Laws Apart

The Jersey and Guernsey Law Review 2010 is now out, and is always worth a look. In the "Miscellany Section" , on a consideration of a recent case for forgery, the author notes, with some dismay that:

There is, as yet, no textbook on the criminal law of Jersey. The best substitute for such a work that we have is probably the 36th edition of Archbold, published in 1966. The solution to the problem, in default of the writing of a textbook, was probably identified as long ago as 1847 when the Commissioners recommended that "[a] definite system of penal law ought undoubtedly to be laid down"; in other words, codification of the criminal law should take place. In the meantime prosecutors need to take care that reference to current English textbooks on the criminal law does not lead them astray.

"Archbold" here refers to "Archbold: Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice" which is a comprehensive coverage of the practice and procedure of the United Kingdom Crown Court including jurisdiction, bail, evidence, costs and appeals. It was first published 1822, when it was written by John Frederick Archbold. Successive editions have been produced to the present day, and now it is published annually.

The trouble comes when English law has changed, and the case law flowing from that legislation depends upon a foundation which is not, in fact, present in Jersey law, either because similar legislation has not yet been passed, or because Jersey is still relying on older laws and customary law. This is why the 1966 edition of Archbold is prized, because there was enough overlap between Jersey and the United Kingdom for it to form a useful groundwork for Court cases. But there has been a raft of newer legislation in the United Kingdom which has not been mirrored in Jersey:

The problem for practitioners today is that reliance upon English textbooks and authorities is no longer so easy. Quite apart from offences against property, there are other important areas of the criminal law where statute has now changed English law so that it differs materially from the old common law and from the law of Jersey. The law relating to sexual offences is perhaps the prime example.

The result is that Jersey has to rely on its own customary law to pick on the same effect as legislation in the United Kingdom, and while this works, it is not codified:

The customary law offence of fraud (which is not reflected in the common law of England) catches much of the conduct which would now be criminal in England under the new Theft Act offences.

An example is given of the case of Paul Self in 2009, the indictment was framed using a modern version of Archbold, and some of the charges were dismissed because the categories in the UK law did not exist in Jersey law, and the wording was not amended to allow for those charges to be made under Jersey customary law. While this was the fault of the draftsman of the indictment, it highlights the problem of not having a codified law, which will mean that slip ups will invariably occur; it is not the most efficient way to conduct legal matters.

It also means that members of the public who may think that a criminal offense has taken place against them, or the police investigating a crime, viewing the matter on the basis of cases in the United Kingdom, may find that in some circumstances, Jersey customary law is not strong enough to deliver the same justice, or can only do so in other ways that are obscure to all but the legal expert.

The article then turns across the water to Guernsey, there was also a call for codification back in 1848, when Commissioners were appointed to enquire into the State of the Criminal Law in the Channel Islands. They concluded that the reliance on interpretation of custom law, rather than case law for criminal cases was often up to the discretion of the Court, and varied widely, sometimes using UK law, and sometime custom law, on a "jurisprudential "pick'n'mix" approach":

It is sufficient to state that we found scarcely a single instance in which the law could be traced to a higher source than the discretion of the Court, or in which that discretion was itself secured from continual variation in practice. It is clear that the continuance of such a system is inconsistent with the administration of justice on any fixed principle, and that it tends to subject the Court to the imputation of partiality or caprice.

We recommend the adoption of a course, with regard to the criminal law of Guernsey, similar to that suggested in our First Report with regard to the criminal law of Jersey: that is to say, that a code be drawn up, embodying in as few words as possible the definitions of crime, and, so far as may be thought expedient, assigning punishments, in language which has already become familiar in the English law books

This led to considerable changes in Guernsey law, so that:

Whilst the Commissioners' recommendations were mostly directed towards the administration of justice rather than the substantive criminal law, from mid-Victorian times the character of Guernsey's criminal jurisprudence became, and resolutely remains, English, and nowadays recourse to French sources for purposes of identifying and characterising criminal offences and their ingredients would be regarded as aberrant.

But the codification still had not really been done by 1953, when a letter was sent to the States Advisory Council by the Procureur, William Arnold (later to be Bailiff of Guernsey from 1960 to 1973) wrote:

"For some time past I have had under consideration the necessity for bringing our Criminal Law more into line with that of England and for codifying step by step those parts of it which are most frequently administered by the Royal Court and the Magistrate."

Hence Guernsey became more engaged with a legislative programme in order to codify the law, one example being the English Larceny Acts (particularly of 1916) which eventually found a near complete legislative reproduction in the Bailiwick in the Larceny (Guernsey) Law, 1958.

The procedure in Guernsey's with regard to criminal law has been to refer to and reproduce English statutes. In contrast, Jersey has relied more on customary law. The Theft Act of 1978, and the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 - UK legislation - have not been mirrored in Jersey Law:

In England dishonesty is now a key ingredient of the new offences. Specific offences now cover conduct such as obtaining a money transfer or a pecuniary advantage by deception...None of these new English offences forms part of the law of Jersey.

In contrast, Guernsey has continued its legislative codification. The recent Forgery and Counterfeiting (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 2006 was based on the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981. The Theft (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 1983 took a substantial part from the UK Theft Act of 1978.

The Law Officers in Guernsey adopt the view that arguments (as occurred for example in Jersey in the case of Paul Self) over whether an offence exists as part of Guernsey law distract prosecutors from their proper functions. They also note that:

Furthermore, it cannot be denied, in our human rights conscious environment, that any uncertainty as to what conduct might or might not constitute a criminal offence leaves the administration of justice pregnant with vulnerability and inconvenience.

No codifications have taken place, either in Jersey or Guernsey, but because Guernsey has largely introduced legislation which mirrors UK law, this means that authorities such as current editions of Archbold can be utilised to extremely good effect as an alternative to local codification, and a wider scope of judgments is available to draw upon, and this also speeds up the Court's time and expense in the framing of indictments.

Jersey, on the other hand, has diverged significantly in a number of areas from the UK, and as a consequence has no codification, an increased risk of mistakes with indictments where there is a divergence from UK law, and a much narrower and obscurer base of judgments to draw upon.

It should be said, in fairness, that the Jersey & Guernsey Law Review does help to mitigate against this problem since its inception in 1997 with its discussions of criminal cases, but there is still a long way to go before such a substantial work as Archbold exists locally.

Links
http://www.jerseylaw.je/Publications/JerseyLawReview/contents10.aspx

The Ideas of the Century

What I remember most about Norwich was "The Sale of the Century", hosted by Nicholas Parsons, which ran for many years, and was very popular. The top prize was - typically for days of typical consumption - usually a car, on which would be draped various lovely females in skimpy adornment, but which were not, unfortunately, part of the prize - I was a teenager at the time!

But I've just seen "View from the West"

http://st-ouennais.livejournal.com/35797.html

"A flavour of what the Real Jersey 2035 event could be like..."

which has a You-tube clip of the start of the conference at Norwich on "transition culture".

The full site is here:
http://transitionnorwich.org

and well worth a look. One subsection

http://transitionnorwich.org/PeakOil.htm

has the following comments on the end of cheap oil and implications of peak oil for the local economy:

What are the implications of this shortage of oil, and the rising oil price, for our everyday lives? Some examples include:
- Travel will become more expensive, and air travel may quickly return to be a luxury enjoyed only by the very rich;
- Food is already becoming more expensive, as our modern food system uses around 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce each calorie of food on our plates; and as food crops and land are diverted to make biofuels;
- The economy will suffer as households and businesses, struggling to pay for food, utilities and petrol, default on mortgages and other loans, leading to a credit crunch.


Transition Norwich is looking at how Norwich can adapt and change from a dependency culture on oil to more independent and self-supporting; it is also looking at the problems of climate change for the locale.

It is what Jersey should be doing now, to prepare for the future, looking at the big picture, rather than tackling just local problems and hoping the big problems will somehow go away. They won't!

Tennerfest - Time for a Change of Name

Almost all the menus in this year's Tennerfest are more that £10, some from £12.50, some up to £17.50.

 

It is certainly better to see the prices up front rather than a few years ago, when almost everything was £10, but almost every menu had "supplement" costs added on for most main courses, slyly printed by the side in smaller print. At least now we can see what we are getting, with the total price, which one assumes is inclusive of GST, and doesn't include a service charge.

 

However, it really would make sense to change the name. "Tennerfest" is now almost exclusively printed in inverted commas, which is a sure sign that it is rapidly losing its original meaning, dating from the days when it really was just a tenner to eat out. Why not "Autumn Food Festival", or "Twenty-fest"? Any other suggestions?

 

I note in passing that there must be a glut of salmon. Almost every Jersey menu has salmon as one of the fish courses, or often the only fish course. As far as I know, Jersey does not farm salmon, so most of the fish courses are sourced outside of Jersey. So much for eating local produce.

 

In fairness, a few restaurants are offering cod or plaice, but they are swamped by the salmon.

 

If I go anywhere, I think I may try the Navigator at Rozel, which I see does a three course meal with coffee, with half a lobster as a main course, for £17.50. That's quite a bargain, and I'll be helping local fisherman as well.

 

States Strategic Plan

Some interesting statistics out of the States Strategic Plan (also known as the pre-election publicity splurge for ministers because of its interesting timing!).

http://www.gov.je/ChiefMinister/Strategic+and+Business+Planning/ProgressStatesStrategicPlan.htm
Even by their own internal assessment, Transport and Technical Services has a damming rating of 20% off track, and 50% on the amber (delays) category, mostly due to funding failures. I'd be hugely surprised in Guy de Faye retains his post even if he retains his seat, but I don't think it is entirely his fault, although his attitude doesn't help.

Some of the tick boxes seem a little out. For instance:

In 2006/7 investigate the feasibility and potential efficiency savings of providing regulatory services in partnership with Guernsey and report back to the States (CM)

That is ticked as "completed", but the outcome is rather paltry.

Various potential initiatives were raised by the CoM with Guernsey's Policy Council, none of which the Policy Council wished to pursue. This will be revisited later in 2008

If it is being "revisited", forgive me for being thick, but it doesn't really seem completed, does it?

This one is also important, and incomplete, but ticked off as complete:

In 2006 engage the relevant authorities in France, through appropriate channels, in discussions, and, in 2007 or earlier, bring forward measures to provide improved communication in relation to the nuclear activities on the Cotentin peninsula and compensation arrangements in the event of a nuclear accident (CM)

And the result:

Close links on emergencies planning and notification of incidents established between Emergency Planning Officer and authorities in Normandy; consultation with MOJ on compensation available under the Paris-Brussels conventions.

"Consultation" doesn't exactly sound as if anything is fixed regarding compensation, does it? Or is there a nice agreement lurking somewhere that I missed?

Health has several items in the "red", and with the new sunken road, the lack of progress on this one is, I feel, significantly bad:

In 2007; debate and implement an Air Quality Strategy for Jersey, including proposals for monitoring and publishing levels of local air pollution, and targets, policies and timescales for reductions in air pollution levels that reflect best practice globally (P&E) Note: This is the responsibility of the Environmental Health Team at Health & Social Services

Under "green", for ongoing and on-track, Planning have this!

Develop a viable proposal in 2006 to provide a new town park for St Helier within three to four years (P&E/TTS)

with the comment (and failure of the spell-checker in their PDF!):

Work underway to develop porposals (sic) for remediation, provision of new park and development of public car parking facilility.


and given the failure of Stuart Syvret to get anyone to look into toxic metals on the Waterfront, is it any wonder that the following is "red":

In 2007; consult on, then debate and implement, a Contaminated Land Strategy (P&E). Slippage due to competing priorities.

Social security is extremely short, and has nothing at all about supporting any kind of work schemes for mentally handicapped adults leaving the education system - who may well find that they have nothing to do except stay with their carers. It is wonderful how you can get ticks for "green" and "completed", and solve the difficult problems by just ignoring them.

Jersey Dictatorship says Guernseyman

First, the right to vote is fundamental to a democracy. If the right to vote is to be of true significance to the individual voter, each person's vote should, subject only to reasonable variations for geographic and community interests, be as nearly as possible equal to the vote of any other voter residing in any other constituency. Any significant diminution of the right to relative equality of voting power can only lead to voter frustration and to a lack of confidence in the electoral process.

- Justice J. Cory, Canada


There is a most interesting statement by Deputy Jones in Guernsey, in which he says that "To be blunt, the Jersey system is little more than an elected dictatorship". He has some very harsh, but accurate comments about how the Jersey system works (or fails to work):

I could see the sense of an executive system of government for Jersey, providing that all the members of the States had been voted in on an 'Island Wide' mandate and could be de-selected by the same method. As I understand it, a partial Island wide voting system will not prevent the new proposed ministerial jobs going to those elected just in their parish.

Deputies and Senators make decisions that effect the lives of every man, woman and child in the Island, yet at present the electorate can only vote to elect or remove a handful of deputies who happen to stand in the parish where the voter resides.

More importantly once elected the politician, should they choose, can ignore the concerns of the rest of the island electorate. They need only take heed of the wishes of the voters in their own particular parish, secure in the knowledge that these are the only voters who will have the power to remove them at the next election. Given that position, is it any wonder that people who are forced by the system to vote on Parish lines, desert the ballot box when the views of the Parish are constantly ignored by States Members the voter had no hand in electing?

Guernsey, in fact, moved to a model that has been proposed by Deputy Roy Le Hérissier for Jersey - that of larger electoral districts that straddle Parish boundaries. The advantage of this is that while there is not the same Island wide mandate that occurs with Senators, the district mandate is spread over only seven districts, with the result that it is much harder for Deputies to gain election by just satisfying a small constituency base - as happens with some of the smaller Parishes in Jersey - St Mary, as an obvious example, or with Deputies having relatively small districts, enabling them to get in if rejected as Senatorial candidates. It is still not perfect, but it is a definite improvement on Jersey. Guernsey also removed the Constables from the States some time ago without many problems; they look after the local Parish affairs, which is especially useful given the larger electoral districts.

There are 45 People's Deputies elected in the following Electoral districts:

St. Peter Port South 6 (includes Herm and Jethou)
St. Peter Port North 7
St. Sampson 6
The Vale 7
The Castel 7
The West 6 (comprises St. Saviour, St. Pierre du Bois, Torteval, Forest)
The South-East 6 (comprises St. Martin and St. Andrew)

Other models - such as those of John Henwood - have been proposed for Jersey which retain the Parish system, but they all break down when it comes to fairly allocating an equal number of voters in a Parish to a set number of Deputies, and the reason that they do so is because it is next to impossible to fit St Mary into the equation. At present, two voters in St Brelade or St Helier are the equivalent of about one voter in St Mary, and unless the Parish population suddenly expands disproportionally (which the natives are keen to avoid), this disparity will be set to continue. Given that the consensus is that a smaller States is needed, there is no room for maneuver around this obstacle.

The Parish system is also under considerable pressure with the position of Rector. At present, each Parish has its own Rector, but the number of clergy available has been in steep decline. This means that District Churches (such as St Matthew, St Simon, All Saints etc) are being divided up (or closed) with total disregard for geography and population, simply to maintain the status quo, so that out of town Rectors - such as that of Trinity, have to also do services for All Saints in town. It is unlikely that this will be able to continue for the next decade, as Jersey already has a higher density of Anglican clergy than England, and there will come a time when one Rector has to split duties between two Parish churches. That is not just an ecclesiastical matter - the Rector also sits on the Roads Committee, and will have his (or her) workload doubled in this respect if the situation continues.

In England, the reforms of 1832, and the setting up of an electoral boundaries commission meant that the allocation of voters per member of Parliament was capable of being adjusted whenever there was too great a disparity. The key to this was the realisation that voting districts were fluid, and could be redrawn, and that they could in fact straddle County and City districts. Jersey has yet to grasp this nettle.




http://www.thisisguernsey.com/2008/08/26/jersey-power-rests-behind-closed-doors/
http://www.gov.gg/ccm/navigation/government/general-election---23-4-2008/;jsessionid=068AD774EAC8F8FC25AE44332B5D1316
http://www.isthisjersey.com/news.php?item.137.8

Housing and Victorian Values

"Jersey is a low tax area and a good place to live and bring up children" (Robin Trower)

This was a quotation from the JEP about property prices from the estate agent, not as far as I know, to be confused with the influential blues and rock guitarist.

Although singing the blues would probably be apposite for the people suck in poverty, unable to ever get off the rental market and into the vastly overpriced property market.

It is precisely because Jersey is a low tax area that it has attracted the offshore finance industry, and this has effectively priced most people out of the property market, and sent rental prices sky high.

According to the local estate agent, Jersey should be largely immune to the sub-prime mortgage problems as far as its housing market goes, although it will be interesting to see if global cut-backs on lending and interest rate rises will also come over here as banks change their policies worldwide. It seems likely that while house prices will not fall (the demand push is too great), it may be more difficult to get loans available, and at the cheap interest rates hitherto enjoyed.

I wonder if Terry Le Main could also learn from Nye Bevan. As Timmins notes:

Bevan's policy was to restrict severely private housebuilding, allowing only one private house for every four built by local authorities, to order local authorities to requisition empty houses.

That would certainly ruffle a few feathers! Especially the ratio!

I know that in the mid-1980s, a friend of mine, Ken Webb was a census enumerator, and he noticed with some dismay the large number of houses deliberately left empty rather than reduce asking rents. I don't know if that is still the case - somehow those figures never appear in the official compiled statistics, but it would be interesting to know.

Sometimes I wonder how far Jersey has come. Look at this speech:


It is not the housing of the poor, but the housing of the people by the people themselves, that we must work for - not the herding into slums for the benefit of private enterprise, not the crowding into barracks in order to provide interest for municipal bondholders, but by a feasible honest system and plan.


This could apply today, for as Nicholas France (the Catholic Dean) has noted, the Housing committee just doesn't want to know when it comes to clamping down on slum properties - and yes, there are plenty over here, with poorer people crammed into one or two rooms, and mould taking residence on the walls.

In fact it was written by Fred Knee secretary of the Workers National Housing Council in the 1890s. We still have a long way to go to catch up with the these Victorian values in the 21st century!

References:

Nicholas Timmins 'The Five Giants - A biography of the Welfare State' Fontana 1996
http://www.defendcouncilhousing.org.uk/dch/resources/GraysonHistory.doc

The Law is Crap(aud)

William Bailhache, QC, the Attorney-General also said that if a police enquiry into alleged abuse at a former children's home on the island led to lengthy trials, an outside judge was likely to be brought in to handle them....He said the allegations of abuse at the children's home should be handled largely by Jersey's legal system, but added that if several defendants were involved who pleaded not guilty, a judge from outside the island was likely to be brought in. "I don't think there's any doubt that justice can be done," he told the newspaper. "The Jersey Royal Court is very well respected. When any community, wherever it is, has this sort of problem, the community must deal with it."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2064076/Jersey-abuse-case-Thousands-to-be-added-to-sex-offenders-register.html?service=print

I love the way in which we are told contradictory things.

First, Jersey can handle its own cases and does not need outside help.

Then the Attorney General says that they may bring in judges from outside, and notes (in another version of this interview) that can be standard practice for long drawn out and involved cases.

But that doesn't mean the Island courts can't handle matters on their own!!


Of course it is and always has been the case, as the Edward's report notes:

The Bailiff may appoint persons from outside the Island, mainly QC's from the United Kingdom, as Commissioners to hear particular cases when pressure of business or conflicts of interest require.

But that doesn't mean the Island courts can't handle matters on their own!!!

A difference that makes such a difference makes all the difference, to paraphrase Spock.

But that doesn't mean the Island courts can't handle matters on their own!!!!!

And on a lighter note, but still of interest, a few extracts from Matthew Jowitt's law review from 2003:

http://www.jerseylaw.je/Publications/jerseylawreview/Oct03/JLR0310_Postscript.aspx

To an English lawyer wearied by Government performance targets and fatuous attempts to apply the 'user friendly' culture of fast-food restaurants to a criminal justice system, Jersey's dignified adherence to its legal past is refreshing, if not a little off-putting at times.The most immediate aspect, because the most obvious, is the Island's apparent love for arcane titles. In England we used to have all manner of exotic legal creatures: stipendiaries, serjeants, assistant recorders, Lord Chancellors - even silks. All sadly extinct, or about to become so. In our brave new legal world the colour of history and tradition is being bleached away. Titles now are prosaic: district judge, list officer, minister of justice - like quick-dry paint, they do exactly what it says on the tin.

For some time I thought 'Judicial Greffe' was pronounced 'judicial grief' - and assumed that must be what advocates received in the Court of Appeal. I suspected that a 'Bâtonnier' was a type of French gateau, probably with marzipan. Bailiff, Deputy Bailiff, Lieutenant Bailiff, Acting Deputy Lieutenant Bailiff (second class) - what is the newly-arrived Englishman to make of this? When I first heard a lawyer talking about 'the Jurats' I assumed he meant an island chain somewhere off the coast of Norway.

But the differences between our two criminal legal systems are more than skin-deep, no matter how familiar much of Jersey criminal law and practice is to the English barrister. In the Island I am repeatedly struck by how involved the prosecution are with matters which, in England, the prosecution not only do not trespass upon, but it is felt should have nothing to do with as a matter of sacrosanct principle.

In Lincoln Crown Court you would not only never hear a prosecutor giving the judge his opinion on what the sentence should be. If he were to do so the judge would come down on him like a ton of bricks. An English judge may well ask a prosecutor what his sentencing powers are as a matter of law, but anything more than that and defence counsel - rightly - would be jumping to his feet to object. In England it is considered somehow unseemly for the Crown to be seen demanding its pound of flesh.

In Jersey things are very different. A Crown Advocate is required, through his submissions, to recommend to the Court a particular conclusion, and give relevant indications from case law about sentencing practice and tariffs. Custody thresholds and starting points are debated at length.

In England it is accepted without being said that the tribunal which sentences an offender should be the tribunal which tried him. There are good reasons for that: the trial judge will have heard the evidence, assessed each and every witness, formed a view as to where the truth lies, or whether certain aggravating features, notwithstanding a guilty verdict, were sufficiently proved to be reflected in sentence. Chiefly, the trial judge will have been able to assess the defendant himself, if he gave evidence, (and in England the fact that an adverse inference cannot be drawn from a defendant's failure to give evidence means that most do). I have often heard a sentencing judge express his opinion as to a defendant's character on the strength of his earlier performance in the witness box. Any English judge asked to sentence a man following his trial before another judge would - unless that judge were seriously ill or dead - decline to deal with it, and send it back to the trial judge.

In Jersey it is difficult for the English barrister to see the point of Inferior and Superior numbers. One manifestation of the Royal Court, with the power to sentence to any length of imprisonment, ought to suffice as it does in the English Crown Court. One manifestation of the Royal Court both to try and sentence the same defendant would be a simpler, more elegant solution than that which pertains as present.

It may be that I have missed point, but it does strike me that this procedural complexity is exacerbated by Jersey's peculiar dual system of trial by judge and jury for customary law offences, and trial by judge and jurats for statutory offences.

It is a system which has the potential too for wide-reaching constitutional problems. English common law offences grow few and far between: violence, dishonesty, drugs and sex are all now, for the most part, codified in statute. Statutes have a distinct advantage over customary law: subject to construction, and some interpretative case law, their meaning is clear and fixed. To an English lawyer, Jersey's customary law is a particular headache - varied in origin, not always clear in substance. The molly-coddled London counsel, used to turning up statute to discover what an offence involves, can be tempted to conclude that Jersey customary law is no move than a misnomer for a piecemeal assortment of ad hoc decisions by different people at different times over a course of ages.

In this new age of human rights law the principle that law should be clear, consistent and unambiguous grows more important that ever. The law should say what it means, and mean what it says. Similarly, defence lawyers will grow ever more astute to argue against changes which detract from those rights - chief amongst them, perhaps, the hallowed right to jury trial. Here lies the seed of conflict: on the one hand the potential need to clarify customary law through codification, on the other the erosion of trial by jury which such a course would entail. Short of abolishing the dual system of juries and jurats, it is not immediately obvious how such problems would resolve themselves.

The Average Story

The JEP has again printed wonderful headlines about the "average wage" in Jersey, making out that workers are doing wonderfully. I wrote on this subject last year, and am pretty fed up with the ignorance of the copy-writers, and I assume the way in which the States Statistics Unit does not stress most strongly the limitations of the average (or the JEP chooses to ignore it).

Two obvious points:

a) Averages are useless without a measure of the spread - are most wages clustered around the average, or are they well spread apart from it. One measure is the standard deviation. You may hunt in vain for that in the JEP article. If the brief of a paper is to inform and educate the public, this should be given, and explained in simple terms.

b) Most wages are a skewed distribution, rather than what is called a normal distribution, i.e. they are not a "bell shape", but are like a bell squashed out of shape on one side. The result: most wages are less than the "average" (arithmetic mean), and the fewer high wages push the average higher than one might expect. This is why most countries have moved from using the average to using the median (or middle point) as this is much better for showing where people are (half above, half below) as best practice. The States Statistic unit have said they can't get that kind of detail from employers (as for instance is managed in the UK), and that means that any comparisons with the UK "average" (i.e. the median) are grossly misleading.

An Independent Report?

I've just been reading a presentation by David Kern on Jersey's economy; an "independent report".

What precisely does "independent" mean in the context of this report? It suggests that the removal of immigration controls, for example, are a "must" for "growth", but this is presented as an axiom, not a hypothesis. It seems that it means that it was not a report written to propose a JCC viewpoint, but that does not mean - as it clearly indends to convey - that it is unbiased, or presents a somehow objective viewpoint (what I call the "god's eye fallacy").

I'd love to know what the "operational difficulties" which he mentions in respect of GST are, no details at all given, and from the talk we had from the tax department, it is in fact running on schedule. The only difficulty which came up was Senator Ozouf's autocratic pigheadedness, against the advice of the tax officers, to say that GST had to be on the shelf, not at the till.

He speaks about population growth needed for economic growth, and says that loosening controls will "inevitably trigger hostile populist reaction"; in fact "populist" is a very popular word in his presentation, and invariable carries the meaning "wrong" or "mistaken", or "harmful". The public must, he suggests repeatedly, be educated out of their short-term populist failings towards "robust" and sensible long-term policies. This is an extremely arrogant and patronising idea! The impact on infrastructure (waste, traffic, education and health services, water, electricity) is not considered at all, which seems to me to show how blinkered and one-sided his presentation is. Long term considerations should also look at those; it is equally short-term not to.

He also completely fails to address the impact of budgetary restrictions on core services such as education and health; these are lost amist the general flannel on tightening budgetary controls, which thereby loses sight of the consequences for the general population which may occur.

A neutral assessment of Jersey economy would be useful, and it is here in part, but it does require straining through a sieve to remove all the areas in which rhetoric takes the place of argument, and assumptions are presented as axiomatic rather than debatable. Independent it may be. Unbiased it is not.