like Holland) who have the support of those present, and matters which can seriously impact on the parishioners is decided by a fraction of the electorate.

The "Variable Man", a short story by American writer Philip K Dick, saw how such electronic voting could return power to the citizen. Clearly there are concerns, what John Stuart Mill called "the tyranny of the majority", so safeguards are needed, but at present we have the tyranny of the minority. When the Parish was little larger than a small town, that made sense. Does it make sense now?

"Afraid I must get back to the labs. Lots of reconstruction work being started." Sherikov dug into his bulging briefcase. "By the way.. One little thing. While you're recovering here, you might like to look at these." He tossed a handful of schematics on the bed.

Cole picked them up slowly. "What's this?"

"Just a little thing I designed." Sherikov arose and lumbered toward the door. "We're realigning our political structure to eliminate any recurrence of the Reinhart affair. This will block any more one-man power grabs." He jabbed a thick finger at the schematics. "It'll turn power over to all of us, not to just a limited number one person could dominate-the way Reinhart dominated the Council.

"This gimmick makes it possible for citizens to raise and decide issues directly. They won't have to wait for the Council to verbalize a measure. Any citizen can transmit his will with one of these, make his needs register on a central control that automatically responds. When a large enough segment of the population wants a certain thing done, these little gadgets set up an active field that touches all the others. An issue won't have to go through a formal Council. The citizens can express their will long before any bunch of gray-haired old men could get around to it."


http://voiceforchildren.blogspot.com/2011/02/no-body-remains.html

Meanwhile on Voice for Children, they are taking up the issue of the broken promise by the Council of Ministers. Of course, Jersey does not have a monopoly on reneging on promises, as a comparison of the Liberal party manifesto, and their Coalition policy support makes painfully obvious, and "real government means making tough decisions" usually means "we have betrayed you". They are focusing on Ian Le Marquand's position, in particular:

On BBC Radio Jersey he was telling the listeners that things have changed since the promise of an inquiry was made back in 2008. He told us that back then people believed there were children's bodies found up at Haute de la Garenne which turned out not to be true. The more astute listener would have picked up that he said there were no "bodies" - not that there were no body "parts".

Things have changed very much, but if Ian le Marquand had noted the press releases, he will see there was nothing about "children's bodies", only "the remains of a child" - although I'm not wholly convinced that was a wise description for what was a small fragment; certainly when I heard it on the radio, what came to my mind was lots of bones. I'm also not so sure about the term "numerous juvenile body parts" that Voice uses for - what I imagine are being referred to - the teeth found.

But there was no doubt that the cautious language was blown up by the press, and the investigating officer, Lenny Harper, clearly said that as police procedure, they had been advised to treat the site as one of potential homicide, not that it was. The conflation of Lenny Harper's statements with the more lurid and fanciful press stories only really took form after the Gradwell / Warcup press conference, and has been a dominant narrative ever since. An enquiry would at least be able to draw attention away from the initial evidence (by then ruled out), and back to the very real stories of children who suffered abuse there.

Regarding the "skull" to "coconut", I think this should be left alone. Firstly, Lenny's own team, based on the historical material in which the fragment was set, were ruling it substantially out by date alone. Secondly, Lenny himself said that it was not part of the enquiry because of this, which is why he didn't pursue the chemical analysis.

http://jerseyattac.blogspot.com/

Jersey Attac, meanwhile leads with the story that "The EU has moved quickly to kill zero / ten in the Crown Dependencies", in which Richard Murphy notes:

if, as is the case in Jersey and the Isle of Man's zero / ten schemes the income tax system is built into the business profits system by reason of deeming there to be distributions from companies which are not technically taxed so that as a result of the deemed distributions those profits are instead taxed as the personal income of shareholders with the net effect being that business profits of locally owned companies are compulsorily taxed

Why doesn't Jersey look towards adopting as one option the EU compliant Luxembourg system, which would certainly provide one alternative structure for some companies, especially those which used to be "exempt tax" ones?

The Family Wealth Management Company (Société de gestion de patrimoine familial), known as SPF, was created by the law of 11 May 2007 to provide a dedicated vehicle for the management of private wealth on behalf of individuals. Its only purpose is to acquire, hold, manage and sell financial assets. It is not allowed to undertake any commercial activity.

The Family Wealth Management Company is designed as an investment company intended solely for individuals managing their private wealth. The term "family wealth" should be understood in the sense of the "private wealth of individuals". The law does not require a family link between the various shareholders.

From the standpoint of the Luxembourg taxation law, FWMCs are exempted from corporate income tax, local business tax and wealth tax .

FWMCs are subject to a subscription tax at the annual rate of 0.25% with a minimum tax of EUR 100 and a maximum of EUR 125,000.
The subscription tax is dependant on the amount of paid-up capital and on issue premiums and on the part of debts that would exceed the octuple of the paid-up capital and of the issue premium

No one has said this is against the EU Code of Conduct - indeed it was devised because the previous vehicle - which was like the Jersey exempt tax company - had to be closed down. Now there is nothing to stop the EU shutting this door, but they will have to do so fairly, which means tackling the tax haven activity in their own backyard, rather than just picking on softer targets elsewhere. If they were genuinely concerned with ethics, they would do this, but I suspect - not least because the auditors won't even sign off the EU budget - that there is a lot of internal hypocrisy within the EU, as evidenced by the banking secrecy of several of its jurisdictions.

In the meantime, I'm surprised that the clever Mr Ozouf has not managed to spot this one. Why reinvent the wheel, when the EU itself has numerous vehicles with EU roadworthiness certificates thoughtfully provided by themselves?