Chesterton on Christmas - Part 1

Writing in 1929, Chesterton sums up much of the busy commercial nature of Christmas, even back then, and how Christmas is domestic, family centred, and should also focus our minds on those who are homeless, and of how "modern commercial complexity eats out the heart of the thing, while actually leaving the painted shell of it".

The Spirit of Christmas
by G.K. Chesterton
I have rather rashly undertaken to write of the Spirit of Christmas; and it presents a preliminary difficulty about which I must be candid.

People are very curious nowadays in their way of talking about "the spirit" of a thing. There is, for example, a particular sort of prig who is always lecturing us about having the spirit of true Christianity, apart from all names and forms.

As far as I can make out, he means the very opposite of what he says. He means that we are to go on using the names "Christian" and "Christianity," and so on, for something in which it is quite specially the spirit that is not Christian; something that is a sort of combination of the baseless optimism of an American atheist with the pacifism of a mild Hindoo.

In the same way, we read a great deal about the Spirit of Christmas in modern journalism or commercialism; but it is really a reversal of the same kind. So far from preserving the essentials without the externals, it is rather preserving the externals where there cannot be the essentials.

It means taking two mere material substances, like holly and mistletoe, and spreading them all over huge and homeless cosmopolitan hotels or round the Doric columns of impersonal clubs full of jaded and cynical old gentlemen; or in any other place where the actual spirit of Christmas is least likely to be.

But there is also another way in which modern commercial complexity eats out the heart of the thing, while actually leaving the painted shell of it. And that is the much too elaborate system of dependence on buying and selling, and therefore on bustle and hustle; and the actual neglect of the new things that might be done by the old Christmas.

Normally, if anything were normal nowadays, it would seem a truism to say that Christmas has been a family festival. But it is now possible (as I have had the good or bad luck to discover) to earn a reputation for paradox simply by going on saying that truisms are true.

In this case, of course, the reason, the only reasonable reason, was religious. It was concerned with a happy family because it was consecrated to the Holy Family. But it is perfectly true that many men saw the fact without specially feeling the reason.

When we say the root was religious, we do not mean that Sam Weller was concentrated on theological values when he told the Fat Boy to "put a bit of Christmas," into some object, probably edible.

We do not mean that the Fat Boy had gone into a trance of mystical contemplation like a monk seeing a vision. We do not even mean that Bob Cratchit defended punch by saying he was only looking on the wine when it was yellow; or that Tiny Tim quoted Timothy.

We only mean that they, including their author, would have confessed humbly and heartily that there was someone historically quite anterior to Mr. Scrooge, who might be called the Founder of the Feast.

But in any case, whatever the reason, all would have agreed about the result. Mr. Wardle's feast centred in Mr. Wardle's family; and none the less because the romantic shadows of Mr. Winkle and Mr. Snodgrass threatened to break it up for the formation of other families.

The Christmas season is domestic; and for that reason most people now prepare for it by struggling in tramcars, standing in queues, rushing away in trains, crowding despairingly into tea-shops, and wondering when or whether they will ever get home.

I do not know whether some of them disappear for ever in the toy department or simply lie down and die in the tea-rooms; but by the look of them, it is quite likely. Just before the great festival of the home the whole population seems to have become homeless.

It is the supreme triumph of industrial civilisation that, in the huge cities which seem to have far too many houses, there is a hopeless shortage of housing. For a long time past great numbers of our poor have become practically nomadic.

We even confess the fact; for we talk of some of them as Street Arabs. But this domestic institution, in its present ironical phase, has gone beyond such normal abnormality. The feast of the family turns the rich as well as the poor into vagabonds.

They are so scattered over the bewildering labyrinth of our traffic and our trade, that they sometimes cannot even reach the tea-shop; it would be indelicate, of course, to mention the tavern. They have a difficulty in crowding into their hotels, let alone separating to reach their houses. I mean quite the reverse of irreverence when I say that their only point of resemblance to the archetypal Christmas family is that there is no room for them at the inn.

Now Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.

But the other sort of paradox is not intentional and is certainly not beautiful. 

 It is bad enough that we cannot altogether disentangle the tragedy of poverty. It is bad enough that the birth of the homeless, celebrated at hearth and altar, should sometimes synchronise with the death of the homeless in workhouses and slums.

Winter

This is just a poem about the cold. Winter weather has meant cold winds, and very cold nights. This captures the mood. The Snow Queen is, of course, a steal from Hans Christian Andersen.

Winter

Now Winter comes, the earth grows old
No leaves are left, the branches bare
And the icy gales bring frozen air
This is the time of dark and cold

The Snow Queen comes, her might behold
With fell designs, her spells beware
Now winter comes, the earth grows old
No leaves are left, the branches bare

By fireside warmth, the tale is told
Of snowbound land, of icy snare
Beside the fire, in warm armchair
Inside the flames are bright and gold
Now winter comes, the earth grows old

Jersey Our Island - Travelling Blind Part 4

Published in 1950, this book is an interesting snapshot of the Island and its customs as it was in the immediate post-war period, and not without humour. Most guide books of the time give the tourist information, or give the impressions of an outsider to the Island, but this is in "inside view", which is rarer.

Jersey Our Island - Travelling Blind Part 4
by Sidney Bisson

Oyster fishing was another of Jersey's maritime ventures that remains only as a memory. Discovered in 1797, the Gorey oyster beds were soon being dredged by a fleet of three or four hundred small vessels, bringing employment not only to fishermen but to hundreds of women and children who sorted the catches as they were brought in and prepared them for export to Britain.

For a few years the trade prospered, enlivened by riots and clashes with French fishermen who were accused of poaching. British and French gunboats took a hand, and to quell the most serious of the riots the 60th Regiment, then stationed in Jersey, was called out.

The Lieutenant-Governor, Major-General Archibald Campbell, directed the operation in person, caught a chill, and died - the only casualty in the Battle of the Oyster Shells as it came to be called locally. The cause of the battle was the delay in opening new oyster beds, which had been laid down to replace those which the turbulent fishermen had dragged bare. In spite of regulations to protect the new beds, the industry gradually declined. By 1850 it was practically dead.

Gorey relapsed into a long sleep, from which it has never properly awakened. Its sloping cotils are more suitable for growing potatoes than for building houses, so that it has fortunately escaped the rash that has permanently disfigured so much of the south and east coast. Its few hotels and boarding houses seem to have a special attraction for artists and `intellectuals.'

Perhaps George Eliot started a fashion when she stayed here in 1857. Anyway you can hardly walk to the neighbouring baylet of Anne Port without your meditations being disturbed by a couple of bearded young males in vivid coloured trousers declaiming their equally vivid views on Auden and MacNeice in high-pitched voices.

Or yourself disturbing a tweed-skirted eton-cropped female of the species perched insecurely on a canvas stool many sizes too small for her broad posterior and dabbing bright green seagulls on a gory canvas.

Aloof, squatting over two and a half acres of the little promontory that juts into the sea, the mediaeval castle of Mont Orgueil dominates the scene. We may forgive Mont Orgueil for not taking an interest in modern verse. When it was young the fashionable poets were Master Wace of Jersey, who had turned the stories of King Arthur into verse (and who, incidentally, was the first to mention the round table), and the priest Layamon of Ernley, who shamelessly borrowed from Wace to give the English language its first great poem.

The castle was two hundred years old, and had been pulled about, repaired, and added to, when Chaucer was writing his Canterbury Tales. It had also been several times besieged, but no one had succeeded in fighting their way into its keep not even the redoubtable Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France.

And no wonder, when you consider the strength and intricacy of its defences. Not everything you see now existed then the Harliston Tower is a fifteenth, the Somerset Tower a sixteenth century addition but the general plan remains unchanged. As you wander through gate after gate, round corner after corner, up step after step, until you reach the entrance of the massive keep, you can understand how a handful of men, provided they were adequately provisioned and armed, could laugh defiance at an army of Frenchmen encamped outside the gates.

It was in 1461 that an invader first succeeded in capturing this stronghold. On the accession of Edward IV, Margaret of Anjou, wife of the imprisoned Henry, took refuge in France. Amongst those from whom she sought assistance was the Comte de Maulevrier, to whom in return she offered the Channel Islands. Maulevrier sent an expedition to Jersey which captured the castle without a struggle. 

There can be little doubt that it was treacherously surrendered. The Keeper, John Nanfan, was a Lancastrian who had been appointed by Henry VI and never replaced ! Maulevrier, and after his death his son, ruled the island until 1468, when Edward IV sent Sir Richard Harliston to recapture it for England.

After a five months' siege Mont Orgueil again surrendered, only to be besieged again after another interval of seven years when Sir Richard, who had been appointed Governor, refused to give it up on the accession of Henry VII.

In the next century strenuous efforts were made to adapt the mediaeval fortress to the use of cannon, including the construction of a massive rampart or `Grand Rampire.' But improvements in artillery made it vulnerable from the west, where it was overlooked by the inland heights. The proud mount had to give place to Elizabeth Castle, and served chiefly as the Governor's residence and island prison, though it continued to be garrisoned until the time of Waterloo.

Occasionally state prisoners were confined within its walls, most famous being William Prynne, who beguiled his leisure, when he was not playing cards with the governor's wife and daughters, writing his `Divine and Profitable Meditations raised from the Contemplation of these three Leaves of Nature's Volume: i, Rockes; a, Seas; 3, Gardens; digested into three Distinct Poems.'

Prynne was a better Puritan than poet. The best he could do was :

`The Castle's ample, airy, healthy and
The Prospect pleasant, both by Sea and Land.'

which Abraham Cowley, who had followed Prince Charles to Jersey, parodied with:

`Written by William Prynne, Esquire, the
Year of our Lord six hundred thirty-three.'

As I sit quietly on the Castle Green contemplating Prynne's three leaves of nature, the voices of my two young intellectuals are wafted to me on the breeze even before they turn the corner. They have had their cerebral cocktail and are returning to their hotel for dinner. I hope it makes them sick. The cocktail, I mean; not the dinner. I don't wish them bodily harm, but it would do them good to vomit a stomachful of censorious bile. I have a mind to get up and go to them.


`Sirs,' I will say, `when you are as old as I am ' (fortunately I look a good deal older than I am) '-you will know that criticism untempered with experience is about as valueless as ' `When you are as old as I am,' says a quiet voice at my elbow.

An Overview of Retail from Sandpiper - Part 2

An Overview of Retail from Sandpiper - Part 2

The “Economic Affairs Scrutiny Panel” conducted a “Retail Policy Review”, and one of the witnesses was the CEO of Sandpiper.

There are some interesting nuggets which I have extracted and commented on after reading the review.

Sunday Trading

An interesting but realistic take on Sunday Trading. I wonder if the Chamber of Commerce or for that matter the States Statistical Unit has ever asked the question of shops up to 700 square metres: The law allows you to do it, why are you not trading?

I am somewhat agnostic on Sunday trading. I have to be because some of my shops do open and some do not so it would be slightly strange if I was to say anything else.

The reality is of course, as we all know, that any shop up to 700 square metres can open today. Walk round the town centre and count how many shops that are under 700 square metres that could trade are not trading. It seemed to me that in this process the first thing you would do would be to find out from all of those people: “The law allows you to do it, why are you not trading?”

But we have gone from giving the 700 square metres a few years ago to let us have open house for everybody. I do not know what the answer would be, and again it would be 2-faced for me to say anything other than I am agnostic. The only thing I would say is that I am trading the brands that have a demand. The brands that I have closed, which is most of my clothing brands, there is not the demand to justify 7 days. There is not the demand for me to ask staff to work extra hours at extra cost, when potentially the cake is only so big. I will keep away from the “Keep Sunday Special” issue, because that is a separate view.

Equally, I understand the argument that says government needs to get out the way and let the free economy take its place. That is why I come down on the view of being agnostic
I mean we open at the peak periods, so we are open now. There is probably an argument in the summer to open on selected Sundays but there are other Sundays in the depths of February where there are cobwebs rolling down the High Street.

Equally, the other consideration is that I would suspect that the real beneficiaries of Sunday trading will be the garden centres and D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) shops. Therefore, this idea that we do Sunday trading, it will regenerate the town, you could argue that it might have a negative effect because it would drag people into alternate locations out of the town.

He also makes an interesting point on the main beneficiaries – the Garden centres, the DIY stores, the Farm Shops, and not the Town Centres. They are the nearest Jersey has to an attractions outside St Helier, and their product lines have often widened considerably from the basic core activity to supplying of refreshments and more general retail items, especially at Christmas.

It would be interesting, from a worker's perspective, to ask: does he ever work on a Sunday like his employees have to? 

That's a question I always ask about Sunday trading: is there an element of hypocrisy if an employer wants the benefits of a day with his or her family, but is happy to let a worker forgo that. A day off in lieu in the week is not much good for the family if your children are at school.

Luxury Brand Market

My sense is that although there is a market for high end it is limited and therefore we have tended to stay away from it because I do not think the majority of the population are going to shop there and unfortunately in this day and age you cannot just afford to be a luxury treat.

It is interesting that both BHS and Woolworth have been taken over by much more high end suppliers, although the more expensive one, where BHS used to be, is looking to sell more general sportswear and have a cafe on premises.

Tourism for Retail

I remember “Time Jewellers” at the heyday of tourism in the 1960s and 1970s which did by and large survive on tourists (and never advertised), but even with specifically holiday geared tourism, such as tourism resorts, the market collapsed some time ago, along with Jersey Potteries, the Shire Horse Farm, the Fantastic Tropical Gardens etc. I think he very succinctly sums up the situation here.

To be honest the phrase I tend to use with tourism for retail is, it is cream on the cake. You cannot survive on tourists. The tourists will put a bit more cream on the cake if you like but you have to have an underlying bulk of business to drive your business on a day in day out basis and if you can attract some tourists as well then all well and good but you cannot build a business in retail just on tourism.

Costs of Doing Business and Changing the Townscape

There is an interesting distinction made here between locally owned properties, who have adjusted rents to keep business since the crash of 2008, and the institutionally owned properties, those bought primarily as an investment in land. It might be useful if there was an easily accessible way of determining which properties are owned by which kind of landlord, and if that could be easily determined, then it could go as a question on the property schedule. While property transactions are recorded in the Royal Court, we don't seem to have any central property registry which can easily be interrogated to produce statistical reports.

There is a certain parallel with the question of economic substance, because institutionally owned properties as described here, are buying to invest and resell as much as buying to rent or indeed redevelop for housing. You can usually tell the latter because they are either empty for a long period, or have a peppercorn charity rental, or have very low rental takeup (I’m thinking of Britannia place as an example)

I have to say in defence of local landlords we have been seeing over the past couple of years locally owned properties taking a far more pragmatic view of property prices. That is not the same when you have institutionally owned properties because institutionally owned properties are very loath to drop their rent because it means they have to lie down the carrying value of their asset which they are very loathe to do. So property prices remain high but I would say that there is certainly a more pragmatic solution being shown to that going forward which is indicative of the fact of supply and demand.

So rents are expensive, relatively expensive in the top 13.

But the town is getting emptier and that is when you are into this joined-up thinking that says we need to manage the decline. We need to manage re-zoning. We need to manage the creation of more green spaces. We need to shorten the process of planning permission so that people can turn commercial into residential at a much faster pace. We need to accept that the town centre is not the town centre that it was. You could almost argue that we almost need to give up on peripheral areas.

I read that Simon Crowcroft suggested a tax on empty shops. I agree with that partially. I agree with it in that I think it is absolutely right for the main streets. I think that is entirely appropriate. But not for the peripheral streets because you are trying to stop the tide of the internet, which is not going away.

What was in the town centre cannot possibly be the way going forward. The demand is not there to keep those businesses that were thriving 10, 15 years ago going. So do not penalise the people on top of having lost their business and having empty shops by taxing it. But absolutely, where you have institutional landlords in the main streets that are just frankly making the place look unattractive, they need to incentivise to move the thing along.

With the need for more residential housing in Jersey, the notion of incentivising a move from business rental to housing rental is an interesting one. A number of finance centre properties which were empty have been converted into flats, and the long time dead end furniture shop by Minden place is also on track to provide housing.

An Overview of Retail from Sandpiper - Part 1

Prefix: this was written before my cough and cold. I like to prepare blogs in advance, in case of illness!

An Overview of Retail from Sandpiper

The “Economic Affairs Scrutiny Panel” conducted a “Retail Policy Review”, and one of the witnesses was the CEO of Sandpiper.

There are some interesting nuggets which I have extracted and commented on after reading the review. The CEO's submission is in italics.

Freight Costs

It is clear that freight costs add a significant amount to the cost of food in the Channel Islands, although it should be noted that the Iceland franchise of Sandpiper.has managed to bring a good many products at UK costs plus GST.

Inevitably whenever you have a new entrant come into the marketplace there is always a challenge and of course every new entrant that comes in comes with wonderful promises about the price of food and the J.E.P. (Jersey Evening Post) is full of the fact that the price of food is going to come down and then the realisation dawns, whether it be when Waitrose come in or whether Tesco come in or when even Morrisons comes in, that the reality is that prices of food in the Channel Islands are more expensive.

So understandably people agitate but as one example when we are spending £8 million a year just to bring stuff across from Portsmouth to St. Helier in St. Peter Port that £8 million a year has to be paid for.

One matter not explored here is whether it would be cheaper to source some products from nearby France rather than the UK. Clearly, with impending Brexit, there may be difficulties here, but it would be interesting to know what the comparative costs are, as the distance is considerably smaller.

Retail Strategy

When you consider strategy with respect to finance as opposed the retail, I think he has a point. In fact there are out of town shopping centres, but with relatively small amount parking – even the Co-Op at St Peter’s does not have a huge amount of space – this was never going to be such a draw for town dwellers. It would be interesting to note if the vast Diamond Garden Centre in Guernsey has had any effect on retail there.

I guess for me the question is, how do government view retail? Are retail an industry to be looked after or are they an industry to be used as a cash cow. I have to say regrettably at the moment I see it as being pretty much as a cash cow. I have been here 11 years and if you look at what has happened to retail more by luck than sound judgment we have avoided the decimation of our town centre purely because we did not have the location for out of town shopping centres. No government strategy. No real thinking but it happened, thank God, and we therefore up until, I would say, probably about 18 months ago had a very vibrant town centre but inevitably as the pressure comes on particularly with alternative shopping channels that town centre is coming under more pressure.

My synopsis would be we have not had a retail strategy for years. There has been no grand plan to manage the reduction in space. No thought of the impact of attrition of alternate shopping channels. In essence, no joined up thinking and policy made on the hoof. I am sorry but that is my perspective. So retail closures continues. What do the States do about that? The States decide to introduce a 20 per cent retail tax on the very day that Mothercare and Thomas Cook … the very day Mothercare and Thomas Cook announced they are closing and leaving the Islands for good.

When he was in the States, Constable John Refault did comment on this line of argument, which had also been used by Senator Philip Ozouf. He noted that “Thomas Cook and Mothercare. Thomas Cook is not a retailer. They do not pay tax. Mothercare have not gone out of business because they pay retail tax in Jersey. I am just trying to read some of my own writing. BHS did not go out of business because it paid retail tax in Jersey, neither did Woolworths and neither did many others. Not one Jersey company has paid a penny piece in retail tax so far. None of the empty shops in St. Helier or anywhere else in Jersey has been caused by the implementation of retail tax.“

Internet Shopping

This is interesting, as he is aware of the advantages of internet shopping over the de minimis level reduction. It is partly a change in lifestyle, but what is also interesting is that he notes that going to town to shop means spending money on parking before you start, an extra saving made by shopping online, and one often missed.

There is no silver bullet, as I am sure you are all fully aware of. Therefore, it is not fine and dandy for me to say: “Well, government has not done anything for years” but in some respects what has been lacking is an attempt to try and get our arms around this situation and to understand it. In the U.K. internet shopping is accounting for 17 per cent of sales at the moment. I would think it is slightly higher here out of total sales by the nature of airfares etcetera. We are sleepwalking.

I will be true to form and say that no matter which way you cut it, I do it myself, it is easier to sit at home in your armchair and buy a product than it is to go walking round town, particularly when the wind is howling in, et cetera. What we need to do is to think about how we can make things more attractive.

I think my point [on parking] is less about the availability of spaces and more about the fact that you have to pay to use them. I do not have to pay to sit in my armchair.
So I think the challenge is there for us but equally, I keep on coming back to the point to say we can do as much as we can and we can do better, but it is coming … and it is a tide and we are not going to stop it. To my mind we are not together working with government to understand what measures we can take to improve the situation.

20% Retail Tax

There is a clear and I think justified criticism of Senator Alan Maclean for making a rather ridiculous statement in the States.

In spite of what has been said there was never one piece of single consultation and on that basis somebody comes along with no consultation and takes 20 per cent of your earnings away what is the implication of that? The implication of that is your capital investment gets slashed to pieces. You cut and run because you know you are not going to get the return on the investments that you were making before. You also have to balance your wholesale budget so when the Minister stood up and said: “And I can assure you there will be no price increases” my jaw almost fell open.

How on earth could that statement possibly be made? If you and your household income lose 20 per cent of that income overnight you either have to increase your income or you have to cut your cost base. So it is really simply economics.

I do not buy the justification but I also do not also understand why you would take one particular sector of the commercial make-up of the Island and say: “We will take retail. Not only will we take retail, we will whack a 20 per cent corporation tax on”, which is higher than the U.K. I used to own the largest pub chain in the Island as well. We used to run that. I can tell you I made more money out of pubs than I made out of retail. So how come the powers that be have decided that: “We will leave pubs … we will leave gambling shops alone but yet we will charge the people that supply food to the consumers. On top of the G.S.T. we will charge the people tax as well. By the way, prices will not go up.” There is just a lack of joined-up thinking here and it is more about the question about where is the priority.

I think it should be standardised and I think it should be applied across the board. Everybody who enjoys this Island should pay their share to enjoy. There is absolutely no justification for singling out one particular sector and overly-penalising a sector that irrespective of the retail tax is under huge pressure, as it is. We do not need this helping hand to fall down the hill. We are already falling ourselves. Just give us a break. We do not want any favours from you because competition is good but we do not also need you pushing us in the back.

I would in no shape or form be suggesting standardising of 20 per cent. I was thinking more along the lines of the finance industry are paying at 10 per cent, and if it is deemed that it is necessary for the States finances that tax is levied then I believe it should be levied at 10 per cent.

Deputy Eddie Noel commented on the 20% that it had been expanding already to encompass different companies: “Such efforts resulted in expanding the 20 per cent tax regime to include mineral extraction companies - that is quarries to you and I - fuel importing businesses - there is the La Collette Fuel Farm – and the like, bringing them into the corporation tax net along with utility companies, property development companies, property rental businesses, all paying 20 per cent”

So the question is what determines whether a retailer should be bracketed in the 20 per cent area, or the 10 per cent of finance companies? Fuel seems more akin to utility companies, as it is used for central heating, but what criteria are used for 10 percent or 20 percent? That’s something which still doesn’t seem to have been resolved. It seems a kind of fuzzy determination done on an ad hoc basis that something thought out from first principles.

If there was any kind of principle, it might be that the finance industry supplies services, and is regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Company with an annual levy but are ISEs as a result (and GST exempt), whereas retailers and utility companies supply goods, on which GST is levied. But this is looking at it trying to find structure, and as far as I am aware, there are no fixed principles on which the structure was built in such as way as to allow extending tax rates to new domains such as retail.

But when Senator Maclean brought in the tax, it seems more to have been an ad hoc tax grab to fill a hole in the budget, so that it would fit within the Medium Term Financial Plan. It highlights a significant problem with the MTFP. Just as people change behaviour to meet targets, rather than changing behaviour to address the purpose of those targets, so too politicians may well bring in stealth taxes, and retail taxes, to plug a hole in the MTFP, and that can be just as much based on short term fixes.

Labour Government Takes Power

Labour Government Takes Power

After Mrs May had received yet another defeat in the Commons, this time on a vote of no confidence, a general election was called.

However the dying days of the Conservative government had one trick up its sleep. They passed the Parliamentary Medium Term Financial Plan. With wider remit than a budget, this imposes budgetary constraints for the next three years.

This means that under current rules, Jeremy Corbyn’s newly formed minority Labour Goverment will have its hands tied with regard to expenditure in its own budgets for the next two years.

Designed to give long term economic stability, over short term populism, the Parliamentary Medium Term Financial Plan has been criticised by the Labour left for not allowing the electorate to really make an immediate change in how the country is governed.

But the City welcomed the change, saying it introduced a measure of stability, and ensured that any change of government could not introduce any radical changes that broke with budgetary constraint.

Does this seem a little crazy to you? A new government constrained by the long term economic restrictions set out in law by its predecessor, and unable to make changes?

And yet that is precisely the situation in the Channel Island of Jersey, where a change of leadership in May 2018 saw a new Chief Minister and a very different Council of Ministers

But they have to fit any new budget for both November 2018 and November 2019 within the constraints of just such legislation – the Medium Term Financial Plan which was set up by the last government.

Does this seem a little crazy to you?

Hospital Review Board: Was Richard Renouf right?

"In science it is observation rather than perception which plays the decisive part. But observation is a process in which we play an intensively active part. An observation is a perception, but one which is planned and prepared. We do not ‘have’ an observation (‘as we may ‘have’ a sense experience) but we ‘make’ an observation. (A navigator even ‘works’ an observation.) An observation is always preceded by a particular interest. a question, or a problem - in short, by something theoretical." (Karl Popper)
A Comment on Richard Renouf’s Critique of the Policy Review Report

Terms of Reference: Hospital Review Board
To consider the available evidence in relation to the decision of the previous States Assembly to support the proposal of the Council of Ministers that the new hospital be located on the existing site, with a view to providing assurance over this decision, or raising issues of concern in relation to the evidence that led to this decision.
Of course how those are interpreted depend a lot on what is meant by “consider the available evidence”

In his critique, part of what Richard Renouf does is to critique the remit of the board, and to argue that it has worked beyond its terms of reference. He says for example that it:

“has not focussed on determining what might be considered evidence relating to the decision of the previous States Assembly to support the proposal of the Council of Ministers that the new hospital be located on the existing site. Instead they have to a large extent heard ‘opinions’ and ‘views’ about the merits of the decision”

“Evidence is constituted by a body of facts which supports a particular proposition. Facts are not asserted. They are verifiable, auditable and assurable. That is what makes them facts. They exist independently of the person who presents them. They are open to scrutiny.”

For instance, the report itself lays out some groundwork:

Part One (sections 3-6) deals directly with the evidence review of the decision points identified in the Board’s terms of reference and scope;
- does the evidence support a single or dual site?
- does the evidence support a town or rural based site?
- does the evidence support the current site as proposed by the Council of Ministers and approved by the States Assembly?

So let us look at a rural site. The report said:

"The clinical risks and benefits had a relatively low weighting compared to other risks, such as planning, in the site selection criteria, which resulted in the process being flawed and a number of potentially alternative rural sites being rejected at the outset.”

“The views of the clinicians were not properly considered.”

So now we have something which Deputy Renouf does not include in his discussion on facts, namely when there are differing facts which are both advantages and disadvantages, how does one weigh up them and prioritise them?

This is something which the Atkins and Gleeds report attempted to do, but part of the remit of assessing the evidence cannot just be about facts but about whether the criteria they used were flawed in some way.

As we now have reports – or perhaps “facts” – from some clinicians that they were strongly instructed not to speak out publically against the choice of site, it is hard to see that this is beyond the remit and terms of reference of the board.

Which is why the report states:

“With the notable exception of the Minister for Health, the majority of the Board feel that the conclusions reached are evidence based, as supported by the opinions of individuals”

In this respect, it seems that Deputy Renout's statement - “There is a sense amongst Board members that planning should be subservient to health and indeed this aspiration is recorded in bold print in the report” - is taken out of context as it has not directly to do with planning being overruled by health considerations, but as the report says is the result of a States Workshop in 2016, which also noted that “the rezoning of green fields for development where there are clear overriding community benefits, the future planning risk can be mitigated.”

And they say: “On this basis, the Board considers that sites such as Warwick Farm could have been seen in a far more favourable light if the clinical input had been given more weight”

So when Richard Renouf uses the statement ““Planning should be subservient to health”” and says:

“The fact of the matter is that planning is not subservient to health and was not in 2012. Government has to comply with the requirements of the Island Plan in just the same way as citizens.”

He is clearly ignoring the special provision in the Island Plan which allows rezoning of Green field sites for exceptional projects, and for that matter forgetting that provision was precisely what was used for the choice of Les Quennevais School site!

As my correspondent Adam Gardiner informs me, there's also something misleading about seeing Warwick Farm in terms of a Green Field site:

“Warwick Farm is only a partially Green Field site. About half is Brown > Field - which includes the greenhouses, low-level office buildings, and beyond a large storage/maintenance area and industrial shed together with various other structures. True, the site otherwise consists of 3 fields which have been spasmodically been in some sort of agricultural use - although not commercially. They were used for growing stock of various kinds or simply left fallow. I am the last person who would want to see fields built over, but rather like Quennevais School one has to take a pragmatic view on these things when it comes to essential public amenities.”

It should be remembered that Les Quennevais school also went through a selection process very similar with a “refurbishment” or current site option.

A concept study by Jersey Property Holdings (JPH) concluded: “Whilst it is physically possible to refurbish and extend, one must seriously question whether the end result would justify the expense.”

It noted that: “The need for demolition and asbestos removal would extend the construction time to five to six years.” 

A new build would not have those problems, which is precisely why the site chosen for school used the special provisions in the Island Plan.

And coming back to “facts”, there is, as Karl Popper noted, no such thing as unvarnished facts. Indeed there can often been hidden assumptions which skew how the facts are considered – the history of science, a subject where you would expect to find “facts” predominating, is testament to the weakness of an approach which assumed that facts are not theory-laden in some was, because how they are selected, interpreted and used is always in the context of some pre-existing ideas, and can be blinkered.

A reading of Popper ("Objective Knowledge") or Thomas Kuhn ("The Structure of Scientific Revolutions") would be instructive in this respect. For instance, Gleeds decided which facts to collect as significant, and how to weigh them in making decisions for choice of site. Whether this process was correct or not is not a matter of "facts" but of opinions which may be argued for particular choices made in how the facts fed into site selection.

That is important because there seems to be an unquestioned idée fixe that prioritises a hospital in the close environs of St Helier's rather than outside, which is seen as less accessible - hence Warwick Farm, Overdale and St Saviours all have flagged up accessibility issues, whereas Gloucester St, People's Park and the Waterfront don't. The Waterfront and People's Park have both fallen mainly because of political issues, leaving just Gloucester Street.

How they manage in Guernsey goodness only knows!! There is an inability to think outside the St Helier Town Centre Box, which seems akin to a kind of inherent weakness in terms of how facts are weighed. Guernsey clearly manages very well with an out-of-town General Hospital, and this was not considered in the factoring of site suitability, and yet they manage perfectly well.

In conclusion, by questioning the terms of reference of the Board, and by making an artificial distinction between fact and opinion, Richard Renouf's critique demonstrates methodological weaknesses of its own.

As Cortlet Novis points out:

"The traditional view of science, which largely endures today [in popular culture], is that theories and models are distinct from the observations we make. In other words, fact is independent of theory."

But he says that is mistaken:

"Science needs to start with more than just “observation” but rather with a pre-existing theoretical framework from which to seek out and make sense of observations. Scientists need something to expect and they need to know where to look. Two people may look down a microscope and see completely different things depending on what theoretical framework they are using. "

The distinction between "views" and "facts" which is made by the Health Minister, I would argue, is a similarly egregious mistake in method which vitiates much of his critique.

Unmitigated Circumstances

This piece was written on an old electronic typewriter, which probably dates it to the late 1970s when we had that at home. A snapshot is given above of the original manuscript. Those were the days of "Tippex" for mistakes!

I rather think I was heavily influenced by G.K. Chesterton in writing style at that time, and I had also been reading works on existentialism at the time, including John Macquarie, and that also feeds through into this piece. I’d also read some Claus Westermann on the book of Genesis – a renown Old Testament scholar.

It’s an interesting vignette, a time capsule of my writing at the time, but a little bit too much “purple prose” for my liking, and while there are interesting ideas, I think they could be expressed better; as it is, the narrative arguments become rather difficult for me to follow now.

I was to be a lot clearer a few years later when I wrote my thesis at St Lukes, Exeter, “The Logic of Religious Discovery”, but by then my writing style had (I hope) improved, and I was probably more influenced stylistically by the unadorned prose styles of Karl Popper and George Orwell. That’s a style that I still feel happiest with today.

Unmitigated Circumstances.
The story of Cain and Abel is very old indeed, with roots stretching far back beyond the dawn of recorded history; it is very likely that this tale would have been part of a tribal tradition, passed ever on by word of mouth, until, eventually, it was written down in final form.

It is easy to spot the noticeable neglect of any clear details of time and place, and that lack of confusing cross-currents such as mark a recorded history; and this makes it certain that this is a folk-tale, or a legend, and not history.

To say this in no way depreciates the authority of the story; on the contrary, it is better understood as a cautionary tale than as an anecdote about ancestors. It is only a prejudiced materialism that dislikes legends, finding fault with them on the grounds that "they are not history"; yet it is just as logical to dislike Sherlock Holmes stories on the ground there was no real sleuth, or in other words, that those stories are also not history.

For the reasoning is the same in each instance, showing that the argument is groundless, serving only as an excuse to avoid any real thinking. we do not read the criminological exploits of the Great Detective to learn the history of Greater London; history has nothing to do with it, it is the Three Pipe puzzle which we ought to ponder. And, in like manner, reading a folk—story can provide plenty of food for thought, despite the fact that it is not history. The lesson is there, but it is up to us to find it. And the Story of Cain and Abel is a lesson of warning, a tale about temptation taking root.

As I have said, the story is a very ancient one, and as scholars have surmised, may well have had its origin in Babylonian tribal customs and rituals; it is related that Abraham came from Ur, and certainly Ur had known of many barbaric practices, perhaps derived from Babylon. So we may suppose that Abraham brought some tribal tales from the city; yet it also seems, as when he began a holy pilgrimage, those same tales were also purged and purified of all the stench of the city, all the evil of Us.

That Ur was an exceedingly wicked place is well illustrated by the "Death Pit of Ur", in which there were found the remains of seventy-four women, laid down as a human sacrifice in front of the king's grave.

As scholars say, there may remain traces of some such horrid rituals in the story of Cain and Abel, of a preference for a bloody, living sacrifice over the good grain of the land, yet such has faded into the background of the story as we have it now. It cannot be, as has been suggested, that Cain's ritual was unsuccessful because it did not involve a living sacrifice; the ending of the tale is with a living sacrifice, and a greater one than that of Abel, and no good came of that shedding of blood; it was not a triumph, but a tragedy.

Reading the story as it is, what is striking is the apparent unfairness of God. And I have noticed people give many excuses to explain away this apparent unfairness. Invariably, Cain is made to look the villain of the piece, he is given a jealous character, always displeased that Abel was given more attention as a child; or, alternatively, he is not the obvious ‘perfectionist that Abel was, and only brought any old crop to give to God, uncaring about its excellence. This certainly provides plenty of reason for God's rejection of his offering; yet, unfortunately, it is all groundless. There is no clear evidence one way or the other.

But when the question is asked: would such an imagined history of Cain's character give God some mitigating circumstances for acting as He did? - then it becomes all too readily apparent that the idea that Cain was already a bad character is only a device to get us out of a tight corner.

After all, if Cain was as wicked already, why did God bother to give him such a stern warning about not going off the rails? If we assume that Cain was a good-for-nothing lazybones (perhaps with a grudge against his brother), then that would lead us to expect God to give him an explanation, in the form of a harsh telling off; instead, we have what appears like a provocation, almost inviting Cain to feel worse about the matter. So in honesty, the idea that Cain was already flawed is a too simplistic solution, which really raises even more ponderous problems.

Let us assume that both brothers came to God with the same good faith, each bringing the best instance of offering. Had God rejected both, God would act fairly; if He had accepted both, God would act fairly; but to accept one and not the other seems to display an unfair favouritism. And given such a situation, the question must be asked: is God really good, fair, just in all his ways?

Certainly that was the problem posed for Cain; and with it arose that terrible temptation - to doubt the goodness of God. Had he overcome that temptation, had he trusted in God, then surely his trust would have been that much the greater, for having been tested, and found true? Yet he was found wanting: he distrusted the goodness of God, and sought a scapegoat to blame for what had happened. Seeing this, God warns Cain, that emphatic and terrible warning. But the warning went unheard; the only cry that arose was the sound of his brother's blood, crying out from the ground, that justice be done. So God punishes Cain with that harsh punishment that God alone may give: the brand of Cain, where justice is done, but mercy also leaves a mark.

It is when we refuse to take refuge in excuses, when we do not defend God by mitigating circumstances, that the whole actually fits together; then the tale is told: temptation in thought leading to temptation of action. But we are left to wonder of how mighty a man of God there might have been, if Cain had been tested but held firm to God's goodness; and how wise we would be to avoid the path he did take, that bloodstained road to hell.

The Gift of Sight

As I'm a bit under the weather, a very advent poem from 2004, based on Matthew 9:27-31. It can be understood as literal or metaphorical, or indeed both. The quote above I came across trying to find something suitable in a picture, and isn't it so true that we take sight so much for granted, and so little as a gift? 

In Astronomy Club, when we have visiting cubs, one of the questions is what you can use to look at the night sky? We have telescopes, binoculars, cameras etc, but almost always needing prompting for that one means they all have  - eyes. I say to them "everyone in this room has this", and at that point the penny drops, and (in a metaphorical sense), their eyes are opened and they can see.

The Gift of Sight

In darkness, we stumbled and fell

Trapped in our very personal cell

Unable to see, a world of darkness

Landscapes unseen like wilderness

And we cried for pity, gift of sight

We might once gaze upon the light

He heard our cry, and sight returned

Eyes opened, such faith unearned

It was as if shadow passed away

Upon that brilliant light of day.

Jersey Our Island - Travelling Blind Part 3

Published in 1950, this book is an interesting snapshot of the Island and its customs as it was in the immediate post-war period, and not without humour. Most guide books of the time give the tourist information, or give the impressions of an outsider to the Island, but this is in "inside view", which is rarer.

It should be noted that St Maglorius is largely a legendary figure, and there is no evidence of druids on Jersey, even though older Neolithic monuments, such as Faldouet, were called "Druid's Temple". But the story, as told, with its humour (and Irish steriotype!) sounds just like something to be spoke by the fireside, in a dark winter's evening, at one of our older pubs.

Jersey Our Island - Travelling Blind Part 3
by Sidney Bisson

It is on this rocky beach of La Rocque that St. Maglorius is reputed to have landed when he visited Jersey before St. Helier had converted the inhabitants to Christianity. (He is also reputed to have landed at Grosnez, as I have already told you, but that must have been some other time.)

Maglorius was a bluff Irishman, quite a different type of saint from the ascetic Helier, and he had got tired of preaching in Gaul because none of the Gauls could understand a word of Irish. His witty sermons were just being wasted. Also Maglorius was a great chatterbox, and it was difficult to chat when the people you were chatting to could not join in the conversation.

Having a mistaken notion that Jersey belonged to England and that the Jersey folk would therefore probably at any rate speak English, he got hold of a couple of fishermen and by gestures made them understand that he wanted them to row him across to Jersey. Which they did, and landed him at La Rocque. As it was low tide he viewed the long journey over the rocks with misgiving, until his Irish logic told him that the shore would be nearer the water's edge at high tide so that he would not have so far to walk. So he sat down to wait for the tide to rise. At least he intended to sit down, but the rocks being steep and slippery he slithered into a crevice. As he was picking himself up he became aware of a terrifying noise that was rapidly getting louder. He soon discovered the cause of it. An enormous giant with flaming eyes was approaching, yelling at the top of his voice and brandishing a fairsized oak.

`May the grass ever grow at your door,' said Maglorius, crossing himself.

This seemed to pacify the giant, who stopped and greeted Maglorius as a heaven sent helper. His mission in life, he explained, was to exterminate Druids, who (as his Holiness no doubt knew) feasted on Christian priests. But the more Druids he ate, the more there seemed to be. He simply could not keep pace with them.

Maglorius did not quite see how he was expected to help, but the giant forestalled a possible argument by picking him up and carrying him ashore in a couple of strides. Here he left him whilst he went off to have another feast of Druids to keep up his strength.

Maglorious could hear their pitiful wails as they were swallowed, which made him feel quite sorry for them. Until he happened to look round and saw a dozen ancient Druids with long snowwhite beards trailing down their long snow-white robes advancing on him stealthily from the rear.

`Arrah ! And it's Druids' meat you'll be being yeself,' said the saint, crossing himself again.

Then taking a leaf from the giant's book, he sprang round in a threatening attitude and let out a blood-curdling yell.

The Druids sank to their knees and joined their hands as if in prayer. But, of course, as they spoke neither English nor Irish Maglorius could not understand a word.

`Och ! Hold your noise, ye good for nothing divils,' he said impatiently. Then as an afterthought: `Can't ye spake Latin, at all, at all?,

And they could ! Many a Christian priest they confessed having killed, but now that the giant had been sent to eat them as a punishment they were ready to repent. And if only Maglorius would help them to overcome the monster they would become good Christian clergy and serve him in any way he wished.

The saint thought for a moment. Then: `Have ye got spades?' said he.

They had. So lie set them to dig an enormous pit, which took them a day and a night. When Maglorius was satisfied with the work he spread branches over the opening and carefully replaced the turf. Then they all went and sat on the beach and had a meal.

Presently along came the giant, idling along the sea shore, hands in pockets and dribbling a Druid's head. The Druids dived for shelter behind an enormous rock, but Maglorius held his ground.

'Ah-ha! Eating with heathens, eln said the giant.

`No,' said Maglorius. `The heathen divils were after betting me half of the island that you couldn't be carrying this great rock to Verclut.'

`What ? This tiny rock?' said the giant, picking it up and balancing it on his shoulder.

And with that, Maglorius ran ahead, encouraging him and taking care to lead him in the direction of the pit. Into which in due course the giant fell with the rock on top of him. The Druids were converted and learnt to speak English with an Irish accent.

The rock became known as La Rogodaine. It stood there until the middle of the last century a twenty foot lump of granite sticking out of the sandy plain when it was quarried and used for building stone.

Near here the road turns sharply north for the final stage of its journey to Gorey. Soon I shall be able to open my eyes again, for Gorey Common brings the ribbon building to an end.

Here on the windswept gorse-dotted dunes the famous Jersey school of golfers (Harry Vardon and his followers) taught themselves the game. Where once was a race course, a rifle range, and a review ground for the militia, the Royal Jersey Golf Club holds undisputed sway.

Gorey Village is quiet to-day. Once it resounded to the ship-builder's hammer and the oaths of the rude oyster fishermen. For shipbuilding was once one of the island's principal industries. When, in 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht brought to an end the War of the Spanish Succession, Jersey believed that her future lay on the sea. Ever since the sixteenth century Jersey ships had sailed to Newfoundland and Labrador and returned with cargoes of salt cod to be sold in the markets of Europe. The absence of a suitable harbour at St. Helier made no difference.

Chevalier tells us how in his time the ships were laid up at St. Malo to be refitted during the winter, whilst their crews, numbering five or six hundred men, came home in smaller vessels.

Throughout the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth the trade prospered. The principal customers were France and the Catholic Mediterranean countries, though at one time it was even found profitable to bring cod all the way to Jersey for packing and reexport to South America in tubs.

The increase in the fish trade stimulated other forms of commerce. Instead of returning empty to Jersey after discharging their cargoes in foreign ports, the cod-carriers began to bring back other wares which were sold in the island or re-exported. The expansion of shore establishments in Canada and Newfoundland brought still more trade.

In a note to Falle's history of Jersey, Durell tells us that Jersey employed over 2,500 `natives' in their fishing stations , who were supplied with a variety of goods from the island. Between 1817 and 1865 Jersey's merchant fleet grew from a mere handful of vessels to over four hundred and fifty, making the island the fifth port in the United Kingdom. Shipowners grew rich, and as labour was cheap in the island, shipbuilders flourished in sympathy.

As far as I know, no one has studied in detail the reasons for Jersey's sudden and dramatic renunciation of the sea as an avenue of profit. In twenty years the number of vessels in the island dropped by half. In another twenty it was less than in 1817. The change from sail to steam and from wood to steel certainly killed shipbuilding in the island. But one might have expected the local shipowners to invest in English-built steamers in order to keep up their carrying trade. It is significant that in 1877, when one seventh of Britain's merchant navy was propelled by steam, the only steamer registered in Jersey was a tug.

And here at Gorey Mr. Picot was still optimistically building a couple of schooners and Messrs. Belot and Aubin a ketch apiece, whilst at other yards in the island four schooners were on the stocks.

Obstinate we Jerseymen are usually held to be, or as Sir Gilbert Parker put it, `self-reliant even to perverseness.' Can it have been this native trait in their character that made the shipping magnates of the sixties pin their faith to sail and wood in the face of all the world? Until it was too late, and Jersey was driven back to the land.

Sofa Surfing in Jersey: Are there over 250 long term homeless?

Sofa Surfing

To quantify homelessness, it is first necessary to define what it is that is being counted. Whilst people sleeping on the streets are more visibly homeless, there are a variety of precarious, insecure or unsatisfactory living conditions often termed “hidden homelessness”

A report by BBC News in December 2017 on the UK noted that:

Ursula Patten, operations director at The Key (drop-in centre for young homeless people in Leyland), says sofa surfers should definitely be considered homeless. "You are homeless if you haven't got a place you can stay on a consistent basis - somewhere that you can call home." She says about 70% of the homeless young people on the charity's books have sofa-surfed before running out of options and seeking help.

Centrepoint chief executive Seyi Obakin said: "Goodwill is the only thing keeping too many young people from sleeping on the UK's streets. It's frightening just how many are trapped in a cycle that is detrimental to their health, sees them struggle to keep up in education, and where outstaying their welcome can mean becoming exposed to dangers no-one should have to face."

Estimating the scale of youth homelessness in the UK

How does one quantify the data?

How do you go about allocating resources to solve a problem when you don’t know the scale of it? That’s the reality facing any charity, government or local authority who wishes to tackle youth homelessness.

The report “Estimating the scale of youth homelessness in the UK” by Anna Clarke, Gemma Burgess, Sam Morris and Chihiro Udagawa of the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning looked at this problem.

The report notes:

Centrepoint commissioned Cambridge University to calculate an estimate of the true scale of youth homelessness. As part of this, we sought to understand the extent of all forms of youth homelessness, including the numbers of young people in hostels or supported accommodation services, and more hidden forms of homelessness such as sofa surfing, where young people move between different friends’ and family members’ sofas because they have nowhere else to go.

To assess levels of hidden homelessness among the wider population of young population not in contact with homelessness services, a UK-wide survey was carried out with young people aged 16-25. This found much higher numbers of young people who reported having slept rough than are known to have done so from published data:

Overall, 26 % of young people said they had ever slept rough or in unsafe such as cars, nightbusses or on the streets because they had nowhere else to go: 17% had slept rough (including unsafe places such as in cars) during the last year, with 10% having done so for more for than one night. 20% had sofa surfed during the last year, with 16% having done so for more than a week, and 4% for over three months.

Of those who had slept rough the most common location was in a car (55%), followed by in a tent (34%), on the streets (18%), in a car park (16%) or in a park or other open space (15%).

The report concludes by estimating that in 2013-2014, around 1.3 million young people aged 16-24 had slept rough or in an unsafe place, and just under 300,000 had doing so on any one night.

What emerged from the survey was that the main reasons for young people sofa surfing related to negative home environments or having been asked to leave by their parents. 

However there were also substantial numbers also indicating that they had sofa surfed after a period of living independently, and were made homeless by a tenancy ending, splitting from a partner or no longer being able to stay with friends or extended family. Overcrowding was a reason in eight percent of cases. 

We can take it pretty much for granted that the same kinds of reasons apply in Jersey.


Lack of Data in Jersey

There has been no comparable survey with Jersey, and recent Freedom of Information requests have elicited the response that no statistics are kept, except for numbers at the Shelter, a response given in 2015, and simply pointed to in a 2017 request. It was a very poor reply, because the Women's Refuge also is likely to have numbers of temporary homeless women, while Sanctuary House has the same in respect of homeless men. It is pretty poor that the FOI reply did not look at those.

But any estimates of sofa surfing have to be based on other means, especially as no surveys have been commissioned.

If we assume that with the UK demographic, that large scale data will smooth out any large local deviations to give an average, we can perhaps make a start. If we take the Cambridge percentages as a baseline, then we would have:4% as long term sofa surfing.

Looking at just men (who tend to sofa surf more than women) and the census data for 20-29, we have a total of 6,357, giving at 4% around 254 young men who don’t have a permanent bed for the night and depend on the hospitality of friends for at least three months.

Now the Cambridge Survey was based on an age demographic of 16-24, so this loses some numbers from the start, and adds some to the end. It is by no means perfect, but it gives some idea of the scale of the problem. 

I suspect personally that the figures may well be higher locally, but I would think that such a cautious estimation must at least supply a minimum figure, especially as anecdotal evidence includes higher age ranges, and I have not factored in women.

Guernsey: Better Statistics? 

The report “Guernsey Indicators of Poverty Report 2015” was not issued until1st February 2017. Guernsey seem to have been more proactive in trying to see the extend of poverty within the Island. It looks as such matters as:

• Household overcrowding as percentage of households 
• Affordability: annual rent to earnings ratio 
• Affordability: purchase price to earnings ratio 
• Affordability: percentage of population in affordable housing (rented from the States or GHA) 
• Affordability: percentage of households receiving assistance with social housing rent payments 

It notes that:

“Homelessness is used as an indicator in the UK, but the level in Guernsey is challenging to quantify. The organisations dedicated to providing temporary housing or shelter keep records of numbers but there are many reasons why people seek temporary housing and not all are due to homelessness. As such, this indicator is not included in this report, but attempts will be made to develop a method appropriate to Guernsey for monitoring levels of homelessness, perhaps including an estimation of the number of people with no permanent residence who may “sofa-surf” for future editions.”

Another report, “Social Housing Allocations and Eligibility Policy”, published in March 2017 looks at different banding for poverty and housing, and sets out a policy which defines a single point of access for social housing, a single set of eligibility criteria and a single waiting list based on an agreed method of prioritisation.

Under Homeless, they have

• Applicant living in St Julian’s House, the Women’s Refuge, or Sarnia Housing accommodation. Anybody in this category should engage with the relevant identified services as required. 
• Applicant is of no fixed address and is reliant on the goodwill of friends and family for somewhere to live – do not have a bed of their own. Sofa surfing is distinct from living with friends or relatives (Band Applicants in this category are frequently having to change address. 
• Applicant has no option but to sleep on the streets, a tent, car, or boat unless social housing is provided. Applicants in the ‘homeless’ group should be put in contact with providers of crisis accommodation in the first instance. 

Now Andium does also have banding for criteria, and it has homeless under band 1, but it does not have any detailed breakdown which includes sofa surfing in quite the same way that Guernsey does,.

But better reporting may be on the way. Sam Mezec, the Minister for Housing, speaking at a Scrutiny Hearing in October 2018 said:

"We have also decided that we will not just be looking at those who are at risk of sleeping on the street but also those who have accommodation that is so insecure that they do fulfil a definition of homelessness as well; if people are sofa surfing, for example, and do not have secure accommodation. I want the States of Jersey to have a decent homelessness strategy and we are in the early stages of getting stakeholders around a table to work out what exactly we have got to do to fulfil that. "

References 
https://www.gov.gg/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=115139&p=0
https://www.gov.gg/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=105802&p=0
https://www.gov.je/Home/RentingBuying/ApplicationAllocation/Pages/HowToApply.aspx#anchor-2
https://statesassembly.gov.je/assemblystatements/2011/chairman%20of%20hss%20h%20scrutiny%20panel%20re%20review%20of%20benefits.pdf
https://www.cchpr.landecon.cam.ac.uk/news/Estimating-scale-youth-homelessness-UK

Radio Review: The Good Companions

Radio Review: The Good Companions

BBC Radio 4 Extra: The Good Companions

John Retallack's dramatisation of J B Priestley's classic story of a 1929 Concert Party tour charts new adventures for factory worker Jess Oakroyd and newly independent Miss Trant. Music composed by Neil Brand Musicians Neil Brand, Michael Hammond & Alex Hammond. Director: David Hunter.

Jess Oakroyd - Ralph Ineson
Miss Trant - Fenella Woolgar 

Jimmy Nunn - Roy Hudd 

Inigo Jollifant - Oliver Gomm 

Susie Dean - Isabella Inchbald 

Mr Ridvers - Gerard McDermott 

Mrs Joe - Ellie Darvill 

Monte Mortimer - Clive Hayward 

Leonard Oakroyd - Gary Duncan 

Mr Joe - Philip Bretherton 

Morton Mitcham - Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong 

Jerry Jerningham - Adam Fitzgerald 

Agent  - Rupert Holliday Evans 

Inspector  - David Reakes 

Box Office - Lady Katherine Weare 

Director David Hunter
Author JB Priestley
Adaptor John Retallack

The J.B. Priestley society gives this summary of the novel:

“It’s long and discursive narrative tells how a stranded concert party, the ‘Dinky Doos’, re-invents itself as ‘The Good Companions’ and eventually achieves success with the help of three itinerant travellers searching for a more fulfilling life : Elizabeth Trant, a personable, young-to-middle-aged spinster with some money to spare; Inigo Jollifant, a likeable young schoolmaster with a talent for writing catchy tunes, who has fled from his stifling, second-rate prep school; and Jess Oakroyd, a joiner from the West Riding of Yorkshire, whose unsympathetic wife and son have made his home life unbearable. Also featured in the story is one of the author’s most loveable characters, the soubrette Susie Dean, with whom Inigo falls in love.”

This is a superb adaptation of the J.B. Priestly play, which really captures the period extremely well. Of course, Roy Hudd is totally suited to the ever optimistic Jimmy Nunn, but all members of the cast bring the story to life.

I’m hoping to see the 1957 film version and the Alan Plater version some time. The 1957 movie suffered from being contrary to the zeitgeist of that time, namely the time of the “angry young men” and the so-called “kitchen sink drama”. This meant that it was out of fashion at the time, but fashions change, and it is the voice of the “angry young men” which seems very dated now, very much a reflection of the 1950s and 1960s.

Priestley’s play in this radio adaptation is set in a particular time and place, but it can also be seen as a metaphor for England coming together. As Gil Toffell observes:

"The travelling troupe of performers in The Good Companions is read as metaphor for a nation on the move. Thus as "Oakroyd" the factory worker from the industrial North, "Jollifant" the public-school teacher, and "Miss Trant" the rural landowner journey across Britain together, an analogy of contemporary socio-cultural movement and mixing. "

But for Priestley himself, this novel was also a kind of holiday from the war years, a story with a cosy fairy-tale atmosphere – despite the ups and downs of the Good Companions on your, they always remain optimistic, full of infectious high spirits, and there is a happy ending for every member of the troupe.

As he notes,” I understand now but was not even conscious of at the time. I had had the War, in which almost every man I had known and liked had been killed. Then, just as life was opening out, there came a period of anxiety, overwork, constant strain, ending tragically. Later, when that time was further away, I would be able to face it, not only in memory but in my work, where it can all be found in one place or another. But first I had to find some release, give myself a holiday of the spirit while writing this novel of 250,000 words”

Priestley comments that while other writers would mine experience and autobiography and find healing in a portrayal of the dark legacy of war, he by temperament was extravert, and he always felt it would have been false to himself do so. So instead, in contrast to the deaths of the war, and the darkness of the post war years, here is a taste of paradise, the opposite of that, a bubbling story that celebrates all that is good in people.

As he says:

“In The Good Companions I gave myself a holiday from anxiety and strain and tragic circumstance, shaping and colouring a long happy daydream. And because a lot of other people then must have felt in need of such a holiday, so long a daydream, the elephant suddenly turned into a balloon.”

It is easy to see why the 1957 movie sunk so rapidly, as it has an optimism which defies the working class angst of the early post-war decades, but sometimes optimism can shine a light and bring hope, where a more gritty working class realism, 1960s style, would not.

C.P. Snow recalls how the realist position in the Second World War was to see the situation around Dunkirk as desperate, and the least bad option was to negotiate some kind of peace settlement with Germany. Churchill, he notes, defied realism, and in his speeches called forth heroism and hope.

The Good Companions does something very similar, in an age when the Great Depression was spreading across the land, the big bad wolf of economic collapse coming nearer. Just as Disney’s most popular short was the “Three Little Pigs” with its song of defiance, “Whose afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”, Priestley gives us a nomadic band of travellers, bound together in a common cause against adversity, who delight in being able to bring hope and laughter and music to others.

And as Charles Barr noted, the characters are taken "to their bewilderment, from their everyday lives into a new space where they are forced to interact, in a sort of workshop for constructing a good society".

References

British Cinema and Middlebrow Culture in the Interwar Years, Gil Toffell, Gil, The Space Between. Volume: 9. Issue: 1, 2013

Margin Released, JB Priestley

Meet the Ministers - Part 2

Meet the Ministers – Part 2

Well-being

Arthur Morley asked about what was being done to tackle problems of mental and physical health, and in particular stress and depression., asking whether as well as measures like GDP, attention should be given to a “national happiness index”, as used in Nordic countries.

And he noted in connection that only 21% of the police said they would recommend their career to others – a sign perhaps of stress in the job, and also how middle management in finance often saw people under intense pressure. Stressful parents could lead to stressed out family life, which was bad for children’s education.

Richard Renouf, Health Minister, answered that well being was important, and there was, he had observed himself, a lot more stress in legal firms than used to be the case when he was practicing. An indicator of stress in general was increased absenteeism, as people could not cope with workplaces.

One of the ways to help was by Jersey Sport, which not only promited being active and fit but also well-being as well, and the transferrable disciplines needed to cope with stress.

St Brelade’s Bay and Coastlines under Pressure

Moz Scott asked what was happening to help protect St Brelade’s Bay, where guidelines were supposed to be developed, but nothing seemed to have happened.

John Young, Planning Minister, said that he had just signed off a letter replying about that. He agreed that St Brelade’s Bay was under great pressure, but also that there were other special places as well.

The New Island Plan, he hoped would be more selective about special areas, and in restricting a kind of development creep that gradually took away what was special. The Island Plan would of course go out to public consultation, because it was as much the public’s plan as well, and from that input, and other inputs, he would take a revised plan to the States. Work was already commencing on studying this area of concern, as funds were there to look at creating a local development plan which could be incorporated into the broader Island Plan.

In the meantime, he was able to use the tool of “supplementary planning guidance” (SPGs) to take steps to preserve the special character of places like St Brelade’s Bay.

Brexit

Andrew Le Quesne asked about Brexit, as time could be running out, especially if Theresa May’s deal failed to get through Parliament and what options were prepared for a “no Brexit” for Jersey. Were the Islands in a strong enough position?

Constitutional Affairs Minister Len Norman said that as far as he knows plans were proceeding well, and Chief Minister John Le Fondre said there was a Jersey Brexit team which had already undertaken a lot of work in preparation. While there was more to do, we were really almost as prepared as we can be for Brexit.

Pay Increases

A question was asked about pay increases, which had not kept pace with inflation for many years for the Civil Service – included Nurses and Teachers.

John Le Fondre replied that the Council of Ministers had to work within the constraints of the budget and the existing Medium Term Financial Plan.

And that seems a good point to end on, with a few thoughts of my own on the Medium term Financial Plan.

The Medium Term Financial Plan

I think the MTFP should be a guide, but it seems ridiculous for a totally new government to be constrained by it, especially now we have moved up to a 4 year period between elections.

Imagine in the UK if Margaret Thatcher had been constrained by an MTFP put forward by Jim Callaghan!! I know the idea is good, but if it acts as a straight jacket, it means a new COM is hamstrung by their predecessors.

We had something like that already when the budget was in September, and elections in October, and the new States were defined by a budget voted on by people who in a number of cases had left the States for one reason or another. It just makes no sense at all. As far as I am aware, Guernsey and the Isle of Man do not have an MTFP, or if they do, it is fixed for the term of one parliament.

Otherwise, what are voters voting for? Vote for me, and I’ll bring changes in the next MTFP the year (or two) after I get in, but cannot before that? No government can run like that. It is unmanageable. It makes voting a farce! It has to be: new government, new strategy, new budget, new MTFP.

If an old MTFP has to be in force when a Council of Ministers is elected, a new MTFP should be brought in as soon as possible so that if elections take place in May, by the following May, a new MTFP is proposed and voted upon, so that no more than a year's delay takes place, and if it can be proposed sooner, it will take the place of the old one. That way at least the 2019 budget could be free from that constraint.

As it stands, the current MTFP runs to the end of 2019, which also fixes the 2019 budget! That is wholly unacceptable. I did not vote for a drawn out year of the old Council of Ministers polices, I voted for something new. I did not vote for 2 budgets by a new Council of Ministers constrained by the decisions of a previous Council of Ministers. The logic of this just defies common sense.

This is one of those legacy issues which puts a new Council of Ministers into a straight-jacket in a way that just doesn't happen in other democracies, when an election means either more of the same executive of change. 

It has not been an issue in the past, because existing Council of Ministers were drawn from the same pool of States members who had wholly supported the MTFP, but it is an issue now, and in this respect, I am wholly in agreement with Geoff Southern that it is a bad constraint, although I would like a more regularised situation as suggested above. 

Meet the Ministers – Part 1

Meet the Ministers – Part 1

The evening began with a presentation of the main strategy of the Council of Ministers outlined by John Le Fondré, Chief Minister, followed by a video clip, in which every Minister had something to say on their part of the collective vision and its importance to Islanders.

Recycling
Tony Pike asked a question as to how recycling could be increased from 6%, and what was being done to encourage people to recycle more and away from single use plastics.

John Young, with his Environmental Minister’s hat, said this was important, but what was needed as a coordinated approach – currently different Parishes do different things regarding recycling. Part of waste recycling and destruction came under the purview of the Department of Infrastructure, but now the different departments were in the same place, they were engaged with the Department of the Environment to improve matters.

Budgets
There was a question as to the media reporting the Ministers saying they didn’t know what their budgets were, or what cuts there were in the case of education.

John Young explained that he had in fact now got a budget, but part of the delay was the fact that the new structure crossed old boundaries, for instance with “Children, Young people, Education and Skills”, “Growth, Housing and Environment” which cut across the traditional boundaries, so that the budgets needed to be reprovisioned for the Ministerial responsibilities, which now straddled the boundaries of the new structure. This was now in place, and he had a detailed budget.

Tracy Valois said she had not heard of proposed savings before that was announced, and internal communications needed to be improved, as well as getting the detailed budget in a timely manner, although she accepted that there were teething problems with the massive changes.

Council of Ministers
How was the Council of Ministers working out? The media suggested disarray.

Richard Renouf answered that collective responsibility which had been in place had not worked. It tended to exacerbate internal struggles, cause deep seated rifts within the Council of Ministers, and paralyse decision making, all of which was just hidden behind the facade of collective responsibility.

The new Council of Ministers could be more open in discussions and disagreements, and members were more accepting of differences because they agreed on the main goals, even if not on all the ways forward.

John Le Fondré added that the Council of Ministers was certainly not in disarray, despite what the media might say, and was making significant progress, but the new structures and a new Council of Ministers would take a little while to bed down.


Arts, culture and heritage
The strategic vision mentioned Islanders benefitting from arts, culture and heritage, which would not be too good if the Opera House or Arts Centre closed.

Lyndon Farnham said that £200,000 extra additional funding had been agreed to help the Arts, including the Arts Centre and Opera House. The main problem was maintenance of their properties. This had not been adequately funded or implemented by the States, with the result that they were having to spend their operating budgets not on actually running the venues but on a legacy of lack of work being done for maintenance.

Fort Regent
Given that Steve Pallett had said that he could not progress further with Fort Regent, what was going to happen with it?

Lyndon Farnham said that the last Council of Ministers failed to find a resolution, and again maintenance was left for many years. A new group would be meeting to look at the ways forward, but part of the problem was always the money. He was keen to find some kind of public / private partnership to bring the Fort back to use.

John le Fondré said there were two work streams looking at the way forward for the Fort but what he didn’t want to do was commission yet another consultants report which would take time and end up being filed. The recent history of the Fort is littered with plans on paper that never got off the ground. There was a bin-load of such plans.

Two things that needed to be considered where (1) how to bring back the Fort to where it should be (2) the logistics of doing this while still having it as a live venue, hence working around existing use.

Vibrant

And in conclusion on part 1, the Vibrant awards of the evening go to John Le Fondré, Lyndon Farnham, Ian Gorst (on a video clip and Judy Martin. Each had one “vibrant” so there is no clear all out winner. I am so, so tempted to get that old musical instrument, the triangle, and take it to these meetings, and "ting" it every time someone says "vibrant".

It has so much entered the zeitgeist that I have been tempted to reach for it in sentences, but I make a conscious effort to avoid being sucked into the abyss of fuzzy meaningless words. For why Vibrant is a "bad thing" (in the words of 1066 And All That), I refer to:

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-future-is-vibrant.html