The Glorious Dead

How to look forward to Remembrance day, this time of the year, and also All Hallows Eve, All Souls Night, Samhain, that time of borderlands explored between the living and the dead? This poem tries to do something of that, and to go with it, I have chosen a painting by the extraordinary Spanish surrealist
Remedios Varo.

The Glorious Dead

On battlefields, the shadows of the dead,
Walk once more, where blood was shed;
And they cry for justice, cry for peace:
That wars may end, the killings cease,
Beyond the veil, on this sacred night,
We mourn, we weep, in candle light:
The glorious dead, those died in war,
Their voices echo beyond that door;
In ancient times, by dolmen came:
Times move on, but still the same;
Thin places, faint voices echo still,
Across the valley, upon the hill,
In Tara met the clan once more,
Where druids came, with olden lore;
The tribal chiefs, come gather round,
Bonfires burn, while musics sound;
The harp is playing: sweet and sad:
The glorious dead, the good and bad;
They died long ago, they died last year,

Lands far away, and lands so near
Of war, and pestilence, sickness, age
But be at peace, do not now rage!
This is the time for honour shown:
For all the dead, for bone of bone;
So we light our candles, do not fear,

As we mourn those so very dear;  
Take part in this journey, on our way:
Our own mortality, the price we pay,
For love and life, for joy and laughter,
Is pain and weeping, loss thereafter;
But in time alive, nothing is ever lost,
Of those who lived, those who crossed,
Beyond the veil, on this sacred night:
Like stars above, they shine in light.

Discover Lost Jersey - Part 8

I came across an edition of "Discover Jersey" , a guide book written in 1993 by Terry Palmer - that's 28 years ago. While the basic history remains the same, the tourism sites have seen a massive fall, and I thought it would be interesting to explore this guide - and my memories of those places, if I visited them, over the next weeks. The latter are in italics. How much we've lost!

This is the final posting. Clicking on the Label "Discover Lost Jersey" will get all the other posts in this series.

Butterfly Farm

Head north-east on 0103 to Haute Tombette for the Jersey Butterfly Centre which Arthur Rolland created after seeing the large butterflies of Seychelles. The family glasshouses were the first in Jersey to convert to the growing of carnations for bloom. which are still the main source of income, but after seeking the advice of the older Guernsey Butterfly Farm, the Rollands now have Jersey's first walk-in display of Iepidoptera, the major tourist attraction — unless people come for the tea—room, or the pet tarantula and python. (It‘s not actually a tarantula. a species which originated in Taranto: Italy; it's more a hairy-legged bird-eating spider from the tropics.) Whatever the attraction, visitors come by the coachload, so drive carefully on the narrow lanes.

This was one of the favourite "rest and recuperation" spots for coaches to stop. It had a small cafe serving snacks, nothing major on the gourmet front, and I'm not sure "tea room" fits something rather basic - but nice enough for a stop when out with our children. We never got to see the butterflies, although we did visit the butterfly farm in Guernsey. Sadly both attractions vanished when their owners died.

Jersey Diamond

Would you like to see the Koh-i-Noor Diamond? You can't. as it's in the Crown Jewels — but Jersey Diamond, overlooking Gorey Pier, has copies of many famous stones and is the island's leading gemmologist. It is also involved in the Living Legend.

Jersey Pottery. 

Pottery is much more mundane than diamonds. But the workshops of Jersey Pottery draw large crowds to Gorey Village, across the parish boundary in Grouville. The business began in the early 1950s with 12 people. and now has around 70 on the payroll, producing a range of around 300 items of merchandise including unlikely objects such as picture frames and clock cases, in an equally wide price range.

We used to pop to the Sail Loft Cafe for snacks and cooked food quite often. This was another popular venue for coaches, and the visitor could wander round the grounds watching pots being made, and being painted. There's still something called "Jersey Pottery" but in a gross violation of trade description, it is actually made in the UK for sale in Jersey. 

Happy memories of my youngest son's birthday party when they painted clay ties (to be fired later as a souvenir for each child), and had a birthday tea after - we brought the cake, but the excellent party food was supplied by the venue. Other odd memories involve my first taste of sushi, and dipping it into a plentiful amount of wasabi sauce  (which I didn't realise was very very hot!) before eating it - apparently, according to my son, who still laughs at the memory - my face suddenly went bright red, and I downed two large orange juices in quick succession.

Agricultural and Occupation Museums, Hougue Bie

But there‘s more to the Hougue Bie than just this mound. The Agricultural Museum has a display of farm machinery from the 19th cent onwards. outside which is a cluster of staddle stones, looking like giant mushrooms but used for supporting stocks of com. A stock? Before combine harvesters were invented, an armful of cut com was a sheaf, twelve of which stacked together made stock or shock.

The Geological Museum has rock samples from the island. Starting with shale. at 700,000,000 years. the oldest. The Archaeological Room looks from Palaeolithic man to the brief Roman incursion, and the Occupation Museum specialises in the 9-fi (2.7m) revving boat that Denis When used in his escape from St Aubin's Bay in 1941. Three nights later a British destroyer picked him up on the edge of a minefield near Portland Bill. He was the only islander to escape.

The geology and archaeology museums are still there, but the agricultural implements, plus an old Jersey railway carriage, found a better home at Pallot's Steam Museum where they can still be seen. The Occupation museum is now not so much a historical telling of the occupation as a memorial to the names and stories of those who died under the occupation - slave workers, islanders etc. It is a very powerful experience.

Scott’s Flawed Expeditions in IT Land

Scott’s Flawed Expeditions in IT Land

Interviewer: How will you meet the challenge?
Jim Hacker: It's far too early to give detailed proposals.
(Yes Minister)

I was thinking of Scott Wickenden’s namesake, Captain Scott of the Antarctic, whose expeditions into that realm were, despite the hype, an unqualified failure. Something similar seems to be the case with our Scott with relation to the States and its IT projects.

Scott and the EGov saga: The first attempt to reach the South Pole

This starts around June 2016, when a press release from Ian Gorst on behalf of the Government noted that:

“Deputy Wickenden’s 15 years’ experience in tech services prior to his election to the States, means he’s uniquely qualified for this new role and I look forward to working with him.”

This is to do with Deputy Scott Wickenden being appointed Assistant Minister with specific responsibility for eGov. We were told that “The Chief Minister, Senator Ian Gorst, has made the appointment to further strengthen the eGov programme.”

At the time, an audit published earlier by the Comptroller and Auditor General (19 May 2016), said “eGov is not easy. It is about so much more than technology and touches fundamentally on how government interacts externally with citizens and internally between functions and activities. Successful implementation goes beyond systems and processes to vision, culture and skills.”

Deputy Wickenden said “I’m delighted to have been appointed to this role. eGov is about transforming government for the benefit of Islanders, and it’s a critical component of Public Sector Reform. There have already been significant improvements to project and risk management; and I look forward to working on the development and implementation of eGov across the organisation.”

Chief Minister, Senator Ian Gorst and Treasury Minister Senator Alan Maclean added the following joint statement “The creation of a dedicated eGov ministerial appointment sends a clear message about this government’s determination to deliver on eGov.”

Fast forward to February 2020, and Bailiwick Express reports that:

“The Assistant Chief Minister has admitted that serious failings within the fruitless £11.6m eGov project are ‘lessons learned’, as the government launches a fresh attempt to modernise civil service IT systems.

By this time it was acknowledged that the government had failed to deliver on eGov, and whatever work Deputy Wickenden had done on “the development and implementation of eGov” was a failure.

You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down: Scott’s Second Exhibition sets off

Not cowed by the failure of eGov, over which he presided, a new IT project began, with a projected budget of £28million project.

Bailiwick Express noted that this which “aims to achieve many of the ambitions that eGov failed to realise – Deputy Scott Wickenden has said the government had taken away many insights from its last attempt to bring different departments' IT systems together.”

“The resurrected £28million project will see an IT procurement specialist, DMW Group, source specialist technology providers to entirely update the way Government works online. The vision is to do away with outdated systems and ways of working to replace it with “tried and tested” services, which will be installed across departments to join up the finance, payroll and recruitment systems.”

Speaking to Express, Deputy Wickenden, who also took a major role in the eGov project, shed some light on what went wrong with the former project - which went around £2m over budget, and was slammed by the Chamber of Commerce as a lesson in "how not to run a project" - that overspent and underachieved: “I think there’s a lot of lessons learned from the eGov.

"One was about making sure that we’ve got the right oversight above the organisation and the right authority. So in the eGov programme, there was a lot of ‘scope creep’ a lot of the then departments of the old days would be trying to push programmes onto the eGov programme and then they would continue changing what they wanted throughout the programme. So it wasn’t scoped properly. Then there was no authority within that area to say ‘no we’re doing it this way’.

In March 2021, Bailiwick Xpress reported on more details of the project:

More details are set to be announced this afternoon on the Government’s long-awaited £28m project to ‘join up’ all of its IT systems.

The Integrated Technology Solution (ITS) was launched last February, to deliver the key ambition of the former ‘eGov’ project: to do away with decades-old systems and bring together different departments’ finance, payroll and recruitment platforms, among many others, to make the Government as a whole more efficient, and easier for islanders to work with.

The £9.9m eGov project went around £2m over budget, and was slammed by the island’s main business lobby group, the Chamber of Commerce, as a lesson in “how not to run a programme” due to its “adhoc” project expenditure and apparently ill-defined lines of accountability.

In launching its revitalised ‘ITS’ plan last year, having signed a contract with DMW group to source specialist technology providers to update the way Government works, Assistant Minister Deputy Scott Wickenden promised that there were many “lessons learned” from eGov.

Scott’s Lessons learned in how to fail successfully

Later in 2021, Bailiwick Express again returned to look at the project, with more figures forthcoming. As with eGov, budgets have increased considerably:

“The Government has been forced to defend its £63m IT programme - whose cost has more than doubled since it was announced last year - against accusations of poor project management. After revealing details of its ‘Integrated Technology Solution’, with the naming of Deloitte subsidiary Keytree as the programme’s lead partner, officials were grilled by Scrutiny yesterday over how the project could be seen as "good value for the public."

“The five-year project will cost £63m - a figure more than twice the £28m initial estimate. This was because, the Government said earlier this week, it had significantly under-estimated the cost and scope of the project, which will integrate finance, payroll and procurement systems.”

“In particular, the Government conceded that it had over-estimated the ability of existing departments to staff the programme. It said much of the extra cost would be spent on backfilling existing jobs or employing more people to join the project.”

Scott hasn’t quite reached the Antarctic but is still trying!

October 2021 saw yet another report on the project, this time from the Government Auditor-General’s report, and it was as damming as the last one:

“The costs of the island’s largest ever IT project ballooned to nearly £70m in a single year while its predicted annual savings significantly dropped because the Government didn’t budget for it properly, a spending watchdog has concluded.”

“Launched in early 2020, the Integrated Technology Solution (ITS) programme, which aimed to update the civil service’s outdated finance, HR and other systems and combine them in a single modern platform, was first predicted to cost around £28m. But earlier this year the Government was forced to defend itself against accusations of poor project management when it emerged that costs had risen by 125% in around just 12 months. “

“A report by Comptroller and Auditor General Lynn Pamment has today concluded that the issue was due to poor budgeting, with the Government’s processes for identifying and calculating costs blasted as “not sufficiently robust”. She said the Government was “overly optimistic” when it put together its plan for the ITS in September 2019 – including about the ability of existing departments to staff the programme at no extra cost.

By the time the full business case was published in March 2021, the overall programme cost had risen from £28m – the amount budgeted in the Government Plan 2020-2023 – to £67.8m.

While acknowledging that the pandemic “had an impact on assumptions and costs”, Ms Pamment said the Government still should have been able to identify many of these at the project’s outset. She also said contingency funding should have been factored in at this early stage.

Scott is still searching for that elusive South Pole

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.' (Oscar Wilde)

Most mere mortals would be rather subdued in their response to what is in incredibly damming report on the IT project. Not so Deputy Wickenden, who managed to see the silver lining through the gathering storm clouds of the faltering second IT programme that he has been overseeing:

"Deputy Scott Wickenden, who has Ministerial responsibility for the Programme, said the Government welcomed the report and thanked the Comptroller and Auditor General for her "thorough review"."

"Overall, the review is a positive endorsement of how the Programme was set-up and the procurement process that was undertaken," he said.

“The review includes a number of recommendations, the majority of which are underway or have already been implemented. It acknowledges that the procurement for the ITS Programme was well conducted and that a good governance structure is in place.

"It also highlights a number of challenges to its implementation, including the capacity of Government colleagues to engage fully with the Programme in order for timely decisions to be made."

Final Thoughts: A Doomed Quest? At what cost?

“It is the work that matters, not the applause that follows.” - Robert Falcon Scott, realising his expedition had failed.

With such an soaring costs, no wonder there is no money for education! It's not digging up roads which is the issue so much as digging a very large black IT hole which has to be filled, and Deputy Wickenden is in charge of both!

As money has been sucked into the IT project, it is hardly surprising that there is so little available for schools. 

References
https://www.gov.je/News/2016/pages/NewAssistantMinisterEgov.aspx
https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/lessons-learned-egov-inform-28m-it-strategy/#.YXHqOhrMLIU
https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/details-emerge-about-govs-long-awaited-28m-tech-plan/#.YXHskxrMLIU
https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/government-criticised-125-cost-rise-major-it-project/#.YXHqVxrMLIU
https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/watchdog-says-budget-major-it-project-wasnt-sufficiently-robust/#.YXHpnxrMLIU

Winter Laments

Winter Laments

Just a sore throat, then a sniffle
Nothing too bad, a distant cloud
Worry? Not I, surely just a piffle
And then I sneeze rather loud!

Nose dripping, like the rain out
Punctuated by a periodic sneeze
A winter cold coming, no doubt
And so annoying! Won’t it ease?

As men do with colds, I am dying
The test says not Covid, hurrah
But I’m shivery, and this is trying
Telling everyone, blah, blah, blah

A healthy mind, but an unhealthy body
I wonder if it will ease with a hot toddy?

Discover Lost Jersey - Part 7

I came across an edition of "Discover Jersey" , a guide book written in 1993 by Terry Palmer - that's 28 years ago. While the basic history remains the same, the tourism sites have seen a massive fall, and I thought it would be interesting to explore this guide - and my memories of those places, if I visited them, over the next weeks. The latter are in italics. How much we've lost!

Grosnez Castle

North of L‘Etacquerel. Les Landes is an area of windswept heath beyond which are the ruins of Grosnez Castle, now little more than a stone archway and the hint of a moat.

This is one of Jersey‘s enigmas. as nobody knows who built it, why, or when It’s probably early 14th cent. a defence against repeats of a raid in 1294 when the French killed more than 1,000 islanders; and Bertrand du Guecclin probably destroyed it in another raid in 1373 - or did the English Parliamentarians sack it while besieging Sir George Carteret in Elizabeth Castle? It was certainly destroyed before 1524. as a map drawn that year marks it as a ruin. The name means ”big headland‘ and is pronounced gro-nay.

This of course is still here, but it was needed to see the instructions to get to Plémont Candlecraft!

Plémont Candlecraft

The B35 swings east to Portinfer hamlet and Plémont Candlecraft. the island‘s only specialist candlemaker. Candles nowadays are for looking at rather than burning: animal-shaped candles are made by pouring suitably-coloured hot wax into a mould and letting it set. But there‘s more skill in producing carved candles. Take a cold split mould. pour in hot red wax. then pour it out; pour in orange. and tip the spare out: follow with other colours until you have filled the mould. While the wax is still warm. open the mould. slice down the candle‘s ribs with a sharp cold knife. and you reveal the rainbow colours. You can try it for yourself here. any day between 0930 and 1730.

Nearby Portinfer Farm has tea rooms where John Wesley‘s early Methodists used to meet.

The company Plemont Candle Craft Limited was dissolved on 23 February 2000

Plémont Holiday Village

And now head north on 0105 for Plémont Holiday Village, which was originally a Pontins Holiday Camp. built on a 250tt (75m) clifftop. It‘s breezy, but on perfect days there are splendid views to Guernsey. Sark, Herm and even Alderney, as well as miles of the French coast. A path leads steeply down to the often-deserted beach at Greve an Lanchon, or Lancon.

A timeline is given below. It should be noted that the "return to nature" is in fact a "managed nature", with paths kept clear around the site, and an artificial pond added. I have no issues with these, but it is a myth that it is restored to a "natural condition". 

1934: Built in the grounds of the old Plemont Hotel the camp first opened as The Jubilee Holiday Camp.
1946: Following the Occupation, the camp reopens as Parkin's Luxury Holiday Camp.
1961: The camp is sold and remodelled, becoming Pontin's Holiday Village and later Plémont Holiday Village, providing amenities for up to 400 holidaymakers.
2001: The site closes its doors as a tourist resort for good.
2014: The National Trust for Jersey reveals it has reached a deal with the developer to buy the land for £7.15 million.
Summer 2014: The States approve Senator Sir Philip Bailhache's proposition to pay half of the agreed sale price, with the trust paying the rest.
September 2014: Demolition begins at the site.

Susana Rowles and an Imperfect Comparison

Susana Rowles is a founding member of the Jersey Liberal Conservatives. I do hope that the rest of the party comes with better thinking than this (from the JEP):

"Size is a constraint but 45 square miles of land is more than enough for 106,000 people. Barcelona houses 1.6 million people in a smaller area - and that's before the near ten million tourists it welcomes every year".

Tourism: Not the Whole Picture

The most obvious flaw lies in the figure on tourists, which sounds huge, but clearly do not arrive all at the same time - and yet this is the impression given by this statement.

A lot of the information is available on Wikipedia, but there is clearly some selection. Where is the paragraph there:

In early 2017, over 150,000 protesters warned that tourism is destabilizing the city. Slogans included "Tourists go home", "Barcelona is not for sale" and "We will not be driven out". By then, number of visitors had increased from 1.7 million in 1990 to 32 million in a city with a population of 1.62 million, increasing the cost of rental housing for residents and overcrowding the public places. While tourists spent an estimated €30 billion in 2017, they are viewed by some as a threat to Barcelona's identity.

In fact, to halt the influx, the city has stopped issuing licenses for new hotels and holiday apartments; it also fined AirBnb €30,000. The mayor has suggested an additional tourist tax and setting a limit on the number of visitors.

Feeding the 1.6 million

Another factor of note is that Barcelona has Europe's ninth largest container port, with a trade volume of 1.72 million TEU's in 2013.

To feed the population, it clearly has a supply chain which has plenty of scope. Where pray, does Susana Rowles see the increased imports coming into Jersey for an increased population. Even a few days of bad weather can empty shelves!

Unlike Barcelona, Jersey is an island with much more vulnerable supply chains.

Water Supply

The majority of Barcelona’s tap water comes from the Llobregat river, which originates in the Serra del Cadí and flows into the sea just south of the city. Where's Jersey's large river supplying water here? The inability of Susana Rowles to see that water supply is a limit is a major defect in her argument.

It is the same ignorance which plagues Mark Boleat's suggestion that Hong Kong shows how high density can be achieved - it gets its main water supply piped from a the Dongjiang River in nearby China., a major tributary to the Pearl River.

Jersey Water has said: " Fundamentally, the Island suffers from a lack of adequate water storage relative to the demand, we will therefore be looking to provide increased reservoir storage in other ways and in other locations to provide the future resilience that we need"

But even Barcelona faces problems.

Ten years ago, Barcelona nearly ran out of water. In 2008, reservoirs dipped so low that the Mediterranean city was forced to import drinking water from France. The shortage came amid Spain’s driest year on record..

In the past decade, Barcelona has avoided a rerun of the 2008 water shortfall. Summers in Spain, though, are becoming hotter and drier, while winters are growing less harsh. Precipitation in 2017 was notably light, plunging Spain into its worst drought since it turned to its neighbors for water shipments.

Population Trends in Barcelona

A recent study notes that:

Population trends parallel the recent history of Mediterranean cities. That is, rural migration and concentration of population in large cities until approximately the mid 1970s, and the reverse processes in the 1980s and 1990s. Thus, from centralized compact urban forms and functions, the Barcelona region is undergoing a more dispersed pattern with an increasing presence of features of what we call the diffuse city (or "American model"): low density housing, a communications network built for private transportation, and proliferation of metropolitan sub-centres.

So what would be the equivalent for Jersey - a move to a dispersed pattern in which more housing was built in rural zones outside the main town of St Helier?

Or might it be that to suggest as a model for population growth being a land based city with plenty of room for growth on the periphery (and a first class rail network), is perhaps not the best place for a comparison with a small island without such features?

In Conclusion

Taking a few superficial aspects of a land based city in Spain as representative of the whole picture, and building an entire argument about population density on a small Island fails once you begin to delve into the details, where it is plain she knows very little. I'm afraid Susana Rowles won't get my vote on this!

Remember Dubno

The only German to voluntary testify at the Nuremberg trials was Herman Graebe, who also organised a safety net  to rescue as many Jews as he could after being horrified witnessing the mass extermination of Jews at Dubno, in Ukraine. This poem is based on his account.

I listened to this testimony and the words of the Chief Prosecutor, Sir Harley Shawcross, repeating it in his closing speech, on BBC Radio 4’s archive hour.
https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-human-behavior/hermann-graebe-testimony-nuremberg

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00100rd

Remember Dubno

A closing statement by Sir Hartley Shawcross:
Remember the brutality, remember the loss,
Of Graeber’s witness, of what he saw that day,
In bleak October, the clouds cold and gray;
Seeing a young boy, fighting back his tears,
A father holding his hand, to allay his fears,
Speaking softly, pointing upwards to the sky,
Stroked his head, knowing they would die;
Together, among many others, a naked crowd:
Beaten, demoralised, enslaved and cowed;
All forced to strip themselves, clothes in piles,
The ending of a journey, such harsh trials;
The SS soldier, seated, looking on in scorn:
Men, women, children, old and newly born,
Into the pit they filed, one by one, they go;
And shooting starts, blood begins to flow:
More come, and fall on top of those shot;
The Tommy gun fires again upon this spot,
And they lie there, dead and dying, lost;
Twitching or motionless, the final breath:
Their lives were swallowed up by death;
And the SS man lights another cigarette,
All in a day’s work: he doesn’t even sweat;
And now the statement comes at the trial:
Prisoners in the dock, a defence of guile,
Excuse of just obeying orders, that’s all:
Until at Nuremberg, at last, they fall;
Orders in a command, a linked chain,
That ended in Dubno, with such pain,
And death; twelve thousand perished:
All lived and loved, and were cherished,
Rounded up, taken to the deep trench,
And shot: a guilt that came to drench
The accused in blood, this evil stain:
Remember Dubno, the Jews, the pain.

Discover Lost Jersey - Part 6

I came across an edition of "Discover Jersey" , a guide book written in 1993 by Terry Palmer - that's 28 years ago. While the basic history remains the same, the tourism sites have seen a massive fall, and I thought it would be interesting to explore this guide - and my memories of those places, if I visited them, over the next weeks. The latter are in italics. How much we've lost!

Battle of Flowers Museum

The hamlet of L'Etacq. west of the Shire Horse Farm. has a cluster of places of interest, beginning with the Battle of Flowers Museum on CH4 — but if you come from the south be careful of the very tight hairpin bend. Florence Bechelet made her first decorated float in 1934, and went on to establish her reputation by winning many prizes over the years. 

In 1971 she opened this museum to the Battle of Flowers. and now a dozen of Florence's floats are on permanent display.

Mar- Nov daily 1000-1700,

The Battle of Flowers. 

The first battle was in 1902 on Victoria Avenue - the A2. coast road — to mark Edward VII's coronation. and it was an instant success becoming an annual event except for 1914—18 and 1940-50. Local businessmen revived it in 1951 and the first Miss Battle was elected in 1953. and the event is now the high spot of the tourist season in Jersey, held on an August Thursday amid a week of celebrations.

I never visited this at the time, and much regret that.

L’Etacq Craft Shops

Several craft shops cluster around the centre of L'Etacq, with a shared car park nearby. The Pottery. Leatherland, and L’Etacq Woodcrafts are workshops that sell their produce at the door; the woodcarvers also have an unusual [me in fashioning knife handles and walking-sticks from cabbage stalks. Not just any cabbage — they use the jersey cabbage, which can grow 6ft (2m) tall in a season. If you want to try it at home. you can buy seeds here

I do remember the Woodcrafts shop very clearly. It was nice for the unusual presents, and the three shops tucked away in this little enclave gave rather a nice feel to the end of St Ouen's Bay. There was also ample parking across the road.

After it closed, the site was re-opened as Treasures of the Earth, and in the process of sorting out some IT matters, I was also given a guided tour. As well as the different gems, they also had fossils of varying sizes, and my girlfriend Annie purchases a particularly large and rather good ammonite.

Goldsmiths and Microworld

You have a choice of route. The B35 leads south to the top of Five Mile Road. where Jersey Goldsmiths has its showroom at the point where the road bends,

Would you care to see what £1,000,000 in gold bullion looks like? Then step inside — free The bullion is on display in a reinforced glass cabinet and looks surprisingly small. no more than would fit into a large holdall. But if it really IS 24 carat gold. you'd never get away with it as its 19.32 times heavier than water — a cubic foot weighs 1,206,51b; a litre, 19.322kg. If you just want to see craftspeople at work on jewellery. that‘s possible as well.

Open year round: Jun-Aug Mon-Fri 1000-2200, Sep-May 1000-1730, plus Sat 1000-1730 all year.

Jersey Goldsmiths later moved to the Lion Park, and now is closed. Jersey Pearl occupies the current site and I've visited a few times as they have a rather nice café area either for a light snack or a meal.  

Around the bend and down the straight. Lewis Tower is immediately on the right, its World War Two bunker holding the Channel Islands Military Museum. Here are militaria and documents from the British and the German forces. on display daily 1000-1700

This is still active and open! As it was mentioned in the guide book alongside the others, I thought I'd give it a plug. Well worth a visit. Apart from the Jersey War Tunnels, most of the older Occupation museums have closed or changed. Hougue Bie is now a memorial with names of those who died here, including the slave workers. Well worth a visit but not a traditional all round Occupation museum which it once was. The St Peter's Bunker Museum is closed, as is the Occupation Museum on the Esplanade in St Helier. 

Microworld

The museum is behind the Chateau de Plaisir, a modern two storey building holding a night-club and restaurant — and Micro World, an incredible exhibition of miniature carvings. Spaniard Manuel Ussa spent years peering through magnifying glasses as he carved his marvellous miniatures. Adam and Eve embrace in a bower — all shaped from the point of a pencil. A minuscule horse balances on the head of a real, but dead. ant. The Sphynx and the Great Pyramid are cut from a single grain of sand. and Tower Bridge balances in the eye of a needle.

Ussa had to stop carving every time his heat beat. as the vibration would ruin his work. which is so detailed that visitors have to look through microscopes.

Open daily. May-Sep, 1000-1730.

I'd never visited until my wife at the time had a relative visit Jersey, and they wanted to see it. It was quite amazing and as you can see, you needed a high resolution magnifier to appreciate the tidy but perfectly formed artefacts. The whole building - which was also open in part as a charity shop for Holidays for Heroes - was closed, demolished, and is now housing.

The Principle of Unintended Consequences: Population and Rentals in Jersey

Jersey is facing a crisis over recruitement, and it is in fact tied in partly with decades of fudge on a population policy. Of course, the main triggers have been Brexit and the Pandemic, but we would have reached this point sooner or later.

I remember reading in the 1980s Karl Popper's Poverty of Historicism, in which he noted that social planning by governments often falls down on a failure to consider or look for unintended effects of what is planned or practiced. 

Under successive governments, the strategy for dealing with the "demographic time bomb" of an ageing population has been to import fresh young blood to make up the shortfall in the ratio between those who work, and those who have retired from work with State pensions and increasing demands (as they age) on the health service. This Ponzi scheme was bound to collapse sooner or later, and it is because of unexpected consequences of this policy that it is starting to fail now.

As the population has grown, it has led to an increase in pressure on housing, which has meant that with more people looking for a diminishing amount of housing - as housing has not kept pace with population growth - the cost of renting or buying housing - even for a small bedsit - has become very high. This is what you might expect when demand increase and supply does not increase to match demand.

At the higher levels of pay, this is not an issue, and until recently, the steady rise in salaries in the finance sector has meant those lucky enough to fall into this category can obtain the more expensive accommodation. 

But for those on lower levels of the ladder, this has meant an increasing proportion of their income has gone to rent, leaving less to spend, and as we were hearing on BBC Jersey today, less for heating their homes - as fuel prices also increase.

The higher cost of living in Jersey for basic essentials - food and basic clothing - has combined with the high house prices to make Jersey a far less attractive place for the less well off. Often the cheapest labour is in hospitality and agriculture, but now across the board, all businesses are struggling with recruitment, as is the public sector. Food prices have been driven up by GST, but also because Jersey has to import most of its food, and this comes at a premium. 

The head of hospitality, it may be noted, highlighted the need for affordable rental accommodation as one of the largest stumbling blocks to getting staff over.

A bedsit in St Helier, or "studio flat" to use the pretentious Estate agent jargon, costs a huge amount to buy and even to rent. For that rental cost, you can rent a decent two bedroom flat in Reading. It is small wonder that a number of Jersey youngsters, seeing a future in which they will be worse off than their parent's generation, are moving to the United Kingdom which, despite higher tax rates than 21% (the effective rate including long term care), are still more attractive - lower rents, lower food prices, cheaper clothing. 

Standard economic theory is that rent control does not work, because if you force rents down, landlords may decide not to rent out their properties, which reduces the amount of rental property available. But 

Forms of rent control have long been considered a failure, and in classical economics, the answer to the problem of scarce housing and rising rents is increased housing supply. Which brings us back again to a population policy because while population increase outstrips housing, more and more houses will be needed!

Studies show that renters in housing with rent control are much less likely to be displaced and they have lower rentals. In other words, it slows down people leaving Jersey, makes it more attractive for people to come here, and also starts to tackle homelessness, another side effect of high rents.

Rent control would limit rent rises to inflation. Landlords who can cover their costs today, will continue to cover their costs, but will no longer be allowed to fleece their tenants by doubling the rent. Responsible landlords who care for their tenants and only do moderate rent increases, using rent money for repairs, will be totally unaffected by rent control.

In fact, in tight rental markets (where developers and landlords have market power), rent control can increase supply: if housing developers cannot generate extra profit through rent increases, it creates an incentive to build more units. 

In general, other factors including overall market conditions and zoning land for housing have far more influence over new housing supply than the presence of rent regulations.

But expect considerable opposition from the landlords who also, it will be noted, opposed the scheme whereby deposits were kept by a third party with documentation to show the state of buildings at the start of tenancies. Landlords are motivated, naturally enough, by self-interest, and there's nothing wrong with that, as long as the States take a broader view of what is best for the public good, rather than the private means.

A Fateful Day

“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Next week is the 13th October, when in 2009, my heart was broken when my dear Annie died.  This Saturday poem looks back to that time, when everything changed and broke apart. I've been told that if death comes after a long time, when someone slips away with dementia, it can be a blessing, but I have no experience of that. Mine was brutal and swift, and for the most part completely unexpected. We had seen each other the weekend before, we had talked on the phone on the evening, we had sent texts before bedtime. This was not going gently into that good night: it was the strike of lightening, the tree suddenly falling over and uprooting, swift and traumatic.

A Fateful Day

Oh, I remember still that terrible, fateful day:
Unexpected phone call, when Giles did say
That Annie is dead. And yet the last night,
We chatted on the phone, all seemed right;
And now my world came crashing down:
A feeling of pain, that I would surely drown;
I made apologies, left the client, driving in,
Stunned, shocked, already the tears begin;
I saw you, in the hospital, on that bed,
So still, so white, unmoving, so surely dead;
Tears began to pour, sobbing without end:
My soul-mate, my dear beloved, my friend;
Your skin, so cold to farewell kiss, no life:
These moments still cut deep like a knife;
They heal, but the scars still remain there
Buried, and yet at an instant I am aware,
And none more so than at this time of year,
Approaching anniversary: it comes so near;
But I also remember you alive, so full of fun,
And joy and laughter; memories one by one
Return, the drizzle and foggy day we first met,
Coming out of Big Vern into the damp and wet;
And more meetings, conversations, and walks,
Through the lane meandering with our talks;
And our first kiss: sweet moment of change:
That it is past, and gone now, seems so strange,
Because you were so full of the zest of life,
Even as your heart began to fail, that strife,
Against limitation; and I loved you the more:
Perhaps I knew deep down the opening door
Through which the traveller goes, of no return;
But how our passion lit up, at each new turn,
Until that one day: you were gone from me;
Failing heart and limitations gone: set free,
Flying upon the wind, soaring up like a star;
And perhaps, then, to look down from afar,
And bless those who mourn, those who weep,
And those whose memory still alive they keep;
And every year, I light a candle, and remember:
Not the burning pyre, or the glowing after ember,
But time alive: that past which memory brings;
Know you are not weary, but rise up on eagle wings.

Without love, there would be no pain: that's the cost:

And all things pass, but nothing good is truly lost.

Discover Lost Jersey - Part 5

I came across an edition of "Discover Jersey" , a guide book written in 1993 by Terry Palmer - that's 28 years ago. While the basic history remains the same, the tourism sites have seen a massive fall, and I thought it would be interesting to explore this guide - and my memories of those places, if I visited them, over the next weeks. The latter are in italics. How much we've lost!

Bouchet Agateware

North-west of the manor. the village of St Ouen holds the first of the tourist attractions. Bouchet Agateware, in Rue dee Marette behind the village hall.

Agate is an impure variety of quartz. named from the river Achates in Sicily where it was discovered in Classical times and Bouchet claiming to be the world's leading producer of agateware. He blends naturally-coloured clays to equal the random bands of hues found in this semi-precious stone. Browse among the selection of small objects. from thimbles and jewellery to delicate handbells.

30 March 2011, BBC news

A potter who ran a tourist attraction in St Ouen in Jersey has retired after 44 years.

Tony Bouchet made agateware in his workshop in St Ouen's village. Agateware, said to be extremely hard to make, is a form of pottery that mixes clays and colours to produce a marbled agate effect.

The workshop is now closed and Mr Bouchet has destroyed all his recipes, records, moulds, clay and special equipment. He said that by doing so would give someone else the chance to discover what he knows for themselves.

Mr Bouchet, who has been doing it for four decades, is known as the "secret potter" because he would not reveal the secret of the technique he had perfected.

I never visited this shop, so no idea what it was like. 

Jersey Shire Horse Farm

The full title adds the word Museum, but this is very much a living display of draught horses and other domestic livestock from goats down to rabbits and ducks. The shire horses had to be imported from England as the final year of the Occupation saw many of the animals killed for meat. after which came the industrial revolution of agriculture.

But forget that: marvel at the Shetland pony that can walk erect beneath the belly of a carthorse. let the children enjoy the donkey. and the tamer who demonstrates the shoeing of horses every Wednesday whether he‘s needed or not. And take a ride in an old Jersey horse-van.

The museum part of the display centres on the collection of horse-powered machinery used on the land for generations. plus a few smaller utensils that relied on manpower. There‘s also a harness room, play area, gift shop and tea room; the museum is at Champ Donne. by the junction of B34 and Cl 15. open Mar-Oct. Sun-Fri. 1000-1730.

When our children were young, this was one of the "places to go" when you want to get out of the house and take them somewhere with something to see. We would walk around the Shire Horse Farm, where there were actually only a few horses to see close, but the odd time, a baby lamb, and lots and lots of bantams of all varieties, and I think rabbits in cages. A season ticket meant there was a place for an outing when you wanted to show the kids some animals close up.

Next to it was the Bird Tree Tea Garden, a cafe doing afternoon tea, and light snacks, with lots of cage birds outside in large cages, and a sign that said "we are free", to emphasis the fact that the discerning tourist wanting to save money might go there instead. It's all gone, all houses now.

The Snow Goose, St Ouen

On our way back, if we didn't go to the Bird Tree Tea Garden, we might stop of at "Wayside Crafts" which was renamed "The Snow Goose" at St.Ouen's Village for some light refreshments. That's gone to housing as well now, and not affordable housing either! Gone by 2013!

A 2013 report noted:

“Snow Goose” This site was in private ownership and the site was for sale, at that time, on the open market. This meant that the value of the land made the proposal for affordable homes unachievable. The site was also small and fairly modest in terms of its surrounding context with regard to mass. Therefore, the desired unit numbers could not be achieved without having a significant impact on the adjoining properties and a detrimental effect on the visual amenity of the main arterial road through the village of St Ouen. For these reasons, together with the fact that the site has since been purchased and developed by others, this piece of land was not subsequently considered.

Major Contractor Collapse: A Case of Deja Vue

Bailiwick Express reported that:

" Local companies involved in the £75m project to transform Jersey’s sewage treatment works will be left fighting for their money after the UK firm acting as main contractor went bust. NMCN, which was the Government’s highest paid contractor last year, collapsed into administration yesterday after a refinancing of the business fell through. It's understood that contractors based at Bellozanne have left the site. More than £200,000 of local firms’ money is believed to be at stake, and Express understands that they are urgently seeking clarity from Government officers on whether there are contractual protections for island companies. Questions are also being raised about what action was taken by Government given repeated red flags."

It isn't the first time this has happened. It reminded me of the Queen's Valley saga where it was the Waterworks company rather than the States who faced calamity, and which also impacted local contractors.

Also below I take a look at Harcourt who were removed from the Waterfront development because of a failure to meet an insurance bond - this was to cover eventualities such as their being unable (for whatever reason) to complete the work. Philip Ozouf, then Treasury Minister, was canny enough to insist on this - as well as pre-lets - as a safeguard. 

It would be interesting to know if any such bond was required for the Bellozane development, or whether any such bond is required for the hospital, to ensure that if a contractor goes bust, local firms will not be impacted by this, or at least will have the collapse mitigated.

Queen's Valley and the Collapse of Shepherd Hill

By the late 1980’s the proposed construction of any new large dam in the UK had become politically very difficult. This was also the case in Jersey where permission to construct Queens Valley reservoir had been hard fought over many years despite a water supply situation on the Island that was becoming increasingly precarious.

When construction eventually did get underway in 1989, the problems for client Jersey New Waterworks Company were far from over as, in November 1990, with construction about 40% complete, Main Contractor Shepherd Hill went into administration.

M J Gleeson was invited to step in to complete the project and Steve Miller was shipped out to the Island at short notice to act as Project Manager for the remaining works – facing the challenges of taking over a half completed project, de-motivated workforce and a very anxious client.

The States Minutes of 4th December, 1990 record this:

Shephard Hill and Company Limited -Queen's Valley reservoir. Statement Senator John William Ellis, States Director and Deputy Chairman of the Jersey New Waterworks Company Limited made a statement in the following terms -

``On Monday, 26th November the Jersey New Waterworks Company was informed that Barclays Bank Plc., in England had appointed an administrative receiver of Shephard Hill and Company Limited, on that day. Press reports suggest that the financial difficulties of Shephard Hill were triggered by the insolvency of a Swedish Bank.

The directors immediately put in hand two plans of action which were pursued hour by hour with the utmost urgency. Firstly the Company sought a meeting with the receiver. The Company's preferred option was that Shephard Hill would complete the contract that it had concluded with the Company.

Secondly the Company sought other contractors who would continue the work in the event of the receiver abandoning the contract.

The Chairman, the managing director and I together with other directors and our professional advisers met the receiver at 3.15 p.m. on Thursday, 29th November and he informed us that Shephard Hill had served redundancy notices on the employees and that they would not continue the contract. As required by the contract the Company gave immediate notice to Shephard Hill that they would after seven days enter upon the site and expel Shephard Hill.

The Company immediately put into effect its contingency plan. Two senior executives of M.J. Gleeson Group Plc., flew to Jersey during the evening of Thursday, 29th November to implement the contingency plan previously agreed at a meeting which I had attended with other directors and our professional advisers.

Apart from Shephard Hill, M.J. Gleeson had submitted the lowest tender for the original contract and have therefore detailed knowledge of the work. They are a large firm of civil engineering contractors and the company and it advisers are confident that they can complete the work on the reservoir. The work will be carried out on a cost plus basis until 31st December and a new contract will be negotiated during December with M.J. Gleeson.

The results of these arrangements will be that the momentum will not be lost and any delay should be limited. In accordance with normal practice the Company has taken out a performance bond for £1.245 million being 10 per cent of the contract price. The Company hopes and believes that this bond, and the value of the work in progress, will contain, or substantially contain, the additional costs that will inevitably be incurred.

Much was achieved last week

Unfortunately I have another development to report. On Saturday, 1st December a small number of principal suppliers who are creditors of Shephard Hill informed the Company that one or possibly more of them would not supply Gleesons unless Jersey Waterworks paid the amounts due to them by Shephard Hill. The Company hopes that this attitude is limited to one or two or a very small number of the principal creditors.

The creditors of Shephard Hill are not entitled to be paid anything by Jersey Waterworks in law or in equity. They have a claim against the receiver. If the directors made these payments they would have to pay all the creditors and they would be in breach of their fiduciary responsibilities. These substantial additional costs would have to be provided by the water consumers and this also is an arrangement which cannot be contemplated.

Waterfront Enterprise and Harcourt: The Insurance Bond

Harcourt had to put up £95m bond to ensure that if they were unable to complete the Waterfront development, the States would not be left footing the bill. Senator Ozouf extended their deadline for raising the bond twice, but they were still unable to raise it.

Philip Ozouf told the States:

“One of the fundamental provisions of the Heads of Terms is that the funding of the infrastructure works and the payments to W.E.B. should be backed by a bond to be issued by a bank or insurance company acceptable to W.E.B. in the sum of at least £95 million. I have previously advised Members that W.E.B. have been seeking appropriate confirmations from Harcourt and its funders that such a bond can and will be provided. While letters of comfort have been provided to W.E.B. by 2 potential funders they are not expressed in terms which provide W.E.B. with the level of commitment that W.E.B. is seeking.”

“Effectively, it is the amount of money required in order to deliver the infrastructure areas for the underground car park, the road, et cetera, to ensure that the States’ position is safeguarded so that it would not be in a position that the developer could walk away without having completed the development without any money.”

Sorrows of Autumn

Something seasonal as the days grow shorter, and the nights start drawing in.

Sorrows of Autumn

Autumn speaks of loss, of fading light:
Summer’s dawn recedes to night;
We part from fine bright summer days,
And sorrow with parting of the ways;
Persephone and Demeter embrace
One last time, one long lingering grace,
Before the leaves turn brown on tree,
And gale forces winds the gods set free;
Rough seas, crashing on the coastal shore:
Warm inside, are we, behind closed door
And shuttered window; the fire bright,
Then darkness, and glowing ember light;
Isolation, while outside the storm rages,
As it has ever done, for all long ages;
The thunder’s roar, the lightening strike:
The air shimmers, bright, ghost like,
And where it hits, hungry fires burn;
Raised voices, fire engines, concern,
And all so fast, the house broken,
What word of comfort can be spoken?
The sorrows of autumn in falling rain,
As if the earth weeps, cries in pain;
The dying light, flower’s fading glory:
This is the season, this the story.

Discover Lost Jersey - Part 4

I came across an edition of "Discover Jersey" , a guide book written in 1993 by Terry Palmer - that's 28 years ago. While the basic history remains the same, the tourism sites have seen a massive fall, and I thought it would be interesting to explore this guide - and my memories of those places, if I visited them, over the next weeks. The latter are in italics. How much we've lost!

Sunset Nurseries

Sunset Nurseries is aptly named as it faces the setting sun across the middle of St Ouen’s Bay, and on clear evenings you can see the earth's shadow climb the hills behind. As evidence of the exposed site, the business had 18 tons of glass broken by the hurricane which struck south—east England on 16 October 1987.

The postcard from the nurseries shows Miss Battle of Flowers 1977, Diane Le Bot, who came from St Brelade. Many thanks to contributors on Facebook for identifying her.

This is a commercial nursery growing carnations in eight glass houses and alstroemeria in another, with the added attraction of a tropical aviary. trout pools, and a restaurant serving strawberries and cream for as long a season as possible. Open daily 1000—1700 except winter weekends, so you must see the sun go down from outside the gate.

I used to enjoy visits to Sunset Nurseries with my children when they were younger, it was a nice rest break as they had quite a decent little café for snacks. At one time there were also sand sculptures there, and it was also handy to park for a visit to the nearby prehistoric site of Les Trois Rocques.

Alas, it was demolished. The planning application said:

Sunset Nurseries, La Route du Moulin, St. Peter. Demolish existing nursery, glass houses and staff block. Construct 6 bed dwelling with landscaping to Field 28. New access from La Route de la Marette. 

The sun set on the Sunset Nurseries :-(

St Ouen's Bay Defences

The British and German defences along the four-mile (6.5km) stretch of St Ouen's Bay oddly called Five Mile Road. extend into the parishes of St Brelade. St Peter and St Ouen itself. The British built most of the towers.

In the early 19th cent. anticipating an invasion by the French. with Tower No 2 being the work of Sir James Kempt, master-general of ordnance. from whom it was named in 1834, The Kempt Tower is open May-Sep Tues-Sun 1400-1700, and Apr & Oct Thur and Sun only. free, mounting a static exhibition showing how the Island protected itself against invasion.

The tower is still there, but it is now a Jersey Heritage holiday let rather than a visitor attraction.

I only visited this once, and remember distinctly how damp parts of it were. Let's hope they solved that problem for the self-catering tourists!

Shell House.

When you drive out of St Aubin on the steep A13, you cannot fail to see Shell House. in truth a bungalow, whose owner has spent more than 30 years braiding shell covered terraces in his garden If you manage to park you are invited to leave a donation for charity.

I used to see this every day on my way home from work, and then after the owner died, they left it to the National Trust who decided that it had no heritage value whatsoever, and flogged it off to a developer, who has yet to develop anything on the site. But meanwhile, all the painstaking work over 30 years was consigned to the rubbish bin of history. This is the same National Trust who saw no reason in preserving a lovely cottage in Trinity because it had modern dormer windows in one side.