The Queen of Wands

The Queen of Wands

 

The lady sits upon the throne

Her future open and unknown

In calmness, serene with dignity

Her eyes gaze out and meet with me

Sunflower growing not far behind

Mirrors her aspect, gentle, kind

Her staff of rule, of silent power

To open up, embrace and flower

The black cat is sentinel before

Her love within her hidden lore

Upon her head a gilded crown

And clad in simple golden gown

She gives forth life, calls forth love

In sweet harmony, my ladylove.

A Writer's Tale

For me it's mostly a question of rewriting. It's part of a constant attempt on my part to make the finished version smooth, to make it seem effortless. A story I've been working on - "The Train on Track Six," it's called - was rewritten fifteen complete times. There must have been close to 240,000 words in all the manuscripts put together, and I must have spent two thousand hours working at it. Yet the finished version can't be more than twenty-thousand words. (James Thurber)

I've recently come across an edition of "The Paris Review" which has an interview with James Thurber. Although in the interview he says he polishes his drafts up to 15 or more revisions before they are in their final form, his literary voice comes across just as strongly in this interview when unpolished; it has the same wry amused look at the world. This is what he has to say about his memory, which was prodigious for recalling all kinds of minutiae:

Well, you know it's a nuisance-to have memory like mine - as well as an advantage. It's . . . well . . . like a whore's top drawer. There's so much else in there that's junk-costume jewelry, unnecessary telephone numbers whose exchanges no longer exist. For instance, I can remember the birthday of anybody who's ever told me his birthday. Dorothy Parker-August 22, Lewis Gannett- October 3, Andy White-July 9, Mrs. White-September 17. I can go on with about two hundred. So can my mother. She can tell you the birthday of the girl I was in love with in the third grade, in 1903. Offhand, just like that. I got my powers of memory from her.

Sometimes it helps out in the most extraordinary way. You remember Robert M. Coates? Bob Coates? He is the author of The Eater of Darkness, which Ford Madox Ford called the first true Dadaist novel. Well, the week after Stephen Vincent Benét died - Coates and I had both known him-we were talking about Benét. Coates was trying to remember an argument he had had with Benét some fifteen years before. He couldn't remember. I said, "I can." Coates told me that was impossible since I hadn't been there. "Well," I said, "you happened to mention it in passing about twelve years ago. You were arguing about a play called Swords." I was right, and Coates was able to take it up from there. But it's strange to reach a position where your friends have to be supplied with their own memories. It's bad enough dealing with your own.

In this little extract gives a wonderful anecdote about a cartoon of his:

INTERVIEWER: You say that your drawings often don't come out the way you intended?

THURBER: Well, once I did a drawing for The New Yorker of a naked woman on all fours up on top of a bookcase-a big bookcase. She's up there near the ceiling, and in the room are her husband and two other women. The husband is saying to one of the women, obviously a guest, "This is the present Mrs. Harris. That's my first wife up there."

Well, when I did the cartoon originally I meant the naked woman to be at the top of a flight of stairs, but I lost the sense of perspective and instead of getting in the stairs when I drew my line down, there she was stuck up there, naked, on a bookcase.

Incidentally, that cartoon really threw The New Yorker editor, Harold Ross. He approached any humorous piece of writing, or more particularly a drawing, not only grimly but realistically. He called me on the phone and asked if the woman up on the bookcase was supposed to be alive, stuffed, or dead. I said, "I don't know, but I'll let you know in a couple of hours."

After a while I called him back and told him I'd just talked to my taxidermist, who said you can't stuff a woman, that my doctor had told me a dead woman couldn't support herself on all fours. "So, Ross," I said, "she must be alive." "Well then," he said, "what's she doing up there naked in the home of her husband's second wife?" I told him he had me there.

INTERVIEWER: But he published it.

THURBER: Yes, he published it, growling a bit.

There's also a wonderful anecdote about his editor, Harold Ross, at the New York Times. He had a strict attitude regarding "low comedy", and four letter words:

Ross had a neighbor woman's attitude about it. He never got over his Midwestern provincialism. His idea was that sex is an incident. "If you can prove it," I said, "we can get it in a box on the front page of The New York Times."

Now I don't want to say that in private life Ross was a prude. But as regards the theater or the printed page he certainly was. For example, he once sent an office memorandum to us in a sealed envelope. It was an order: "When you send me a memorandum with four-letter words in it, seal it. There are women in this office." I said, "Yah, Ross, and they know a lot more of these words than you do."

When women were around he was very conscious of them. Once my wife and I were in his office and Ross was discussing a man and woman he knew much better than we did. Ross told us, "I have every reason to believe that they're s-l-e-e-p-i-n-g together." My wife replied, "Why, Harold Ross, what words you do spell out."

I also love this story about the difference between the novelist and the humourist:

Hervey Allen, you know, the author of the big best-seller Anthony Adverse, seriously told a friend of mine who was working on a biographical piece on Allen that he could close his eyes, lie down on a bed, and hear the voices of his ancestors. Furthermore there was some sort of angel-like creature that danced along his pen while he was writing. He wasn't balmy by any means. He just felt he was in communication with some sort of metaphysical recorder. So you see the novelists have all the luck. I never knew a humorist who got any help from his ancestors.

Thurber never took himself seriously, unlike some of the other writers he came across:

I can remember calling on Frank Harris -  he was about seventy then-when I was on the Chicago Tribune's edition in Nice. In his house he had three portraits on the wall - Mark Twain, Frank Harris, and I think it was Hawthorne. Harris was in the middle. Harris would point up to them and say, "Those three are the best American writers. The one in the middle is the best." Harris really thought he was wonderful.

Once he told me he was going to live to be a hundred. When I asked him what the formula was, he told me it was very simple. He said, "I've bought myself a stomach pump and one half-hour after dinner I pump myself out." Can you imagine that? Well, it didn't work. It's a wonder it didn't kill him sooner.

Well, the characteristic fear of the American writer is not so much that as it is the process of aging. The writer looks in the mirror and examines his hair and teeth to see if they're still with him. "Oh my God," he says, "I wonder how my writing is. I bet I can't write today." The only time I met Faulkner he told me he wanted to live long enough to do three more novels. He was fifty three then, and I think he has done them.

Then Hemingway says, you know, that he doesn't expect to be alive after sixty. But he doesn't look forward not to being. When I met Hemingway with John O'Hara in Costello's Bar five or six years ago we sat around and talked about how old we were getting. You see it's constantly on the minds of American writers. I've never known a woman who could weep about her age the way the men I know can.

Thurber was a writer, but not one of the serious, big novelists, who rather looked down their noses at what he did:

I don't believe, as Thomas Wolfe did, that you have to turn out a massive work before being judged a writer. Wolfe once told me at a cocktail party that I didn't know what it was to be a writer. My wife, standing next to me, complained about that. "But my husband is a writer," she said. Wolfe was genuinely surprised. "He is?" he asked. "Why, all I ever see is that stuff of his in The New Yorker." In other words, he felt that prose under five thousand words was certainly not the work of a writer . . . it was some kind of doodling in words.

Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 - September 15, 1938) was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.  While acclaimed when alive as one of the most important American writers of equal quality to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner, Wolfe's reputation has been "all but destroyed" since his death... He is often left out of college courses and anthologies devoted to great writers.

James Thurber, on the other hand, is still cited and read. An anthology of his best pieces - "James Thurber: Writings and Drawings" was recently published, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman, who says:

This book, the one you are holding, The 13 Clocks by James Thurber, is probably the best book in the world. And if it's not the best book, then it's still very much like nothing anyone has ever seen before, and, to the best of my knowledge, no one's ever really seen anything like it since.

It was funny in strange ways. It was filled with words. And while all books are filled with words, this one was different: it was filled with magical, wonderful, tasty words. It slipped into poetry and out of it again in a way that made you want to read it aloud, just to see how it sounded. I read it to my little sister. When I was old enough, I read it to my children.

Some years ago, my son Roy, my late partner Annie Parmeter, and myself spent an enjoyable hour or two every week reading various books out loud. Michael Morpurgo's book "Why the Whales Came" is an excellent book to read out loud. But I think our favourite was "The Thirteen Clocks". If I was on a desert island, this slim volume would probably keep me sane. Neil Gaiman again:

Something very much like nothing anyone had ever seen before came trotting down the stairs and crossed the
room. "What is that?" the Duke asked, palely. "I don't know what it is," said Hark, "but it's the only one there ever was." (James Thurber, the 13 Clocks)

Listen: it has a prince in it, and a princess. It has the evilest Duke ever written. It has Hush and Whisper (and
Listen). Happily, it has Hagga, who weeps jewels. Terrifyingly, it has a Todal. And best and most marvelously
and improbably of all, it has a Golux, with an indescribable hat, who warns our hero that

"Half the places I have been to, never were. I make things up. Half the things I say are there cannot be found. When I was young I told a tale of buried gold, and men from leagues around dug in the woods. I dug myself."
"But why?"
"I thought the tale of treasure might be true."
"You said you made it up."
"I know I did, but then I didn't know I had. I forget things, too."

Every tale needs a Golux. Luckily for all of us, this book has one

The 13 Clocks is not a fairy tale. It's not a poem, it's not a parable or a fable or a novel or joke. Truly, I don't know what The 13 Clocks is, but whatever it is, as someone else said of something else at the top of this introduction, it's the only one there ever was.

Memories of the Kitchen

I recently was tidying up and came across an Mensa Magazine from 1985, edited by Ken Webb. Ken was a both a personal friend, and at one time an "accredited journalist". Older Islanders may remember him presenting the sports news on Channel Television's local news programme. We worked together for a number of years on "Thinks!", the name he gave to the Channel Island Mensa magazine, with himself as editor, and myself as assistant editor.

Here's a piece he wrote about his memories of working in hotel kitchens as a young man, and it is interesting that I use almost exactly the method he suggests for boiling eggs - I place the egg in cold water and bring to the boil, rather than placing it in boiling water. The difference is that I used a very clever colour small half-sphere of Perspex, placed to boil with the eggs. It starts off red, and gradually turns yellow, from the outside in, and is graded for different consistencies of boiled egg. I use it along with a circular device which you press on to push in a circle of tiny blades, and which opens the top of the egg perfectly every single time.

I've added one other piece from the page. The magazine was printed as an A5 booklet, and if the text didn't quite fill a page, rather like Reader's Digest used to, Ken would add some small quirky detail to fit it exactly - I've left one of those there too after the kitchen memories.

---

MEMORIES OF THE KITCHEN
By Ken Webb

I was born in an hotel (owned by my great Aunt who died last year aged 103!) and spent the first thirty years of my life in various family hotels.

Naturally I was trained to be an hotelier. Being the son of the boss, training was NOT easy. My father believed that, unless you could do every job in the hotel as well as did the staff you employed, you had no right to call yourself an hotelier: "If the chef throws a tantrum at August Bank Holiday week-end and walks out, you step into the kitchen and the only comment from the guests should be that the food is better than ever."

The staff, naturally, made it hard going for me, knowing as they did, that should I complain to my father I would receive scant sympathy. Training was old-fashioned, thorough, practical and merciless. One example will suffice. The head chef, a small, bad-tempered but brilliant Italian, placed a metal spoon into a pan of boiling fat, took it out, and placed it straight on the back of my hand - I bear the scar to this day!

"You have been burned by boiling fat", said the Mussolini of the Kitchen, "Now you will take good care, that you will never be burned by boiling fat again." How right he was - but what a way to learn!

That is how things were in the "good old days". Nowadays the parents of the kitchen apprentice would rush off to the Police, have the chef arrested and taken to Court and charge with causing grievous bodily harm, or some such nonsense.

When you have undergone training as vigorous as existed pre-war, you do not forget readily all you have been taught and, despite having left the Hotel business thirty years ago, I venture to pen a few little tips- dredged from the innermost depths of my memory which may (or may not!) prove to be of some use.

1. To get that egg yoke just right and to avoid cracking the shell and losing egg white, just place the egg in cold water, bring to the boil, and allow to simmer for three minutes. If eggs are kept in a refrigerator it is better to take them out half an hour before you need to use them in order that they may gradually reach the temperature of the room. (In the boiling of eggs the shell sometimes cracks. This is due to the violent change in temperature causing the air inside the egg to expand too rapidly.)

2. To avoid tears when peeling onions, bite on a large crust of dry bread and breath through your mouth.

3. To make sure you get the best out of your herbs, do not chop them on a board as the board will absorb the juices. Use the bottom of an upturned dinner plate or, better still, snip them finely with a pair of scissors into a glass. What is not used will keep fresh if the glass is placed into a refrigerator.

4. If you wish your mashed potatoes to be really light, never mix with cold milk. Hot milk beaten into hot potatoes with a dash of baking powder or Bicarbonate of soda will ensure success. Incidentally, a piping bag will do wonders for your presentation.

5. To preserve your favourite frying pan in pristine condition (ALL chefs have a favourite frying pan, especially for omelettes), NEVER wash it in water. Wipe it - while still hot  with kitchen tissues. If necessary a small sprinkling of salt on the tissues will remove any stubborn crusting on the pan's surface. Finally a wipe with a fresh tissue on which you have placed a few drops of oil. Ideally, store your favourite pan in a brown paper bag. This will prevent rust as the paper absorbs the moisture and steam found in a kitchen.

6. To ensure your buttered (scrambled) eggs are done to perfection, use a porringer or improvise a form of double cooker. It is most difficult to judge the texture of the eggs if they are being cooked on a direct heat. A pan of water with an upturned dish placed in it will do for a double cooker and has the advantage of your being able to see how the water is boiling. Use for all egg bound mixtures and delicate sauces.

WHAT IS LIFE?

The Russians  as always  are advancing further claims of the longevity enjoyed by those who have the great good fortune to live under the benevolence of the Communist State.

The latest example is of a man who it is claimed, has attained the age of 110. When asked to what he attributed his long life, he  said it was due entirely to the fact that he had never touched drink, tobacco or women. When is he going to start living?

St Helier in 1932 - Elizabeth Castle

A few more extracts from the 1932 Guide Book to the Channel Islands...

This covers mainly Elizabeth Castle, and its more recent history. The Elizabeth Castle of 1932 looked quite different from that today in many respects - the 1940s saw a legacy of German bunkers and gun emplacements which altered the skyline of parts of its battlements, making a much harder, starker silhouette.

The cost of the castle is pretty amazing £1,500. It is difficult to ascertain what that would be today - the Measuring Worth website says:

In 2010, the relative value of £1,500 from 1922 ranges from £63,900.00 to £491,000.00.

Even at the upper end of the scale, that still seems like a bargain!

The history of the castle doesn't mention that there is a gap of around 600 years between the death of Helier, and the foundation of the Abbey on the castle. It is notable that the life of Helier dates from the time of the Abbey, and is mostly constructed from bits and pieces of other Saints lives. It appears to be more of a foundational document for the Abbey, written up so that more might be known of Helier than simply a name.

The historian Charles Grosset noted that the Passion of St Helier, written in the 10th or 11th century, draws upon two very much earlier lives of St Marculf (A and B), and amends them to suit his narrative.

Grosset's conclusion is that the life of St Helier is extremely poorly documented, and like Balleine, he considers it largely fictional. He sees the writer as having "been given the task of writing a life of the hermit Helier, who lived in Jersey and has a few bare facts known about him: the cave where he lived, healing of the sick, and death at the hands of pirates. He discovered a similar sounding name to Helier in the district of Tongres, and also a hermit called Eletus in the Life of St Marcouf. He did not hesitate to identify Helier with the near namesake in Tongres, or to make an identification with Eletus, taking the story of a miracle set on an island whose place-name was not to be found on the map."

The last item in this extract is the West End Bathing Pool. This is sadly neglected and no longer in use, although it has been suggested refurbishing it would be a good jubilee project. Here it is described in its vibrant heyday - probably very popular with young people, because it permitted mixed bathing!

St Helier in 1932 - Elizabeth Castle

Elizabeth Castle.
 
Admission-6d. Open daily, Sunday included.
 
The Castle stands on a detached rock about three-quarters of a mile from the shore. It can be reached by boat or by a causeway, which is completely covered at high tide, but is available about 3 hours after high water, and remains available for about 5 1/2 hours. If the tide is rising, it is not advisable to stay too long, or it may be necessary to remove shoes and stockings to make good one's retreat by the causeway.
 
In 1922 the Imperial Government offered Elizabeth Castle to the States of Jersey for £1,500. The States accepted, and at once began to put the historical parts of the building in a state of repair. The official handing over of the keys took place, with full ceremonial, on May 21, 1923.
 
The venerable and picturesque appearance of the Castle at a distance is not confirmed by a close view, but historically the spot is of interest and should be visited.
 
Close to the rock on which the Castle stands, and enclosed by the breakwater, is the Hermitage Rock, in which the hermit Helerius, or St. Helier, from whom the town derives its name, had his cell in the middle of the sixth century. He was noted for his piety and eloquence. While addressing a band of pirates, he was suddenly attacked and killed by the captain, who feared that his men might be induced to desert him. On the spot -where this occurred a Norman nobleman, Guillaume de Hamon, built an abbey and church in 1126.
 
In the reign of Edward VI the Governor of Jersey received orders to fortify the promontory, but little was done until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the greater part of the fortress was constructed. The lower ward was built in 1626, and the tower nearest the causeway, called King Charles's Tower, was added a few years later by the express desire of Charles II, who, as Prince of Wales, had been much interested in the fortifications which resisted his capture by the Parliamentarians.
 
Sir Philip de Carteret, Bailiff of Jersey, strengthened Elizabeth Castle on the outbreak of the Civil War. At his death (1643) the faction favouring the Parliament attempted to seize the Castle, but it was strongly held in the King's name. Mont Orgueil Castle was also stoutly defended by the Dowager Lady de Carteret. On the arrival from St. Malo of Captain George Carteret (nephew of Sir Philip) the attack on Mount Orgueil was withdrawn, and Carteret, assuming his rightful office of Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey for the King, soon suppressed opposition. In 1646 the fugitive Prince Charles arrived at Elizabeth Castle. On February 17, 1649, Carteret caused the Prince to be declared King.
 
Soon afterwards it was deemed prudent that the soi-disant king should retire to the Continent. Lord Clarendon also arrived at the Castle in 1646 and remained two years and one month, during which he began his famous History of the Rebellion. Admiral Blake arrived in 1651, with Parliamentary forces, and in St. Ouen's Bay Sir George Carteret and his Jerseymen fought them for four hours, when the Parliamentarians retired to their vessels and made for other parts of the Island.
 
When the Parliamentary forces landed, St. Aubin's Castle and Mont Orgueil quickly surrendered, but Carteret stubbornly held out in Elizabeth Castle. It was bombarded from St. Helier Hill (now Fort Regent), and an enormous shell "fired at a venture" did irreparable damage by exploding the powder magazine. Forty men were killed, and among the buildings wrecked were the Abbey Church and the residences of Prince Charles, Lord Clarendon and Sir George Carteret. In consequence of the disaster, the garrison capitulated on December 15, 1651, marching out with honours of war. The siege had begun on October 23.
 
Slightly to the west of the causeway is the
 
West End Bathing Pool, or Victoria Lake. It has a sea-water surface of over five acres. Mixed bathing is permitted at all times. The pool is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, and from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays. There is every convenience for both swimmers and nonswimmers-rafts, spring-boards and double diving stage (5 feet and 9 feet high). A boatman is always in attendance. As the Pool is covered at every tide the water is renewed twice a day.
 

Policing Behaviour

"Yes," said Oyarsa, "but one thing we left behind us on the harandra: fear. (C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet)

There was a mother on BBC Radio Jersey talking about the Town Park, and how there were "intimidating" groups of teenagers who congregated there after school had finished, and how they were always swearing. This isn't the only place for people to comment on this - here is a comment from Frome, in the UK, which is almost an exact replica of the concerns, though the Jersey teenagers were not accused of drinking:

I AM getting increasingly concerned about how many hoodies and teenagers hang around Victoria Park, Frome, drinking alcohol and intimidating the younger children the park is designed for. It needs a resident park keeper and the council should sort this. When a friend of mine called the police regarding the under-age drinking they seemed uninterested. This park should ensure the safety of our children.

The language from these young people's mouths is disgusting. I want my children to feel safe and happy going to the park and getting their independence without the worry of these juveniles. The council should be monitoring parks for this kind of behaviour and the police should move these teenagers on. I know this is a concern for many parents.

And another comments on teenagers hanging around shops:

There are groups of teenagers that hang around outside shops. some are ok kids , some are little criminals in the making. Point is it can be very intimidating for people trying to go to the shop to buy groceries. it can also be intimidating for other kids who want to go the shop but are afraid of being bullied. It should not be tolerated and it is the parents fault, I will never allow my child to hang on street corners and if i caught her disobeying me and doing so she would be grounded. children should have proper activities to be doing in their spare time (cinema, sports, community work etc) and studying. It is up to parents to provide a proper lifestyle for their children and keep their children out of trouble.

A report on anti-social behaviour notes that:

Hanging about in parks and open spaces or on streets can seem harmless, but can cause other people to be frightened or intimidated. A group of people talking loudly or shouting can cause disturbance to residents, particularly if close to people's houses, and having to listen to people swearing can also be upsetting.

But another individual takes a different line:

When I was a teenager we wanted to hang out with each other and had nowhere to go, so we'd just congregate wherever. We never did anything wrong or got in the way, I don't see the problem.

I think the question is really whether the behaviour is intimidating in a positive sense. If the young people are swearing at other people, or coming up close to them deliberately, that is bullying behaviour.

But a large crowd of teenagers, perhaps with language salted with swear words, can seem intimidating even though the young people have no intention of being so, or of engaging with the people who find them intimidating: it is the psychological reaction of the person with a large, and perhaps noisy crowd, close to hand - and it is a reaction of fear. But the problem may lie more with the individual than the teenagers themselves. Is it really intimidation, or is it just perceived to be? After all, it is well known that many sailors in navies historically have a language well punctuated with swear words.

In a study "Inequality and the Steriotyping of Young People", Maurice Devlin considers how much of this may be steriotyping, and is a gut-reaction, and a false perception. He notes that:

When the topic of how they thought they were seen by adults at a local and community level was discussed, by far the most frequent and spontaneous response had to do with 'hassle' in public places, with high visibility because of being in groups, and with the tensions associated with 'hanging around' and being 'moved on'. This was also consistently linked with the fact that there was little else to do, or at least little else that was attractive and accessible.

While there definitely are troublemakers, it is important not to see all teenagers in the same way. The same study also has interviews with teenagers in Ireland, and here are a few of their comments:

Karen: .All of us get tarred with the same brush. You're a teenager, you hang around in a group, you must be a vandal.

Eamon: Everybody stares at you, there's no where to go like. As adults, they can go to the pub, they've more things to do with their time.We haven't. ..We're just knocking about and you can see us more, we're just kids. We don't have nowhere to go. Adults can hide but we can't. Whatever we want to do we have to do it outside

Susan: If they see us hanging around.but like there's nowhere else to go.they feel intimidated.they write into the local newspaper, but it's not our fault, we have [the youth club] once a week, there's six other nights, like, with nothing else to do but hang around. And we're not always doing bad stuff, we're hanging around, we may just be talking, but it's never seen as 'oh well they may be talking'.[It's] 'oh you're drunk, you're on drugs, you're smoking something, you're going to break into someone's house, you're intimidating

The study has interviews with a "focus group", in which participants frequently returned to the theme that since they enjoy spending time with their friends, in groups ('walking around in a gang, that's what it's all about'), and since there is often nowhere for them to go as a group, they are constantly placed in situations full of
potential for 'hassle' with adults:

Most young people were quite ready to agree that they do often make 'loads of noise' and engage in behaviour which might be seen by many adults as a nuisance, but they tended to think the response was disproportionate, and their accounts were often characterised by humour and irony.

Gary: Sometimes you might be, like at night time you might be making too much noise, like if they have children. But like sometimes it's 4 o'clock in the day.

Angela: It's because you're young. Like, what do they want you to do, sit at home all the time?

The fact that they seemed always to be perceived as trouble-makers (or potential trouble-makers) was very 'wide of the mark' to the young people.

Gemma: Like, you can understand it, but like nothing's going to happen to them. Nothing ever happens to old folk in [area]. If anything we'd probably be looking out like, if we seen anything wrong, anybody getting robbed or anything.

Michelle: Yeah, my own granny lives round here.

In one of the focus groups, a youth worker gave an example of how young people's behaviour, even when they are involved in 'legitimate' activities organised by youth groups and schools, with a community dimension and with adult supervision, can be a cause of tension when they move outdoors.

.It was going to be a community day and we were going to welcome people on stilts and give them flyers and take photographs on stilts. So we had the workshop over in the school two or three evenings during the week. Then [it came to] the first night they went out on stilts and there was great laughter and a bit of craic and excitement and people were falling over and diving and.next of all the police arrived on the scene and they got out and [said] 'Who's in charge here'? and I said 'I am' and he said 'Is everything alright?' and I said 'Yeah, grand' and he said 'It's just, we've had a call that there's been a lot of young people making noise'. And I said 'That's laughter, young people having fun'

Factors such as the facilities available, the nature of public space, the variety of options open to young people for places to meet, the extent to which they are engaged in formal education or in other structured pastimes, and the question of whether they can (and do) travel out of their own area to pursue such pastimes, all appear to be involved.

What it seems that people want some kind of embargo on unstructured meetings. There is a call for young people to "be doing something", and by that is meant either some charitable enterprise, or some structured activity. But that really tells us as much a about the desires of the people making the suggestion to control young people.

The forbidding of meetings of large numbers of people in public places was, for a time, the law in the UK. In 1819, Parliament passed the Six Acts, which allowed that any house could be searched, without a warrant, on suspicion of containing firearms, and public meetings were virtually forbidden. If people came together in crowds, there was a danger perceived by the authorities of riots, so a blanket ban on meetings was the answer. It was a disproportionate response, and one made from fear, and a desire to feel safe by controlling people's lives, and what they could and could not be free to do - including simply meeting together in a public place.

Control makes people feel safe, and that is why the suggestion is made that the parents should be controlling the children, or there should be structured activities which they should be taking part.

At the root may be fear, but it is often an irrational fear, like the fear of spiders. We know that some spiders are poisonous, and our body's primeval defense mechanisms are triggered when we see a spider - our ancestors came from an Africa where spiders were poisonous. But we have to overcome that, and fear of large numbers of young people is also something we have to be mindful of as often an irrational fear.

If they are breaking the law, then the authorities can be called upon; but in the meantime, perhaps a little introspection and mindfulness would be worthwhile. As a character says in one of C.S. Lewis books: " The darkness in your own mind filled you with fear." Perhaps before we look to the policing of young people's behaviour, we should consider the way in which our fears police our own behaviour.

References
http://www.youth.ie/nyci/inequality-and-stereotyping-young-people

Plémont: A History of Failure

We have recognised that moral struggles are frequently between competing goods, rather than between a straight good and a straight evil. (Richard Holloway, Godless Morality)

In 2006, a proposition was brought by the Connétable of St. Ouen to decided whether or not it was in the public interest to preserve the headland at Plémont "as open space for the enjoyment of the public of the Island"

The proposition  also went on to "to request the Council of Ministers to consider all options to preserve the land described in paragraph (a), and to recommend a preferred option to the States with the least possible delay;(c ) to request the Minister for Planning and Environment to defer determination of any application relating to the redevelopment of this site pending States' consideration of the Council of Ministers' recommendation."

The debate of Plémont headland has a long history politically; it goes back at least six years, and it is a record of an inability of the States to find a solution. In October 2006, the States passed the proposition parts (a) and (b) by 36 votes in favour, 9 against, and 5 abstaining to:

( a ) agreed that it would be in the public interest for the headland at Plémont, as shown in Drawing Number 1505/06/101, namely the site formerly occupied by Plémont ('Pontin's') holiday village complex and surrounding associated land, to be preserved as open space for the enjoyment of the public of the Island;
( b ) requested the Council of Ministers to consider all options to preserve the land described in paragraph (a), and to recommend a preferred option to the States with the least possible delay

The National Trust at the time also collected 10,000 signatures in favour of the motion, and speaking to Jo Sargent in Geographical Magazine, in April 2007, the President of the National Trust of Jersey, Mike Stentiford, stated what he wanted to see happen:

What are your main concerns for the coastline's future?

Plémont is our real concern. It's a dramatic headland on Jersey's northwest coast and is the gateway to 22 kilometres of north coast footpaths.
Unfortunately, it's blighted by an empty, abandoned, dilapidated eyesore that, in the heady days of popular tourism, functioned as the Plémont
Holiday Camp. Developers now want to dismantle this awful building, which is good news, but then to replace it with 34 expensive houses and gardens, which is really bad news. Apart from the wild beauty of this part of the coast, the proposed building development would be within a stone's throw of the UK's most southerly colony of Atlantic puffins.

What are you doing to protect it?

In September last year, the National Trust for Jersey launched a petition against any development at Plémont. It was launched online, with full-page advertisements in the local press and volunteers collecting signatures in local supermarkets. It proved to be remarkably successful, and we collected more than 10,000 signatures in just four weeks. The trust believes that if development is granted, Jersey's environmental integrity--or indeed the lack of it--would be seriously questioned. We're asking that the site be purchased by the States of Jersey, returned to its natural wild state and left in its entirety to the people of Jersey. If this happens, the trust and its lands team will happily take on the responsibility of caring for and managing the entire headland for the benefit of future generations. The petition has been given to our chief minister in the States of Jersey and we're currently awaiting a decision from local government.

This was the States under its first Ministerial government, under the leadership of Senator Frank Walker, and in 2008, Senator Len Norman decided to ask Frank Walker what had happened - after all, it was getting on for two years since the matter was raised. The reply was a masterpiece of prevarication:

4.3 Senator L. Norman: Might I remind the Chief Minister again of the proposition to the Constable of St. Ouen which was adopted by the States in 2006 which requested the Council of Ministers to consider all options to preserve the headland at Plémont and to recommend a preferred option to the States within the least possible delay?  Now that 2 years have past I wonder if the Chief Minister and the Minister for Planning and Environment have sorted out who is taking responsibility for this and when we might receive the preferred option?

Senator F.H. Walker: It is not, sadly, as simple an issue as the Senator would suggest and discussions have been taking place between me and the Minister for Planning and Environment and indeed the Constable of St. Ouen in recent weeks, but there are legal considerations which have yet to be fully resolved.  But I would hope some information and perhaps even a proposition would be coming to the States in the not too distant future.

4.3.1 Senator L. Norman: I am pleased to hear that discussions have taken place between the Ministers.  I wonder during the 2 years since the proposition was adopted by the States, have any discussions taken place with the owners of the land?

Senator F.H. Walker: I have not had discussions with the owners of the land and nor would it be appropriate for me to do so.

In 2009, the Senator Frank Walker's "not too distant future" had still not arrived. Deputy Roy Le Hérissier was on the case on what were now termed "active negotiations", but unfortunately Deputy Le Fondré was not the right person to ask, and Senator Philip Ozouf was not available to answer:

3.2.3 Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier: In terms of the Assistant Minister's definition of active negotiations will he say when the first approach was made after the Constable of St. Ouen's proposition was approved on 22nd October 2008?  When was the active part of the negotiations initiated?

Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré: I am just trying to look at a reference.  I believe there was a meeting in early January and it was subsequent to that, that further correspondence was received in, I will say, April or May to be general which has then resulted in the further meeting that is being planned.

3.2.4 Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier: Just a final question.  Would the Assistant Minister comment on a proposal that has been made to the Minister for Treasury and Resources as a way of perhaps dealing with the kind of concern implicit in Deputy Martin's question?  Would he comment on a proposal that has been made for the use, for example, of dormant bank account monies as one of the approaches to this particular project?

Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré: Unfortunately, I cannot comment because I am purely responsible for property and that is definitely a matter for the Minister.

In January 2010, by a narrow margin, the States voted against buying an area of Plémont headland to return it to nature. They rejected by 23 votes to 19 the Constable of St Ouen's proposition that the former Pontin's Holiday Camp site should be bought by the public of the Island.  Some of the debate was hidden - not for the first time with the States - from the public, as the States decided to go "in camera" for the discussion to continue with further information on cost.

As the JEP reported:

Members chose to vote on whether the States should enter into negotiations to buy the site at all, even though another option was the use of compulsory purchase powers and a large part of the debate was centred on this issue. After rejecting the idea that the States should buy the site, they did not, therefore, need to vote on whether compulsory purchase powers should be used.

Around the same time in January 2010, a working group was also being set up to look at the future of Fort Regent, another long running saga still without conclusion!

In January 2012, the JEP reported on yet another delay in the whole saga of Plémont:

PLANS for a major public inquiry into the development of one of Jersey's most treasured beauty spots may be scuppered. The architects have withdrawn and resubmitted the 2011 plans to build 28 homes on the site of the former holiday village at Plémont after a border dispute with Planning.  But the fact that the plans are new has 'reset' the whole Planning process. That means that the previous decision by the then Environment Minister, Freddie Cohen, to submit the application to a public inquiry for review has lapsed, and the new minister, Deputy Rob Duhamel, will have to make a decision on whether to hold an inquiry. Trust president Celia Jeune said that they wanted help to buy the site to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

The latest move by Philip Bailhache brings the proposals up to date. The Jersey Evening Post reports that two years after the last attempt to save the area from development and return it to nature was narrowly defeated in the States, the Senator is preparing a fresh move:

With a Planning application for a 28-home development on the site heading for a public inquiry, Senator Bailhache's plan could be the final chance to preserve one of Jersey's most beautiful natural areas. Senator Bailhache has confirmed that he is in the early stages of preparing the proposition.

The composition of the States has altered considerably since the last vote. But the arguments for and against probably have not changed much, except the economic situation has worsened. It is perhaps not quite as black as noted in Senator Ferguson's speech, when she alluded to 2012, but the deepening global crisis still make the points she made then as pertinent now:

Senator S.C. Ferguson: Like other speakers, I am sympathetic to preserving the coastline.  After all, I did bring the proposition regarding Warren Farm to the States.  But the main problem with this is funding.  But the other problem is that by virtue of the rules voted on by this Assembly the developer is entitled to expect that he can develop.  Members have commented that the House has general powers to countermand decisions of Planning.  This is not so and the details for those who are interested are in the Planning Law.

The Chief Minister has commented on our previous experiences going into various land propositions.  He mentioned Lesquende.  I would add Les Pas, where the States made a real mess of a planning application in 1989, 1990 or thereabouts and it took us something like 14 years to finish it.  What are the facts?  As has been said in this House before, we are where we are. There is an offer to preserve some two-thirds as public land.  This appears to be in the public domain and presumably would be difficult to rescind. Without prejudice to any negotiations we therefore have a publicly announced gift of about two-thirds of the land.  I think that also must be factored into the discussions.

We have the saving line - holding line - that the quality and limits to any future building being controlled by the Minister for Planning and Environment.  There will be people who will talk piously of the cost of everything and the value of nothing, but I think we have to be practical.

In 2012 we will have a structural deficit.  Members will have noticed the lugubrious comments of the Minister for Treasury and Resources from time to time saying that we shall have difficult decisions.  Like other Members, I read the financial press, I look at economic forecasts and the economies are not yet out of the woods.  I do not know the scale of the structural deficit, but I suspect from the lugubrious comments that it will be chunky. It is a time of prudence.

Members are waxing lyrical about returning the whole site to nature.  Well, I go back to it, where will the money come from?  Will the Minister for E.S.C. (Education, Sport and Culture) be contributing from his budget?  It also seems to me that this particular proposition is applying the nuclear option at too early a stage in negotiations.  It is a basic law of successful negotiation that both sides should be not quite satisfied.  It is a question of balance.  If both sides have not quite got everything they want then that is a successful negotiation.

A parliament blunderbuss at this stage is totally unhelpful.  We cannot tie the hands of any negotiators.  This, for example - a compulsory purchase proposition - would rule out the other sorts of possibilities like a land swap.  Haut de la Garenne?  Possible.  I am sorry, if we agree to a compulsory purchase no other ideas will be able to be considered.  I will not be supporting this proposition.

What we have in the debate about Plémont is a debate about conflicting values, where there is no right or wrong answer, and no calculus of decision making which will make the situation easy. That is probably why it has been the subject of endless delays, meetings, active discussions, and all the paraphernalia of failure - what politicians are good at, like Jim Hacker in Yes Minister - "lots of activity but no actual achievement". One way or another, we do need a decision to be made - and acted upon - rather than substitutes for action which we have seen so often over the last 6 years. If I can end with another quote from Richard Holloway:

In life we are in the business of making trade-offs between conflicting goods and evils, and there is no infallible measuring system for weighing these values against each other. That is why we often reach situations where further reflective deliberation gets us no further and we have no choice but to act.  I am reminded of Denis Healey's statement that in politics one never reaches conclusions, but one must make decisions.

Making Airwaves

In the time of Jubilee celebrations, you probably remember the movie hit a year or two ago - "The King's Speech", starring Colin Firth about George VI and his speech therapist Lionel Logue.

I did a blog posting on that here:
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/lionel-logue-and-kings-speech.html

But this is something you may not have known. In 1940, Queen Elizabeth, then just Princess Elizabeth, also made a Radio broadcast - and the details are given here, from the BBC Handbook of 1941:

Princess Elizabeth

The most notable day in the year's broadcasts to children was Sunday, 13 October [1940], when Princess Elizabeth broadcast a message in the Children's Hour to children of the Empire. This was Her Royal Highness's first broadcast.

Princess Margaret, who was at her sister's side while she was speaking, also made her maiden speech over the air by bidding their listeners good-night.

The speech was recorded for inclusion that same evening in the first of the new weekly programmes for children evacuated to Canada and the U.S.A.

Look East

A poem of memories, some bittersweet...

Look East    
A moonscape of rocks, just as in memory;
And as if yesterday, I walk along the jetty,
Looking back towards the car. That I recall
So well; facing the bitter cold wind that Fall,
While you watched from the car, smiling eyes;
The wind is strong today, a lament of sighs,
As it whistles over the sea wall. No feeling:
That was my concern, was fading a healing?
Or a loss, the ghosts of past just vanish away,
Like a sea mist, beneath the hot sun of midday?
But it was not so: And indeed, I'm glad I came,
Because there is joy in knowing I am still lame;
Tears of joy and sadness, falling down my cheek,
For I still miss you, I still watch out and seek;
And I munch the hot dog, warm and tasty,
We loved to eat those here, you and me:
Came to watch tidal flow on Eastern shore;
And memory returns, like opening of a door:
Dog walkers upon the sand, of tide and place;
This was our special time, our private space,
But cut short all too soon, on every day;
I can visit the past, but I cannot yet stay;
Happiness comes this way, and so I long
To watch distant memories now so strong;
That's how it was, so fierce and true:
And not a moment do I rue.

The Modern Prodigal

Did you hear the story about two brothers?

Once upon a time there were two brothers. One stayed at home, and got on with mundane tasks, scrutinising his father's accounts, but the other was a somewhat flashy individual who wanted to make a name for himself in the world. He asked to take over the running of his father's business, and his father, let him take charge of the accounts. But he was wild and full of the excesses of youth, and some of the servants who worked for the business didn't like the way he treated them, as hired servants, not worthy of respect.

One left abruptly, saying that he was fed up with being hectored and bullied. Another servant, he said was inept at book keeping, and really incompetent. He said this so that when the servant left, he would be in the right, and the servant would not be able to seek compensation. But the other brother was unhappy with the way the younger brother was handling the servants, so he called in a Quaestor to look into the whole sorry mess and report. The Quaestor said that the younger brother had been a bit of a bully, and had wronged one servant by making him our to be incompetent.

Now the younger brother saw that he couldn't carry on the way he had as if nothing had happened, so he set off for home. When he was far off, his father came out to meet him, and greeted him.

And he said to his father, "Father, I am sorry, I have acted badly, I have bullied people, and I have done wrong, and I admit my mistakes. I have learned my lesson. Take pity on me."

Or he would have done, if it was the parable of the prodigal son. But this is the twenty-first century, and modern prodigals aren't quite as contrite. Here's the modern version:

And he said to his father, "Father, I have been misunderstood, and all I ever wanted to do was save money. And I will be vindicated in my decisions in the end. And please don't listen to the Quaestor, because he doesn't understand the difference between challenging servants robustly and bullying. And I've really done nothing wrong, and have no reason to apologise to anyone or say sorry."

And the father said, "Well, everyone is human. And you've been very stressed. Maybe all you need is more quiet talks with me, and better management of your workload."

Because that's how the Prodigal Son is welcomed home nowadays.

Take any card

Probably the most clichéd of card tricks is the one where the magician asks a member of the audience to "pick any card". It's called forcing a card, making the poor sucker take the card the magician wants them to take. I felt something similar was going on when I chanced to get a glimpse of the Jersey Annual Social Survey.

How it works is this: instead of presenting discrete options, you present paired options, so that there is an inbuilt degree of bias in the question; it assumes the result has to be either / or. Here is an example:

Suppose the government had to choose between increasing taxes and spending more on services, or decreasing taxes and spending less on services, which one should you think it should choose?

- reduce taxes and spend less on health, education and social benefits
-  keep taxes and spending on these services at the same level as now
- increase taxes and spend more on health, education and social benefits


Or perhaps - apply something like John Seddon's Systems Thinking to improve the efficiency of public services without having to make such choices, and looking for ways to get the trading local companies who effectively do not pay tax on profits on an even footing with those who do. But these aren't options we are given, and it is unlikely that many local politicians have ever read "Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: Case Studies: Delivering Public Services that Work (Volume 1)".  These are case studies of public sectors which have been turned around to provide more with less staff. It can be done, but this is not one of the options given in the survey.

And take immigration. One question asks about how concerned you are about immigration - very, fairly, not very, not at all. But the next brings back the paired options once more - choose (for each option) between very acceptable, fairly acceptable, not very acceptable, not at all acceptable.

How acceptable is future immigration to Jersey if it...

- keeps taxes for individuals as low as possible
- helps to maintain businesses and job opportunities
- makes sure we have enough workers to support the ageing population
- means our pensionable age can be kept as low as possible
- leads to better public services such as education and health


If the section on taxes and spending showed some bias, here is naked bias. Those are leading choices, almost designed to bias the recipient into giving the answer than immigration is, after all, acceptable. Who wouldn't want lower taxes, more job opportunities, better public services? But by linking these in a paired option with immigration, the survey is playing the forced card - we are back in magician territory again.

Of course this is nothing new - the same design faults were a major flaw in the Imagine Jersey forums some years ago. But it is rather disquieting to learn that nothing seems to have been learned from that except to follow the same pattern. What it does NOT do is to ask the following questions (which are assumed):

Do you think it is likely that inward migration can provide enough extra taxation to keep taxes low?
Do you think that inward migration improves job opportunities?
Do you think that inward migration provides enough workers to support the ageing population, or more aged people later on (and more pension demands)?
Do you think inward migration gives us more money for better public services, or are the migrants create an extra demand on schools and the hospital?

When we ask these questions, we can see core assumptions and biases made by the survey. Of course it could be answered that there is the option of giving "not at all acceptable" in response to the questions it asked, but the way that they are phrased, the unintentional consequences of each choice is hidden.

For instance, we could see that inward migration may lead to a vicious spiral needing more migration as the migrants themselves age and add to the demands on health services and pensions. That's not considered, or even placed in front of the average individual answering the question. Yet it is a perfectly obvious thing not to overlook - migrants, after all, don't stay preserved in amber at the same age they arrive in the Island. They age. They will be pensioners themselves. They will be an ageing population.

Is this a fair survey? It seems very close to the specimen survey given by Sir Humphrey Appleby in "Yes Minister". Part of that will depend on whether all the questions are published as well, so that the bias is apparent to any reader of the results. But even that is not enough - by using paired options, and by neglecting the possibility that those options might not be paired, the survey is actually excluding what people might think. There is a comment box, however, and I suggest it is used to note that.

Sir Humphrey: "You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Oh...well, I suppose I might be."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes or no?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one."

Then and Now

Back to more usually blogging tomorrow, in the meantime, for today, a Jubilee themed poem...


Then and Now
 
The rain is beating steady, down
But within the Abbey, all is fine
The Queen in her Coronation gown
With coronet, jewels gleam and shine
 
The rain is beating steady, down
Crowds await, the Queen to see
The joy the weather cannot drown
Now sixty-years, the Jubilee
 
The rain is beating steady, down
The young Queen is passing by
This was a day of Oath and Crown
And from the crowd, a cheering cry
 
The rain is beating steady, down
Still they rejoice in London Town

Anthem for the Land

Bank holiday Monday, and something a bit different today, with a more Pagan feel to it.

Anthem for the Land

Sing gods and worlds unseen
Knights noble and fine in green
In ritual, we convene
Goddess victorious
Titania so glorious
Blessed be upon us
Dance on the green
 
Spirit of air, arise
Scatter the seedling skies
And make them fall.
Blowing the fallen sticks
Currents as deep as Styx
Herein the hopes we fix
Dance on the green
 
Sing lays of ancient lore
Witch song as downwards pour
Here comes the rain
Keeping the Rede and laws
Never meddle without cause
Ritual with heart and voice
Dance on the green
 
From elemental foe
Deadly winds that blow
Spell out a magic screen
Outward the arms extend,
In enchantment, defend
All whom we call our friend
Dance on the green

 

Hymns and Messages

I've been looking at different kinds of hymns, and how they function; it is possible, I think, to provide a taxonomy of hymns, in which a function analysis can tell you about the writers, the audience who sing them, and the kind of society in which they took root.

I'll start with Bishop William How's hymn. Bishop How (1823-1897) is a good example of a typical Victorian hymn. Victorian hymns like this are packed with New Testament imagery. This is a hymn about death, but it is also a hymn which tells you about Jesus, drawing upon images such as captain, and the whole notion of a fight to be fought, a race to be one; it is a call to arms, like "Onward Christian Soldiers". This is a hymn of Empire, calling the singers to strive to be good, and so earn the crown. It's the kind of hymn that helps people to buy into the idea of a society

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
who thee by faith before the world confessed,
thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might;
thou Lord, their captain in the well-fought fight;
thou in the darkness drear, their one true light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

This becomes even more pronounced as the verses progress, where the struggle is linked to warfare, and news of distant triumph, and it is a call to be part of this Empire "from earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast", to think of yourself as part of a "blest communion"; religious piety is linked to belonging.

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O may thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
and win with them the victor's crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Encapsulating Christian theology - Jesus crucified, died to save us all - is also something we find in Cecil Frances Alexander, the wife of the Bishop of Derry, and in this late Victorian hymn there is a call to morality, to be good. This is the reason why Jesus died, so that we might be good, and go to heaven. She doesn't say as much, but there's left the idea that if you aren't good, you won't (and probably go to hell). In its way it is a carrot and stick approach, in which the next life is there as a reward, as much as the victor's crown, and pearly gates of "For All the Saints".

There is a green hill far away,
outside a city wall,
where our dear Lord was crucified
who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell,
what pains he had to bear,
but we believe it was for us
he hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven,
he died to make us good,
that we might go at last to heaven,
saved by his precious blood.

But of course, being good, as another of Mrs Alexander's hymns reminds us, is also about knowing your place

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

It is no wonder that Karl Marx was totally revolved by this kind of piety, which he saw as using the promise of a reward in heaven as a means of keeping people in their place in this life; suffering is the path to heaven, and if the poor suffer, great must be their reward. Indeed, it is hard to read some of these hymns, and listen to the preaching and think otherwise - Christian children all must be - mild, obedient, just like he". What is happening is that Victorian culture is being given a Christian justification; it is not a baptism of Victorian values by Christianity, but an adaptation of Christian values to Victorian society. And, of course, a society which had lived with the notion of slavery as ordered by God for many years was quite able to live with the notion of rich and poor being ordered by God. This lingers even today, with a Christianity that becomes bound up with a retreat to personal piety, and leaves social justice on one side, is obsessed with matters sexual (women priests, gay marriage) but virtually ignores the call for social justice.

Which brings us neatly to a modern hymn writer, Graham Kendrick. Here is a subtle change of emphasis. The Victorian hymn tells us what to do, tells us how to feel. But the modern hymn is an expression of feeling that we make our own by singing; it is like a musical creed, but as much concerned with what we feel and how that guides our actions, as giving us theology.

All I once held dear, built my life upon
All this world reveres, and wars to own
All I once thought gain I have counted loss
Spent and worthless now, compared to this

Knowing you, Jesus
Knowing you, there is no greater thing
You're my all, you're the best
You're my joy, my righteousness
And I love you, Lord

Paul Heelas in his study on "New Age Spirituality" refers to this change, which largely happens post-war, as a "subjective turn" from religion to spirituality. There has been a turning away from objective and external roles and "towards a life lived by reference to one's own subjective experiences". This they term a "holistic milieu". It's the same thing that one finds in modern Yoga, Buddhism, aromatherapy, homeopathy, reiki  and circle dancing, but in Kendrick's work, we see its Christian expression. That's not to denigrate it; it is a significant advance from Victorian hymns, and tonally very different. It's not just that Victorian hymns are almost written to be loud, congregational, with the organ in full volume, where these are soft, gentle, almost hymns for a guitar or piano; the difference between the external and internal goes deeper than that.

Now my heart's desire is to know you more
To be found in you and known as yours
To possess by faith what I could not earn
All-surpassing gift of righteousness

Oh, to know the power of your risen life
And to know You in Your sufferings
To become like you in your death, my Lord
So with you to live and never die

It is interesting to see how the notion of "heaven" has receded and is replaced by "never die", and there is here an idea that faith is both something unearned, and a matter of relationship at its heart; it is not about knowing things, but knowing a person. This difference is also apparent in his hymn "First Light". This is, at first sight, a much more "external" song; it doesn't present itself initially as an expression of feeling, and yet it draws the singer into its meaning. It's a much more subtle approach to the Victorian ones, and it is tied in with images of the living world - the sun, new shoots, springtime, trees. Unlike "All Things Bright and Beautiful", this is not a Paley's Watchmaker account of creation, but of creation as a dynamic unfolding of the potential that is hidden there; in a way, it is drawing upon both the modern approach to spirituality - the hidden self, the awakening, awareness - and evolution - this is not creation laid out, but creation unfolding. In "All Creatures", everything has a place in the world; here, everything is in flux:

First light is upon our faces
First light of the morning sun
First sight of a new creation
First hour of the age to come

New life from the earth is waking
First shoots of the second birth
First bloom of an endless springtime
First bud of the tree of life

And unlike Mrs Alexander's hymn, there's not the "everyone know their place", but the whole breaking open of the living world is tied in with the theme of justice. Light is shining into the darker corners of society.

First rays of the sun of justice
First note of the freedom song
First breath of the coming spirit
First shout from the conquered tomb

First light is the Father's glory
First light is the risen one
First born over all creation
We greet the unconquered son

And finally, instead of a moral of "be good, go to heaven", there's an idea of "new creation" starting, and old orders breaking up. One might always say that this is a critique, albeit oblique, on the Victorian hymns, the "winter's breath" trying to preserve a fixed and rigid order. It's not anarchy, it is not socialism, but it is definitely a very "different drum" that is beating in hymns like these, and one that reflects much more the society in which we live today.

First sound of a sacred rhythm
First beat of a different drum
First step of a dance with heaven
First joy of the age to come

Last sigh of an age that's passing
Last chill of a winters breath
Last night of the king of terrors
Last night of the sting of death

First light is the Father's glory
First light is the risen Son
The First and Last of all things
Jesus has risen from the tomb

Three Crowns

Three Crowns
 
Once there were in Saxon times, three crowns,
The sea came in, took coast and so one drowns;
Vikings landed, and there defeat, another lost,
Gold melted down, so precious, such a cost;
But one remained, hidden, buried deep, they say,
And while it stays, it guards the land this day,
Along the wind-swept dunes, beneath the sand;
Now Kings and Queens of England rule the land,
And Coronation ceremony is both a solemn time,
And also now for celebration, when bells chime;
But they will never wear the last of crowns at all,
That which keeps safe the land, prevents its fall;
Bound up in ancient magic, art so finely wrought,
Now lost in the mist of the past, and never sought,
Save with guardians of the past, their secret keeps,
Along the coastal flats, where couch grass sweeps:
The distant sea upon the rocks, waves on the shore,
And the last of Saxon Crowns, of ancient lore.
 
(inspired by M.R. James, A Warning to the Curious)

St Brelade Country Fete

What are you doing for the Queen's Jubilee? In St Brelade, Jersey, I'm going to head off on Sunday to Reg's Garden. It's a great garden to visit anytime, but this day it is going to be a hive of activity. Why not come along too? And it raises money for three local charities, as well.

St Brelade Country Fete

Entry to the fete is FREE

Two days to go to what will be the largest event the Parish of St Brelade has been involved in since the days of the fetes held around St Aubin's harbour.

The main idea of holding the fete in Reg's Garden, was to be nearer to the more populated area of the parish and of course to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee year. The garden is only half a mile from Red Houses.Easy walking distance and pavements all the way.

The fete will be open from 11am till 7.30 pm and all car parking will be in the field opposite Silver Springs, supervised by the ATC and the St Brelade Honorary Police

The fete is aimed at the family, with field sports such as Tug o' War, Egg and Spoon and Sack racing.

The lucky dip will be topped up with a hundred 'Dips' during the day, and children will be able to feed the fish.

The twenty foot high inflatable slid and bouncy castles will be a huge attraction and as will listening to and watching the performers on the stage, some may be as young as Alfie, a ten year old who writes and sings to his own guitar, and his fans.

"St Brelade Youth Project entertainers for St Brelade Fete"' will In most cases, be performing on the stage for the first time.

Official opening will performed by Ian Gorst, the Chief Minister and Miss St Brelade, at 12.30.

While being entertained for seven hours with jazz, folk music and beautiful singing, you can be satisfying your taste buds from the various stalls with hot and cold food.

In an adjoining field there will be car-boot and craft stalls.

To be a bit naughty, there will be stocks to throw wet sponges at, preferably while your favourite politician has his/her's head stuck in it.

The three main recipients of any funds made on the day will be:

St Brelade Youth Club,
Maision St Brelade
Les Amis.

Open Government

Bernard Woolley: "Well, yes, Sir...I mean, it [open government] is the Minister's policy after all."
Sir Arnold: "My dear boy, it is a contradiction in terms: you can be open or you can have government."
(Yes Minister)

The vote for an "Open ballot for Ministers and Chairmen" went through the States yesterday, and it was voted in by 27 votes to 18, with one abstention.

The comment by PPC about delaying it to be part of a larger review didn't really stack up, expecially as that was the reason given back in November last year - said review is still being prepared, no doubt, but it's taking its time. It's not even been tabled for debate, so there is no deadline, and consequently, plenty of opportunity for it to drift along. Fortunately the Chairman of PPC, Simon Crowcroft, seems to have realised this, and there was no attempt to vote for a further delay.

It's like one of those open votes in the House of Commons - the kind of vote which doesn't divide up on Party Political Lines. Of course there are no parties in Jersey, but there's a spectrum from left to right, and anyone looking at votes on certain matters can virtually predict the outcome. So it was good to see two establishment figures, along with the Chief Minister, voting in favour:

Senator Paul Francis Routier M.B.E. Pour
Senator Philip Francis Cyril Ozouf Pour

Meanwhile, it wasn't perhaps surprising that Senators Le Marquand and Bailhache voted against. Senator Bailhache came out with a terrible argument - people cannot vote without fear or favour if it is an open ballot. Actually, I think that's precisely what they can do.

Chancellor: Jim, we're on the same side, aren't we?
Jim Hacker: Yes.
Chancellor: Good. I'm going to win and I never forgive people who let me down.
Jim Hacker: I can't make my support too public.
Chancellor: It doesn't have to be public.

It frees them from the underhand, behind the scenes, mixture of cajoling and implied threats - "you'll scratch my back" - that otherwise will take place. Does Senator Bailhache really expect us to believe that it doesn't go on? It stops politicians thinking - "it will be to my advantage to vote for X, and besides - no one will ever know!". Instead, as the voting is in the public gaze, everyone will know, and the behind the scenes wheeling and dealing may still go on, but that kind of lobbying will not have quite the same effect.

Meanwhile, the "old guard" of Constables came out against it, no surprises there:

Connétable John Le Sueur Gallichan Contre
Connétable Leonard Norman Contre
Connétable John Martin Refault Contre
Connétable Juliette Gallichan Contre
Connétable Philip John Rondel Contre

Nor was it surprising that James Baker (fast being seen as a lap-dog of Sir Philip Bailhache) or Kristina Moore or Sean Power came out against it. But what was surprising perhaps was Deputies Jackie Hilton and Deputy Carolyn Labey. What were their reasons? It will be interesting to find out when Hansard is published.

There have been some interesting changes of voting patterns:

The following voted for "Chief Minister: Election by an Open Ballot" but against "Open ballot for Ministers and Chairmen"

Deputy Jacqueline Ann Hilton

The following voted against "Chief Minister: Election by an Open Ballot" but for "Open ballot for Ministers and Chairmen"

Senator Paul Francis Routier M.B.E.
Senator Philip Francis Cyril Ozouf
Senator Sarah Craig Ferguson
Senator Alan John Henry Maclean
Deputy John Alexander Nicholas Le Fondré

Shiro

Here is some more English work from Annie Parmeter, written when she was 12 at Moorestown College, St Peter.  Here is her retelling of a Japanese folk tale. There are many tellings of this story, often with different endings. Folktales keep a basic form, but often change over time in the way they are told, depending on who tells them, and what the speaker intends to convey.  It is interesting that the form of the Shiro tale remains very constant - except for the ending, which changes. In some versions, the greedy neighbour and his wife end up in prison, and don't repent. In one version, the trees are cherry trees, and their blossoming is the end of the story.   Here are a few of the different endings.

(1) The greedy man asked the important man to forgive him for what he had done. They slowly changed their ways. They became gentle and good friends. On every festival all four went to the place where Shiro was buried. They prayed and offered mochi-cakes, so that he should live on in peace. For the rest of their days, they were very kind to each other and to the people of the village. All ended well.

(2) The ashes were blown into the Daimio's eyes. This made him very angry, and he ordered his retainers to arrest the false Hana-Saka-Jijii at once and put him in prison for an impostor. From this imprisonment the wicked old man was never freed. Thus did he meet with punishment at last for all his evil doings.

(3) The old man climbed up a dead tree and flung a handful of ashes at a branch. There was not a single blossom, though. Instead the ashes went straight into the eyes of the lord and his retainers, which produced tears instead of petals. The Lord was extremely angry. His men pulled the old man from the tree, and scolded him severely. The greedy old man apologized over and over again, and finally they let him go home.

(4) The cherry tree was instantly covered in blossoms. With the thought of his beloved Shiro in his heart, he climbed another dead tree and scattered ash. As it too bloomed he felt his sadness lift.  The miracle of the man who made dead trees bloom soon became known all across Japan. The kind old man was named "Grandfather Cherry-Blossom" and given great honor throughout the country.

It is interesting to see how the story changes - is it a story which ends with punishment and retribution, or rehabilitation and penitence? The existence of a version which just ends with the blossoming caused by the ash suggests that the story originally ended there, and that it was extended in two different ways by later tellers of the tale who wanted to elaborate on what happened to the greedy neighbour. 

Shiro, by the way, means white - the colour of the dog.

Shiro: A Folk Tale retold by Annie Parmeter

A farmer found a thin white dog and he took it home and cared for it. One day, when the old man was digging in the field, the dog, named Shiro, suddenly began to dig, and after a short while a fountain of gold coins poured out of the hole.
 
The greedy next-door neighbour saw this, and asked if he could borrow the dog for a day. As soon as the old man was out of sight, the neighbour started to be cruel to the dog because it was too frightened to show him where the gold was. The greedy man was waving his spade about; he struck something hard in the soil and dug it up, but it was only rags, logs and broken tiles. The man was furious and hit Shiro with the spade. His master heard his whine and took him home, but Shiro died that evening.
 
The old couple planted a pine tree by Shiro's grave. The tree grew to 100 feet in a month because Shiro's spirit had entered the tree and made it grow. The old man chopped down the tree and made a beautiful wooden mortar out of part of it. When the old man and his wife used it, the rice grains turned to gold.
 
Again the neighbour asked the couple to lend him something. This time it was the mortar. But the rice did not turn into gold, so the neighbour threw it in the fire; when the old man came to collect it, he was told that it had fallen apart and been burned on the fire, but the ashes were still there. So the old man took home the ashes and, on the way home, some of the ash was caught by the wind and it settled on the trees and turned into flowers and leaves.
 
Just then the Lord of the Province happened to be coming down the road, and saw what had happened. He gave the old man a huge sack of gold. The greedy neighbour had seen this and collected the remaining ashes taken from the fire and came up to the Lord and said that he, too, could make the trees bloom even though it was winter; and began to throw the ash about. But it went into the eyes of the Lord and his servants and the Lord was livid and made the greedy man confess to all he had done, and he was penitent.
 
Every festival or anniversary, the reformed neighbour and his wife went with the old couple to the temple where they offered prays and offerings for the everlasting peace of Shiro's spirit.

Arise Jim Hacker

Looking at the questions asked in the States today, I see that Jeremy Macon asked a question about the terms of reference for the committee of Inquiry into the historic child abuse. As is now known, especially from leaked segments online, this has been completed by VERITAS for some time, and nothing has yet been done about it:

Will the Chief Minister advise when the Terms of Reference of the Committee of Inquiry into historic child abuse will be lodged for consideration by the Assembly and advise what impediments, if any, there have been?  Can the Chief Minister explain what consultation, if any, there has been with interested groups, such as the Jersey Care Leavers Association, regarding the formulation of the Terms of Reference of the Committee of Inquiry into Historic Child Abuse?

The reply by Chief Minister Ian Gorst was vague in the extreme:

I have undertaken to submit the Terms of Reference for the Committee of Inquiry into the Historic Childcare Abuse to the States. There is a clear commitment for a Committee of Inquiry to provide help with closure of this difficult and long- running period in the Island's history. It has been important to develop clear terms of reference that will be effective and provide help with closure, but not subjecting witnesses to the potential of undue cross examination in a Committee of Inquiry which would result in all parties having to receive legal representation. This has required careful consideration of the original terms of reference before being submitted to the States for approval.

In the light of requests I will be arranging to brief the Jersey Careleavers' Association and other interested parties on the final terms of reference and I will consider any feedback from those groups before submitting them to the Assembly for approval. This consultation will inevitably delay the date of a States debate.

In other words, the Terms of Reference submitted by VERITAS don't quite meet what is required, so more "expert advice" is required to tweak those, and I believe that Andrew Williamson has been brought on board to do this. No consultation is being made with the Jersey Careleavers Association during the formulation of the final terms of reference, but "feedback" will be "considered" after they are complete.

I'm afraid I don't have any confidence that the final terms of reference will actually do any good, once they have been altered in this way. It seems to be the old story of Yes Minister again. In the episode "The Greasy Pole", there is a section on "How to discredit an unwelcome report" which says "You are waiting for the results of a wider and more detailed report which is still in preparation. (If there isn't one, commission it; this gives you even more time)." This is obviously what is really meant by "careful consideration". Senator Gorst is obviously finding it a slippery business at the top of the Greasy Pole.

Much the same comes with the question about the "restructuring of the public sector". Remember that mantra that Ministerial government would lead to larger and more "joined up" departments, something that has been singularly lacking. Gerard Baudains has asked: "Further to the answer given to my written question of 15th May 2012 regarding the restructuring of the public sector, could the Chief Minister further advise who is presently carrying out this work and give details of progress to date?"

The Chief Minister seems to have been briefed by Sir Humphrey Appleby on this one:

The work on Public Sector Reform is being led jointly by the Council of Ministers and Corporate Management Board and is being resourced within the Chief Ministers department. It is still early in the programme but, to date, some high level scoping work has been developed and an engagement programme drafted for approval by the Council of Ministers with the aim of starting a dialogue with all interested parties but especially our staff, States Members and the Public.

Just look at the vague terms - "still early in the programme", but we do have "high level scoping work" (what in heaven's name does that mean?) and an "engagement programme" (another piece of nonsense which tells us absolutely nothing). Unhappily this is just "with the aim of starting a dialogue".

George Orwell wrote on bad political language, and what he says can be seen extremely clearly in the reply given by Senator Gorst:

Two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing

What we can expect from Senator Gorst is that "it is intended that a States Members briefing will take place in the next two months." - note the phrase "it is intended". I'm surprised he didn't come out with "Government is a complex business. So many people have to have their say. These things take time. Rome wasn't built in a day.".

Clearly, the Spirit of Jim Hacker from Yes Prime Minister is alive and well - and has possessed our Chief Minister. Perhaps the Dean can perform an exorcism?

It is not surprising then, that Senator Gorst is becoming as wishy-washy as his predecessor Terry le Sueur. He is supporting Senator Philip Ozouf - "everyone makes mistakes. I want to end the blame culture that exists" but also wants to have it both ways: "I do not condone bullying'. Training will be given to avoid ministers putting officers under undue pressure."

Haven't we been here before? I have a feeling of extreme déjà vue? Wasn't it Terry Le Sueur who did something like that to try and rescue Terry Le Main? As Ben Queree memorably wrote in the JEP:

And it's probably good to know too that 'essentially fine' means that the rules were broken, but that it doesn't really matter - that the whole thing can be dealt with by a little 'training and education'. Try that one out next time you get a parking fine. Exactly what kind of 'training and education' Chief Minister Terry Le Sueur has in mind for his erstwhile Housing Minister Terry Le Main was left tantalisingly hanging in the report, released last week, into the whole sordid mess.

This could be brought up to date with just a few changes:

"And it's probably good to know too that 'essentially fine' means that the rules were broken, but that it doesn't really matter - that the whole thing can be dealt with by a little 'training and education'. Exactly what kind of 'training and education' Chief Minister Ian Gorst has in mind for his erstwhile Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf was left tantalisingly hanging in the air."

I can see a polarised States developing, just as it did under Terry Le Sueur, because it is clear that alignments are slotting into place once more between "us" and "them". The rot set in with the electoral commission, which was fatally compromised by putting it in the hands of States members who then decided who would be the non-States members.

And finally, Philip Ozouf has just tweeted "Powerful maiden speech by Deputy James Baker on what we should be focusing on in the States: economy, jobs & efficiency".

Now we know why Deputy Baker has had such long periods of absence from the States Chamber; he's been busy working on his speech. It's a hard life, being a politician!

An Eye on the States

More Hansard is now online, and this gives me the opportunity to look at the Draft Connétable (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Jersey) Law.

What this law set out to do was to repeal the policing functions of the Connétables, and to empower a Procureur du Bien Public to deputise for a Connétable in certain circumstances, such as if the Connétable was incapacitated with a long term illness (as happened in Grouville), "to remove certain other functions from the Connétables and to make ancillary and consequential amendments"

It's curious that apart from the Constable of St John, the only other members to vote against it were the left-leaning members of the Chamber, the very people one might expect to welcome a reduction in the powers of the Constable. Those voting against the motion were:

Connétable of St. John
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)
Deputy M. Tadier (B)
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)

The Constable of Trinity, John Gallichan, who is also Chairman, Comité des Connétables, brought the proposition. He noted that in 1998, the Defence Committee (now incorporated in Home Affairs) brought a proposition which approved the following proposition arising from a working party report made in 1996:

- Establishing by law the office of Chef de Police for each Parish to have charge of Honorary Police within the Parish
- The Connétables ceasing cease to fulfil an operational policing role but retain overall responsibility for the effective and efficient policing of their Parish
- the merging of the Centeniers Association and the Association of Vingteniers and Constables Officers
-  that the senior Procureur du Bien Public in the Parish should be empowered by law to deputise for the Connétable in the event of the latter's
incapacity or absence from the Island.

But while the proposition was made, no legislation has taken place. In the meantime, the Constables have deliberately chosen not to undertake any actual operational policing, in line with the spirit of the proposition.

The Comité des Connétables has repeatedly inquired when legislation could be approved to complete the States decision, for example, to empower the senior Procureur du Bien Public to act in the Connétables' absence. But this can only be done if the Connétables operational policing powers are removed.

He noted that this was also tied in with the position of the Constables in the States:

Meanwhile we have continued to debate the composition of this Assembly and whether the Connétables should remain in the States. The rationale which came out of Clothier 1 for the Connétables to relinquish operational policing is to remove the political policemen so that the States is a true democracy. Thus, if the States decide that the Connétables should no longer be Members of the Assembly then there is no reason to remove the operational policing powers.

In the debate which followed, some pertinent points were raised, as well as some extraordinary ones. I am not going to look at every speech, but I'm going to pick a few of the highlights which bear consideration.

The Constable of St John, Phil Rondel, said that "my biggest concern is that we are seeing the creep from the Parishes to the centre. I will name just a few, not in any particular order...     We have seen a big move to the Island-wide rating system plus the electoral system and obviously welfare having now been administered by the centre from Social Security. The latter is not working as well as it is supposed to and I have seen people in St. John's sleeping rough in the bus shelter through lack of support from Social Security and that really worries me."

I did wonder why, if he is a Constable, who is also a States Member, he didn't tell us what he had done about this - whom he had contacted. Had he been in touch with Social Security? Had he spoken to Senator Le Gresley, the Minister? It seems curious to highlight a deficiency of income support, and get be an elected States member and do nothing about it. Or perhaps he did, and is too modest to mention that? And if he did, what was the result? This does seem to be raising an issue along the way which is important, but should have been dealt with elsewhere, perhaps raising the matter in question time, not as an example of "creep from Parishes to the centre".

He sees the removal of the Policing powers as one step closer to removing the Constables from the States, but he is pretty well the only one who views it that way:

There is little left under direct Parish control; probably dog licences and Parish Rates Committee and several other small areas which at the moment do not come under the centre. To go down the road of removing further powers of the Constable will open the door for the Parish system to be moved to the centre at the stroke of a pen or more likely the press of a button. At a time when some Members in this Chamber would like to see the Constables out of the States, this law and adopting it today is playing straight into their hands.

Sarah Ferguson seems to have been the only member who has consulted with Parishioners on the matter, and thought this was appropriate to voice their concerns. She did vote for the proposition, nevertheless, with regard to consultation, perhaps this should have been wider. I can remember one occasion only when a former Constable asked me for an opinion in response to a question, because - as he said - Constables should consult Parishioners on matters like that. The fact of an election in the offing may well have meant that "consultation" suddenly went down well with the electorate!

I have received a number of representations from the public regarding this proposition. I quote from the messages I have received. "Given that the office of Chef de Police is now firmly established and it is proposed that the Chef relinquishes certain duties, will the Connétables be allocating part of their salaries to the Chefs in light of their reduced responsibilities?" "Have the Connétables consulted with their parishioners regarding this proposition?" This particular individual says that: "My understanding is that the Chefs and Procureurs have been consulted but not the Parish". There was a duty of Connétables - I do not know whether it was ever written and it has been neglected of late - but they have the power to call Parish Assemblies to discuss significant matters so that they know the thoughts of their parishioners when they come in to the States and why have they not been doing this?

Montfort Tadier gave a very rambling speech, which digressed onto all kinds of subject which where nothing to do with subject to hand. He should perhaps try honing his skills by listening to "Just A Minute", where deviation from the subject matter loses you points. He made a couple of interesting points though. Firstly, he wondered if it was just Phil Rondel among the Constables who disagreed with the  Comité des Connétables on this, and thought it would be useful to know "how many of the Constables support this proposition?" He did also address the parishioner whose concerns were raised by Sarah Ferguson:

The point, of course, about salaries is a spurious one because the Connétables are not remunerated for their Parish duties. It is an honorary position; they get remunerated for their position in the States which is quite right. Any States Member should be paid for their job as a States Member; that is my opinion. I do not think we are delegating any of the States duties to a Chef de Police or to a Procureur du Bien Public and I would be very surprised in fact if those in those positions were asking to be remunerated. Certainly that would be a departure from Parish traditions.

And thirdly, he asked a question about something which did not seem explicit in the legislation:

My question is will it still be possible for a Constable to carry a warrant card if we are removing the notional powers? This is where I disagree in principle with 1.3. The Constable of St. Mary is grimacing but yesterday one of the Articles that was passed was to do with impersonating a police officer. Now, if one is not a police officer, one has had all one's power removed, what possible use can one have for carrying a warrant card which identifies one as an Honorary Police Officer?

But along the way, there seemed a misunderstanding of the training received by Honorary Police, and a diversion into how long one might expect to wait at a Parish Hall inquiry - he suggested it could often be as much as three hours, and whether on the spot fines might be better; none of that had much relevance to the subject under debate. When he did return to that, he thought it should be rejected because it didn't go far enough - the Constables should not be members of the States, so there is no need for them to lose policing powers:

The reason I am saying this is because one of the reasons one might want to reject this proposition is that it does not go far enough. My point is that at the moment I am hesitating because I am thinking, is it worth supporting this proposition on the basis that it is a step in the right direction, it is some kind of slow evolution or is it worth rejecting because it does not do the whole job?

On the matter of the warrant card, Tim Le Cocq, the Attorney General, gave this legal advice in reply to Deputy Tadier:

In my view, the existence of a warrant card, as opposed to some other form of identification, is a document which is capable of saying that the person holding it is able to exercise policing powers. If this legislation is passed, in my view, there should be no warrant cards held by Connétables.

Gerard Baudains raised the point about who would watch the Procureur if the Procureur deputised for the Constable:

I will not go over the meaning of life and the various other. [Laughter] just heard recently. I am generally relaxed about this law. I do, however, have one small concern and that is traditionally the Procureur du Bien Public keeps a watching eye over the Connétables, especially in financial matters. Now if a Connétable was to be indisposed for some time and the senior Procureur was taking over his duties for a considerable period of time, who would be watching the watcher?

In an extraordinary speech, Deputy Mike Higgins argued that he would not vote for the proposition because it was in French and he didn't understand French.  It's amazing he didn't ask Deputy Tadier to translate for him; after all, there is expertise there in the House, and he had ample time to get a translation, if he doesn't trust the notes setting out what the law intends, which are in any case in English. This must be the oddest reason for voting against a proposition that I have seen for a long time.

Not only do we not have marked-up copies of the legislation that is being amended, a number of the laws being amended are written in French; the law of the 1853, 1797, 1864 and so on. I have had a look at these on the Legal Information Board. I have not got a clue what they say. As someone who does not speak French or read French, I have no idea of the consequences of the amendments that we are making and I think it is bad law if States Members are sitting here going through debating things for which they have not got a clue about possible unintended consequences, to quote the Constable of St. Peter. Therefore, I will not be supporting this legislation. If I do not understand its context and what it is about I will not support it.

Geoff Southern thought that the Constables needed more reform, and it didn't go far enough. Quite how some change along the right lines can be "ducking the issue" is another matter. I suspect that Geoff's first suggestion is the real reason, and he also seems unaware of how much reform has taken place behind the scenes.

Given that choice, I am looking at this proposition saying: "Right, I think I will vote against this, because I do not want them to give up their police powers; they can have it as long as they get out of this Chamber." [Laughter] But no, that is not my real reasoning. My real reasoning is that yesterday we wasted an opportunity to have proper reform of the 13 police forces on the Island. Today, equally, we are passing up that chance. This is ducking the issue, I think, and so I will be voting against this the way I voted against the previous proposition because the 2 go together and I cannot support either of them.

Deputy Jackie Hilton of St. Helier asked a very pertinent question about criminal checks. After all, if the Proceurer is able to deputise for the Constable, they should have the same degree of scrutiny applied to their past:

I believe the Constables, when they stand for election, do have a criminal record check. I would like clarification whether that process will continue in the future. I know that they are going to be removed from their policing role but will the criminal record check still take place? Also, in view of the enhanced role of the Senior Procureur, could I know whether the Procureurs at the moment who are in very important public positions - and I think it is important for the public that they know exactly who they are voting into these roles - currently have criminal record checks and if they do not, would the Comité des Connétables or the Parishes consider making this mandatory in the future?

Steve Pallett, Constable of St Brelade thought the time was right to clear a few misconceptions that had been aired about the lack of professionalism of the honorary police. It's not directly relevant to the debate, but worth stating, as I suspect that quite a few people's views (and States members, judging by this debate) are stuck in the past, where an Honorary Police was elected at a Parish Hall, and picked up things as they went along. That is no longer the case.

I have heard a lot mentioned in the last couple of days about the professionalism of the Honorary Police and I have shaken my head time and time again. The fact is all of the Honorary Police are trained. They carry out a foundation course and it is carried out to a high standard. Only one out of I think the last 230 or 240 officers that have come into the Honorary Police Force have not been trained in the foundation course, which is the basic course. I have done it myself. It is a perfect sounding board to get a start in the Honorary Police and to learn how to carry out your duties. That again comes down to what the Honorary Police do. We are not a play police, we are not front line police officers, we carry out more often than not community duties but, yes, we do carry out some duties sometimes in St. Helier and St. Brelade on a Friday night that are a little bit nearer to what the States Police do, but generally speaking we are not front line police. We are not trained to the level that they are and I do not think anybody expects us to be trained to that level. We have a role to play in this Island and I think we carry it out to what I would consider to be a very professional standard.

Senator Ian Le Marquand wanted to just highlight that one over role was removed from the Constable by this proposition:

What Article 1 does is twofold. It firstly removes the operational policing functions as many other Members have said but it does something else; it also removes the role of prosecutor which technically could still remain with the Connétable. What remains is the supervisory role and that is expressly set out in the law. I believe that this creates a situation which parallels the current relationship of the Minister for Home Affairs to the States of Jersey Police and of the Minister for Home Affairs, in particular, to the Chief Officer of Police.

Constable Deidre Mezbourian of St. Lawrence highlighted the operational policing functions, and why they should be removed from the Constables:

I would like to refer Members to is what those powers and duties are. They are listed on page 5 of the proposition and they are keeping the peace; powers of search, examination and investigation; arrest and granting of bail; conducting Parish Hall Inquiries and charging suspected offenders and presenting accused persons before the criminal courts. Clearly, it is inappropriate for a Connétable, as a Member of the States, to have those policing powers. I urge Members to support the proposition to remove those powers today.

Constable Simon Crowcroft of St. Helier rather neatly took Philip Rondels argument - it has worked well for hundreds of years so why change the position of Constables - and inverted it - the role has survived because it has evolved and adapted:

The Constable of St. John said that the Parish system has worked well for hundreds of years and we should not change it and I would simply argue that the reason it has worked well for hundreds of years is because it has changed regularly

He also addressed Sarah Ferguson's concerns, and in doing so, gave an insight into when Parishioners tend to be consulted on these kinds of matters; apparently, it's up to the Constable.

[Senator Ferguson] did make a couple of interesting points. She asked why the Constables had not consulted the parishioners on this matter. It is something which comes up from time to time in the Assembly. The Constables are asked why they have not taken a matter to a Parish Assembly and it is a judgment call for the Constables about whether they feel a matter has generated sufficient concern out there in the public mind to be brought to an Assembly. Perhaps this is something that should have been taken to an Assembly. I hold my hand up on that one because I did not think of doing it.

Meanwhile Deputy Trevor Pitman decided that this was being done just to smooth the way for the Electoral Commission to come up with proposals that retain the Constables in the States, and he voted against it on those grounds. Actually, I think he may be partly right. Both the change in the main Police Law, and the possible changes in the position of Constable may have focused the minds of the Constables that this was something which really could not be left on the shelf for much longer - especially when you consider the delay from 1998 to get anything done! But I don't agree with him that's grounds for not making the change; after all, the reasons in 1998 as as valid as today.

I think the one problem with what is being done, the one real reason this has been brought forward now, is to try and cement the Constables' place in the States before we have the Electoral Commission. That is the real reason that it is being done. So I think Members should probably vote accordingly to that reality.

In summing up, the Constable of Trinity addressed some of the points raised:

Deputy Baudains, on the Procureur du Bien Public: obviously it would then go down to the junior Procureur who would keep an eye on financial matters but I think I should bring this forward.

Deputy Hilton: yes, certainly as Connétables, we would have police checks done and now that the Procureur is an elected position, I would expect that also to be carried out but I will make sure that that does get put into statute, that all Procureurs . it is essential, if you think about it, the Procureur is looking after the finances of the Parish so why should you not have a C.R.O. (Criminal Records Office) check done on the Procureur?

And finally, a wry comment for Deputy Higgins:

For Deputy Higgins, I am sorry he cannot speak French. Maybe he can go to the Alliance Français. They do lessons every Thursday morning.

There's a nice codicil in the statement made by Constable John Gallichan just before the final vote which links it a bit of history - not many speeches go back to June 1495!:

Just before we take the vote, Sir, it seems a lot of work has been done. Could I just thank the Law Officers and the Attorney General for his support throughout and also to say that the Charter of Henry VII in June 1495 reflects the pivotal part played by the Connétables in the Island's democratic institutions for over 500 years. The role has included policing of the Parishes but since the States decision of 1998, the Connétables have not performed this operational and policing role. This is another milestone in the evolution of the honorary service and the role of Connétable and it gives me great pleasure to propose it in Third Reading.

And finally, on another matter - the vote also went through on the non-States members in the Electoral Commission.  The States members are Senator Sir Philip Bailhache, Deputy James Baker and Constable Juliette Gallichan.

Deputy Tadier was told off for saying "we have 3 very strong-willed, strong-minded people ...certainly 2 strong-minded people and one person who, when he does come to work, will do what he is told anyway." Trevor Pitman mentioned the same person: "It has to be seen as an absolute nonsense because, with the best will in the world, we have now got 3 members who... well, I do not know one of the members, because again he is not here and he rarely is here, and that is a fact, and yet he is going to sit on an Electoral Commission."

So who is the guilty party who has stepped into the hallowed shoes of Ben Shenton as the individual who vanishes from the States most often? It must surely be Deputy James Baker by a simple process of elimination - "he" rules out Juliette Gallichan, and "will do what he is told anyway" could never by the wildest stretch of the imagination ever refer to Sir Philip Bailhache.

Reg Langlois is always going on to me about whether States members are worth a salary of over £40,000. Certainly for absentee members, I would have to say that he has a point. Perhaps Sir Philip Bailhache could have a quiet but firm word with the errant member in question and the responsibilities of States members.