Subsidiarity and Participation

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization.

In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the drive for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the State.

The Parish is an excellent example of that principle. It raises money from the rates to cover expenses, and is run as a very tight ship. Being smaller than the State, it can be more efficient than the State. The recent consultation on property taxes, which is still lurking on the Council of Ministers agenda, would take rates from the Parishes and put them in the hands of an official, centralised authority. Instead of people giving time on an honorary basis as Rates Assessors, we would have a civil service pyramid, and rates would almost certainly increase as a result of the paid bureaucracy.

Another way of stating subsidiarity is this: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.

A model for this can be seen in the work of charitable organisations, which are helped by grants from the States. They are far more efficient than the States, and can also draw upon volunteers to help fund raise and aid them with their activities. And yet the States is considering, and has considered cutting grants. But if the charities were not there, the citizens of the State would be in a worse position, and the States might well have to pick up the tab as people became unable to cope in their lives (for a variety of reasons). What seems like cost cutting actually deprives charity of their functions.

Pope Pius XI wrote an encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, in which he stated:

“It is indeed true, as history clearly proves, that owing to the change in social conditions, much that was formerly done by small bodies can nowadays be accomplished only by large corporations. None the less, just as it is wrong to withdraw from the individual and commit to the community at large what private enterprise and industry can accomplish, so, too, it is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of right order for a larger and higher organization to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies.”

One doesn’t have to be a Catholic to assent to this Catholic Social Teaching. What is important is that it is providing a framework for understanding how society works best, which is not by command and control centralisation to the detriment of smaller bodies, and indeed to individuals themselves.

This is a matter also dealt with by former Senator Sarah Ferguson, writing in the JEP on the 13th January 2016.

Is anyone listening?
By Sarah Ferguson

The Governor of Texas has a plan. Actually it looks more like a reminder to Washington to get back to the Constitution. It effectively requires Washington to stop trying to control everything and let the State deal with everything that concerns the State alone, as set out in the founding documents.

This seems to reflect the feeling of the general public everywhere that those in power are ignoring them and trying to control their every move. There are regulations for this, that and every other thing, the latest being the conclusion by the UK Authorities that no one should drink alcohol. There is a rider that perhaps older ladies may partake of a genteel glass or so.

The problem with central control is that more regulations are required, more compliance personnel are required and productivity falls. At the same time the unelected officials running the regulatory bodies acquire more and more control over our lives.

Temps passé, the Connétable of the Parish would call a Parish Assembly to discuss matters of significance. If the Connétable was reluctant to do this then only 4 members of the Parish would be required to hold them to account. Sadly this was changed to 10 members of the parish last December – why? Perhaps, with a number of Connétables engrossed in the executive, they no longer consider themselves representatives of the Parish?

The Privileges and Procedures Committee are also considering whether to have a Business Committee for the States. Currently business is dealt with in date order. The proposal is for the Business Committee to ensure that important business is dealt with first. Important to whom? Will the Business Committee be under the control of the Executive and will back bench members be trampled in the rush?

At the 2nd February sitting of the States Assembly, the States will consider a proposition of the Chief Minister, P.163/2016 Jersey Bank Depositors Compensation Board: Appointment of Members. According to the report on the proposition, the interviews were conducted by senior States officers. Given that £100 Million has been earmarked in the Rainy Day Fund in case it is required for Depositors’ compensation, and given that the previous appointments were organised by the Appointments Board, this seems curious.

There have been two good consultations recently –for the Charities Law and for Les Quennevais School. This makes it all the more surprising that the so called consultations about the site of the new hospital have been such a disaster. Are the rumours about the siting a red herring to divert attention or are they the preliminaries to an all-out war?

The Strategic Plan states that “the Island’s government serves you, the residents of Jersey”. Doesn’t that include considering the public point of view? Is anyone listening?

William Hague on Climate Security

Foreign Secretary William Hague has recently delivered a speech titled 'The Diplomacy of Climate Change' to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. There has been a lot of problems with addressing climate change, because a good many people simply refuse to look at any evidence, or find various alternative explanations.

The debate is often, as in Jersey, conducted between environmentalists such as Mark Forskitt and Nick Palmer, and deniers such as Senator Sarah Ferguson, in such a way that it seems removed from the public arena. Indeed, a few politicians whom I spoke to recently thought that part of the debate on the Island Plan had been subjected to an attempted hijack by environmentalists, who were taking up valuable time, and distracting from the main issues. Of course, they are sure, we don't really need to do anything with redundant greenhouses, but knock them down for housing. And no one can really believe Jersey should look at become that bit more more sustainable in producing its own food, because that's not commercially viable.

But when a politician of William Hague's stature throws down the gauntlet, perhaps it is time to listen. Hague began by setting out the importance of climate change; it is not a trivial issue, because as resources become scarcer, if the issue is not addressed, competition and conflict over who gets those resources will become increasingly important:

Climate change is perhaps the twenty-first century's biggest foreign policy challenge along with such challenges as preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. A world which is failing to respond to climate change is one in which the values embodied in the UN will not be met. It is a world in which competition and conflict will win over collaboration.(1)

The keynote phrase in his speech is "climate security". As the climate changes, and as non-renewable energy resources become scarcer (so that biofuels, rather than food) becomes more viable, the connectedness of the modern world means that any problems ripple through the system, impacting on a global scale. No one can bury their heads in the sand. It is irresponsible to do so:

You cannot have food, water, or energy security without climate security. They are interconnected and inseparable. They form four resource pillars on which global security, prosperity and equity stand. Each depends on the others. Plentiful, affordable food requires reliable and affordable access to water and energy. Increasing dependence on coal, oil, and gas threatens climate security, increasing the severity of floods and droughts, damaging food production, exacerbating the loss of biodiversity and, in countries that rely on hydropower, undermining energy security through the impact on water availability. As the world becomes more networked, the impacts of climate change in one country or region will affect the prosperity and security of others around the world.

He notes that the time to start thinking about low carbon business is necessary now, not "business as usual", because otherwise it is future generations that will pay the price for our delay, our willful refusal to take any form of action. Locally, this means looking at food production, about the standards of houses being built to be energy efficient, about transport, power etc. Part of that can be done by private citizens taking action - as is the case locally with the move to buying organic products (not dependent on oil-based fertilizers), increased recycling by dropping off newspapers, plastic bottles at recycling banks, less use of plastic bags. Small things can bring about surprisingly significant changes. But part has also to be the responsibility of governments in empowering the citizen towards a lower carbon, less wasteful, lifestyle.

We need to shift investment urgently from high carbon business as usual to the low carbon economy - this means building an essentially decarbonised global economy by mid century. At the same time we must ensure development is climate resilient: otherwise the changes in climate that are already unavoidable will block the path for hundreds of millions of people from poverty to prosperity

Rather than decrying wind power and other renewable sources of energy, the UK, under what Hague describes as probably the greenest coalition government in its history, is committed to improving production from those sources. A new wind farm has just opened offshore in Kent. Instead of blocking such strategies, and talking them down, Jersey should show how innovative it can be. Guernsey recently financed a seabed survey, to give public data as a springboard and incentive to commercial wave power companies. We too can do more, and we need to start thinking about targets. Denmark generates more than 15% of its electricity from the wind, which is not insignificant.

The UK is already the world leader in offshore wind with more projects installed, in planning and in construction than any other country in the world. We are undertaking the most radical transformation of our electricity sector ever. We aim to provide over 30% of our domestic electricity from renewables by 2020. We have committed to build no new coal-fired power stations without carbon capture and storage technology - CCS - and we have announced our intention to continue with four CCS demonstration projects.

The other matter of importance highlighted by William Hague is to not just let matters rest with environmentalists but also to look at business engagement. Is anyone in the States of Jersey talking with any commercial groups who provide renewable energy? And are builders sufficient aware of environmental specifications? What of older "Masterplans"? Did they factor in environmental and climate issues?

And we must also reach out beyond, to NGOs, faith groups and business. Of all these, perhaps business engagement is key to making a difference. It is business that will lead the low-carbon transition. It is business which best understands the incentives needed to help us all prosper.

The Parish of St Helier has been very pro-active in looking at recycling. In August they published a report which noted that:

In April this year the Parish sought expressions of interest for a Recycling Partner capable of finding environmentally sound and cost effective end uses on or off Island for the recycled materials the Parish is producing; the recycling partner would also be responsible for the transport of the recyclables from the depot to the end-users. This generated considerable interest with 11 initial applications from French and Jersey companies, some of which put forward very detailed proposals.

And they are looking in particular at ROMI Recyclage, which has been established since 1866 and has a number of sites across France.

The business operates over a broad range of recyclables to ensure stability for the company during fluctuations in the waste commodities market, which will in turn provide stability for the Parish's income streams from the sale of recyclables

With regard to building, it is worth noting that one office has been built recently to BREEAM specifications. What is BEEAM?

BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) is the leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the de facto measure used to describe a building's environmental performance.(2)

And Ogiers new premises, recently mentioned in the Green Building Press, has recently been completed; it is the first office building on Jersey to be built to BREEAM specifications

Ogier, providers of offshore legal and fiduciary services, have moved into their new premises, Jersey's largest and greenest single occupancy office. The the partnership between the company, developer JCN and local building firm Camerons as the main contractor has resulted in a new landmark for St Helier. Ogier House has achieved a "very good" BREEAM....Additional to the atria, solar shading has been used to reduce the need for air-conditioning and movement sensors avoid electricity being wasted by lighting rooms with no-one in them. Seasonal Commissioning ensures the building is operating at optimum efficiency all year round, with thermal zoning of different rooms. Space has been allocated for storage of recyclable waste, promoting green management strategies within the building.(3)

Hague makes the point that it is not "an idealists pipe dream" to look at strategies for moving to a low carbon economy, and the sooner we do so, the better we will be prepared for the future:

A global low-carbon economy is not an idealist's pipe-dream but a 21st century realist's imperative. Countries that adapt quickly to a carbon constrained world will be better able to deliver lasting prosperity for their citizens.

Describing the weather catastrophes of the past year - in Russia, Pakistan, China - Hague comments that:

While no one weather event can ever be linked with certainty to climate change, the broad patterns of abnormality seen this year are consistent with climate change models. They provide a vivid illustration of the events we will be encountering increasingly in the future. The clock is ticking. The time to act is now.

And he concludes with a message to take action now:

This is not a hard choice. We have to get this right. If we do, we can still shape our world. If we do not, our world will determine our destiny.

Links
(1) http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2270476/william-hague-climate-change
(2) http://www.breeam.org/
(3) http://www.greenbuildingpress.co.uk/article.php?category_id=1&article_id=681
(4) http://www.recycle-more.co.uk/nav/page726.aspx

Eight or nine levels of management

I thought this letter deserved a wider audience. I have seen the organisational chart which Senator Ferguson was generous and kind enough to share; it is a truly superb piece of thoroughly professional work by Sarah Ferguson, and I will be researching comparable charts etc for a detailed review of the structure. I suggest that Peter Body and his "levels of management" skeptics ask for a copy.

That a large States department has no organisational chart is amazing - when I was working on a business continuity plan at work, one part of the plan was - quite obviously - an organisational chart, giving posts and responsibilities - and that is for a relatively small organisation. Someone at Heath can't be doing their job properly!

How the States, with large departments like Health, manage without one is, quite frankly, incredible, because any additions to staff will likely be on an ad hoc basis, dependent purely on small clusters, and will very likely involve duplication, because no one has the big picture to hand. Yet the Chief Officers of Health over this period were all charge of managing manage a department in which he was unaware of the detailed structure and work done by its members. Didn't they think it might be useful? Obviously each Chief Officer knew who was beneath him, and each level of the pyramid knew their level, and perhaps a few levels below, but no one could have had the complete picture of how it all fitted together, because they had no chart.

http://www.thisisjersey.com/2010/04/28/eight-or-nine-levels-of-management/

From Senator Sarah Ferguson.

THE letter by John Henwood (JEP, 22 April) regarding the organisational structures of various States departments has been brought to my attention.
I happen to have the only chart for the Hospital and I have sent this - all 17 pages - to Mr Henwood.

When I first joined the Health Committee, under the presidency of the former Senator Syvret, my first question was to ask for a copy of the organisational structure.

The reply was that this is all we have - the top three layers of management - and if you want any more you will have to do it yourself. So I did it.
I have circulated it to various officials, getting a variety of reactions. These varied from the dismissive to 'how nice'. I have some hopes that the Comprehensive Spending Review may actually address the implications of these charts.

There is evidence that there is too much administration - for some departments within the Hospital there are eight or nine levels of management from the front line to the Health Minister. The Comptroller and Auditor General's report last year on the structure at the Hospital said that it was not possible to evaluate the cost of management because these costs were not known. While I understand improvements have been made the cost of management is not yet known. My understanding is that it should be about 6%.

I hope that the Comprehensive Spending Review addresses some of these issues. Meanwhile I have other departments in my sights!

On a different but related matter, I fear that the subtlety of my question on photocopiers - and I didn't mention bottled water - was lost on your reporter (JEP, 17 April).

Any competent organisation can extract information from the computerised ledgers and identify exactly what has been spent on what. The States ledgers were in such an appalling state that it was not possible to undertake more than very approximate analyses.

This was due to the fact that the financial management function was so poor. Considerable work has been undertaken to rationalise the ledgers and the Public Accounts Committee will no doubt be following this up.

This has been a constant theme of the Comptroller and Auditor General and my Public Accounts Committee and has figured in our reports and my speeches.
Similarly, it is important that the accounts of all the organisations supported by the States should be published in the interests of transparency. This was also mentioned during the hearing.

Senator Ferguson needs extra homework

Recently, Deputy Montfort Tadier brought a proposition calling for a Monday off when Liberation day fell (as it does this year) on a Sunday. Later when this failed he tried for a Friday, this was also rejected.

Philip Ozouf stated that "I think it would be unconscionable at this stage in the calendar at the end of February to be discussing and to be considering an extra and public holiday in what is effectively 12 weeks' time. No self-respecting nation state would be debating in their national parliament the addition of a holiday at such late stage. "

Deputy J.M. Maçon commented: "On a point of clarification, if I may. The Minister commented that no self-respecting national assembly would bring such a proposition at such short notice. May I ask when the Council of Ministers brought their Boxing Day proposal, how many weeks were given then?"

Now Deputy Maçon knows very well that the Boxing Day proposition was rushed through the assembly with very short notice. He has, in fact, caught Senator Ozouf in an inconsistency. What do you do when you have been caught out? If you are Senator Ozouf you respond by ignoring this and moving the debate to general terms. Well done to Senator Ozouf for not giving a straight answer!!!

Senator P.F.C. Ozouf: "If I am able to respond, clearly there is an issue that we need to sort out in relation to giving certainty in relation to public holidays and bank holidays. We need to sort this out, there are another 6 occasions in the next 35 years when Liberation day falls on a Saturday or a Sunday and when there are other Boxing Days and other days and we need to sort this out that there be an automatic statutory provision, not this chaos."

But the best of the commentators has to be Senator Ferguson, who plainly prefers to rely on memory rather than research.

"I think I have been lost in the points of clarification. I am confused by this habit of suddenly thinking: "Let us have an extra duvet day." I think it is something that seems to have come upon the population in general over recent years. The Deputy said it is the 65th anniversary, well, why not the 64th? Why did we not do this for the 64th or the 66th? Every year we celebrate Liberation Day is important because every year we remember. "

She now tackles the comment that the USA moves the day when Independence Day falls on a Sunday.

"I certainly did not intend to mislead the House but I can certainly assure the Deputy and the House that we did not get an extra day when I lived in America. Again, it must be a fairly recent thing because when I lived in New York we celebrated the day on the day and that was it, there was no extra holiday."

Well, if one wanted to be really picky, I would note that when, in 1779, July 4 fell on a Sunday, the holiday was celebrated on Monday, July 5. I don't really think that Senator Ferguson is quite that old, but that would certainly explain the shortfall in her memory.

If she had done her homework, she would have found that in 1938, Congress changed Independence Day to a paid federal holiday, and federal holidays, when they fall on a Sunday, are observed by workers the following Monday. When was this decided? Well, this year as it happens, Independence day falls on a Sunday, and as noted:

July 4, 2010 (the legal public holiday for Independence Day), falls on a Sunday. For most Federal employees, Monday, July 5, will be treated as a holiday for pay and leave purposes. (See section 3(a) of Executive order 11582, February 11, 1971.)(1)

It can be seen that the order making this so was in 1971! So this is Senator Ferguson's "fairly recent thing". I myself would not consider 39 years quite as recent as that, but I am not quite as old as Senator Ferguson. I do hope that next time, however, she doesn't rely wholly on her memory but does a little extra homework.

It might also provide a good idea for Jersey politicians like Senator Philip Ozouf to look at this whole section to save reinventing the wheel! Here is the exact paragraph mentioned above:

Executive Order 11582--Observance of holidays by Government agencies

Source: The provisions of Executive Order 11582 of Feb. 11, 1971, appear at 36 FR 2957, 3 CFR, 1971-1975 Comp., p. 539, unless otherwise noted.

By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Sec. 3. (a) Any employee whose basic workweek does not include Sunday and who would ordinarily be excused from work on a holiday falling within his basic workweek shall be excused from work on the next workday of his basic workweek whenever a holiday falls on Sunday.
(b) Any employee whose basic workweek includes Sunday and who would ordinarily be excused from work on a holiday falling within his basic workweek shall be excused from work on the next workday of his basic workweek whenever a holiday falls on a day that has been administratively scheduled as his regular weekly nonworkday in lieu of Sunday. (2)


Links:
(1) http://www.opm.gov/Operating_Status_Schedules/fedhol/2010.asp
(2) http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/11582.html

Sarah Ferguson's Bad Accounting

Now, according to the natural order instituted by divine providence, material goods are provided for the satisfaction of human needs. Therefore the division and appropriation of property, which proceeds from human law, must not hinder the satisfaction of man's necessity from such goods. Equally, whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance. So Ambrosius says, and it is also to be found in the Decretum Gratiani: "The bread which you withhold belongs to the hungry; the clothing you shut away, to the naked; and the money you bury in the earth is the redemption and freedom of the penniless." (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Question 66, Article 7)

I heard Senator Sarah Ferguson on BBC Radio Jersey this morning; she was justifying the low level of foreign aid given by Jersey in comparison with its GDP by saying that one should take into account all the charitable giving that goes to foreign aid, such as the recent Concert for Haiti, Side by Side for Maderia, Christian Aid etc.

This is a kind of thinking that I am sure will be happily latched upon by any country that is providing less aid than the United Nations Target, especially as only 5 countries have so far managed this!

Although the world's 22 rich countries were mandated by the General Assembly to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) as ODA to developing nations, only five countries have met this target, according to a new U.N. report on FfD. Three of them, Luxemburg, Norway and Sweden, have also pledged to reach the 1.0 percent target by 2005-2006. The other two, Denmark and the Netherlands, have not. (1)

With the Ferguson proposals in place, all of these countries, who also have fund raising activities and private donors, can count that all in as part of their GNP, and manage to reach their targets without having to spend a penny. That, of course, is the outcome; it is an excuse to avoid considering that governments, as well as individuals, have responsibilies. As Peter Singer pointed out, in 1972, " if governments decide to reduce expenditure, they regard foreign aid as one of the expendable items, ahead of, for instance, defense or public construction projects"(2).

It is well known that Jersey is facing a "black hole" ahead, and I suspect Senator Ferguson's statements are not unrelated to that.

She is not, however, the only one trying to make out that more aid is being given than is the case. Writing in "The Tablet", Denis Claivaz notes that the IMF is also doing this:

Many people may not know that the International Monetary Fund's £74 million "highly concessional" and "interest-free" emergency assistance for Haiti is actually a loan. Full repayment will be due after a five and a half year "grace period". Interest will accrue from 2011. Surely history has taught us that Haiti does not need more loans. Haiti needs unconditional grant aid. Given the role of the international community in that country's miserable history, there is a moral obligation to ensure that Haiti's debts are immediately and unconditionally forgiven. Christine Lagarde, the French Minister of Finance, was among the first to encourage world leaders and money institutions to cancel Haiti's debt. Significantly, this is from a minister whose country had illicitly and immorally collected a huge amount of money from Haiti for the privilege of her simply being recognised as a sovereign state. The international community must both help Haiti to recover from the earthquake and empower its people to build their country anew.(3)

So how is foreign aid measured?

According to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), foreign aid (or Official Development Assistance) is the transfer abroad of public resources on concessional terms (with at least a 25 percent grant element), a significant objective of which is to bring about an improvement in economic, political, or social conditions in developing countries.(1)

This foreign aid represents the moral obligation of the richer nations to help the poorer ones. There is an obligation for all the citizens of a prosperous nation to help those suffering, regardless of geographical boundaries. Voluntary giving is simply not enough, and where it is given, it is a bonus.

Karl Popper, in his "Open Society and Its Enemies" writes that :"human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway...Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering - such as hunger in times of unavoidable shortage of food - should be distributed as equally as possible."(4)

At the present time, the news is focused on the immediate disasters - Haiti, Madeira, Chile - but all the while, there is still a steady need for aid for the many poorer countries:

According to Oxfam, on current trends there will be 9.6 million child deaths in 2015, compared with the millennium summit goal of 4.2 million. The cumulative total of additional child deaths between 2000-2015 resulting from the widening gap between the millennium target rate and current trends will amount to 56 million.(1)

We cannot see just how well off we really are. As D.J. Shaw notes:

Despite progress, it is still an appalling fact that in this globalizing world of increasing prosperity, in which the richest tenth own 85 percent of the world's assets, just under one billion people subsist on less than a dollar a day, 2.8 billion (almost half the population of the developing world) exist on less than two dollars a day, and 850 million suffer from hunger in dehumanizing, abject poverty. Hunger and malnutrition kill more people every year than AIDS, malaria and TB combined, and more people die from hunger than from wars.(5)

In fact, the 0.7% is a very modest sum, as Tim Costello is chief executive of World Vision Australia notes:

The commitment required to eradicate global poverty is modest by comparison with the cost we will have to endure in combating climate change. In 20 years time I suspect that we will be shocked at how modest the request of 0.7 per cent is from the poorest trying to survive. They are not asking us to give up our consumer excesses but just to show a little charity that we could easily afford.(6)

I hope that the proposal by Senator Sarah Ferguson to "count in" personal charitable donations will not get the sympathetic hearing that I suspect it probably will with the States. She was also noting that there is not a proper accounting officer for the Overseas Aid Committee, and therefore no proper accountability to the States. This is ironic because her suggestions strike me as the worst kind of accounting to fudge figures and misrepresent Jersey's giving.

It is also doubly ironic that Jersey has no comparable scheme such as "Gift Aid" which would increase and promote that kind of giving which she would like to count as "overseas aid".

Links
(1) http://www.moyak.com/papers/foreign-aid-overseas.html
(2) http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1972----.htm
(3) The Tablet, Letters Column., (Br) Denis Claivaz, Presentation Brothers,
Geneva, Switzerland, denisclaivaz@hotmail.com
(4) The Open Society and its Enemies, vol. i, pp. 284-285)
(5) http://www.odi.org.uk/events/world_food_security/D_John_Shaw.pdf
(6) http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/19342.htm

Talkback on Population

The concept of the 'population bomb' is so imbedded in our thinking that it does not occur to us that human population growth may end, not because of disaster, but because of other natural processes.(Glen Hiemstra )

Back from a mini-break in Guernsey, I listened to BBC Radio Jersey and was pleasantly surprised to hear Senator Sarah Ferguson say that the "demographic time bomb" was in fact more a a demographic hump, because once the "baby boomers" generation reaches its peak, the elderly population will then start to decline fairly rapidly (even given modern healthcare). She said that really long term planning should plan both for and past the peak population of elderly people. This ties in with the fact noted by Glen Hiemstra in "The Futurist", which is looking at the USA, but has implications wherever there was a "baby boom" in the West, including Jersey:

Generation Y, the 'dot com generation' or the 'millennial generation' is huge. The baby boom was 76 million strong in the U.S. Generation X, those born between 1964 and 1979 was much smaller, at only 17 million (an astonishing drop).

It is the first time I've heard a politician actually mention that "hump" rather than "time bomb" - because of course one of the features of the proposed inward migration is that it will probably increase the duration of that peak, and make the "demographic time bomb" longer - it is easy to see why, because if younger people come to the Island (probably mostly in the range 25-40), they will in turn age, and add the the growing number of elderly. In fact, any simple model shows that you lower the average age in the short term, only by producing a weighting factor that will increase the average age in the long term. The only way this means of combating an increase in average will work is to continue to grow the population by bringing in younger people, which in turn, increases the total population. It looks good in the short term, but in the long term is a mathematical disaster. The model just will not work.

What is really needed is an immigration policy that will ensure immigration takes place only if the birth rate is declining to the point that the total population will start falling (or certainly falling below a critical level). In order to do this, some decent mathematical models based on census information should be developed, and this should as far as possible be adjusted each year by parameters of population change - births, deaths and other measures of immigration from housing, tax, social security, electoral role etc.

Links:
http://www.2010census.biz/population/www/coop/popconf/table.html
http://www.futurist.com/articles/future-trends/population-myths-trends-and-transportation-planning/