JERSEY IS PERFECT - A REBUTTAL TO YANK TROUBLE-MAKER LEAH McGRATH GOODMAN

A guest posting by Jersey resident Sir Hilary James Jon Le Gallais-Ecobichon-Pinochet

Now look here. Americans are trouble-makers - always have been, always will be. You only have to consider when they most unreasonably threw my British ancestors out of their country, ungrateful blighters. Wanted 'independence'! Pah - you would never hear we Jersey elites such as our esteemed Foreign Minister, Sir Philip talking about nonsense like that now, would you? Ridiculous notion.

We ARE British - its just that we top people really don't want to risk the said British ever saying 'enough corruption is enough' and finally interfering with a well merited Turks & Caicos style investigation!

Anyway, after all the nonsense of the past few days I would like to thank the owner of this 'blog' Deputy Trevor Pitman (quite nice chap for a damned Lefty - in fact almost a shame to use our courts to stitch this one up really) for giving me the opportunity to talk to you peasants - sorry, ordinary working people - on the Internet about this awful Leah McGrath Goodman woman.

Seems she has been saying some very untrue things about my- sorry, OUR - Island on the television. So to put Johnny Foreigner straight I'm going to do a short rebuttal using the example of just a handful of key headings such as:

• Yachts
• Champagne lounges
• Secrecy 
• Freedom of speech

Trust me. When I have finished you will know without a shadow of a doubt that Ms McGrath Goodman has a whole raft of misconceptions about how we better people run Jersey and - like they say in that advert - none of them are true. So here we go. Goes without saying, of course, that all of the views expressed here are my own. Well, apart from a few suggested by the Communications Unit to 'sex things up' a bit...

Yachts

Now Ms McGrath Goodman goes on about we in Jersey enjoying yachts, champagne lounges and the like. This first one is very  easy to deal with.  Utter poppycock! I mean, have you ever heard such nonsense? If we wanted yachts here we would probably have built an iconic, world-class Waterfront to moor them next to, wouldn't we? But we haven't.

No, our fine, right-wing  and feudal Establishment Party government has sensibly been very careful to ensure we miss that opportunity completely. I.e by only having a bloody ugly shambles of a half-finished building site with a cinema complex and leisure pool that the taxpayer has to subsidise, and a handful of fast food outlets on it! Oh, and a Carbuncle award-winning sea-front hotel without any balconies. Mmmm, until recently we even also paid the chap charged with developing all of this more than the American President himself just to ensure things all 'went to plan'. 

As for the fact that not so long ago our first Chief Minister was posting back a 'travel blog' as he and his lady wife sailed around the world sunning themselves on their own massive luxury yacht this is just pure coincidence. Look - I haven't got a yacht and I'm loaded thanks to the insider knowledge I picked up when we were setting up LVCR! Sold it to buy a couple of waterfront apartments I rent to Jersey people who can't afford to buy. That's right - doing my bit to help the worse off arf, arf! But that's another story...

The fact is our Council of Ministers DON'T want yachts here. Period. Because yachts might mean tourists and we've been trying to kill off our tourist industry for decades. Yes, we're a proud Right-wing monoculture now and contrary to the spin nothing must distract from us being a whiter-than-white Off-shore finance centre. Like that film 'Highlander' when it comes to industries 'there can be only one' and if it just happens to involve tiny little grey areas like cheating developing countries out of tax they desperately need but were too slow to gather - then that's their fault! This is the gospel of Ozouf and Oxera; and Amen - we're sticking to it, brother!

Champagne lounges

Now this one really does show what a damned sensationalist this American journalist is! Okay, so it is certainly true that throughout the life of the last States Assembly the small bunch of elite politicians who made up what Deputy Mike Higgins (another Lefty trouble-maker) calls the 'Kitchen Cabinet' and their 'advisors' did use to meet and make key policy decisions via their weekly meeting at the Champagne Lounge at the lovely Grand Hotel. I don't deny this at all.

Well, I can't - because Deputy Pitman has told me he used to see them there every week whilst attending the hotel's gym. But the links to what Ms McGrath Goodman is saying are as tenuous as they are coincidental. Yes, this venue is called 'the Champagne Lounge'. Yes it is in a beautiful, luxury hotel where a bottle of wine can cost hundreds of pounds. Yes, alright so these meetings did also only have the inner circle of those politicians at the very apex of power and some 'business people'. But does that mean secrecy or that there was something to hide? 

Let's be practical - you can't have 51 democratically elected representatives of the people (States Members) all crowding in to a meeting in a champagne lounge. Not only would the public start to notice but some of the poorer people who have sadly managed to infiltrate local politics based on hard work, intellect and ability - rather than the traditional way of inheriting loads of cash; or having had an ancestor who once grew a prize-winning cabbage in the Trinity Parish fayre would likely not even be able to afford to buy a drink! Really, we're just thinking of their feelings by this exclusion.

Yes, if pushed I'll concede that some people might find some of this a bit worrying. But let's face facts: in the 21st Century even Lefty scum like Deputy Pitman are sometimes allowed to walk through such establishments to make use of money-making facilities like hotel gyms. We must surely give the appearance of being a democracy? And as for some of the non-political figures at these secret meetings I'm sure people like Mr Rankin Riantz and other 'movers and shakers'  had just popped in for a drink by chance. If they were not to sit down for a chat, a drink and to red biro the paperwork it would surely appear just rude.

Secrecy 

In my opinion this secrecy claim by Ms McGrath Goodman must quite possibly be the silliest and most far-fetched of all. I ask you: is Jersey the sort of place where our government elite abuse the 'justice' system to silence, generally intimidate and if at all possible try and ruin people? Well, yes okay it is. But we do this only for the greater good.

If we didn't who knows what might transpire. Hells bells, we might even find ourselves with a real democracy on our hands! Before long people in the island all might even acquire equally weighted votes to use at elections. Think about it - all Senator Bailhache and his Electoral Commission's efforts in coming up with Option B to take us back to the Dark Ages could be wasted!

Honestly, after hundreds of years of feudalism and a good seven decades of time consuming, co-ordinated oppression involving the law office, the State media and the wealthy one could hardly expect us to risk that type of thing, surely? Does Ms McGrath Goodman really think that having gone to such lengths as to have the local newspaper refuse to allow the democratic movement after the war to promote its manifesto - even as a paid advert; and in tandem with we feudal overlords carrying out character assassinations on every left-wing politician to put his head above the parapet in the years since we could stand for that? Of course not!

Ms McGrath Goodman really needs to take a reality check. It takes a lot of time and effort to create a 'justice' system where only the rich and powerful can hope to obtain justice. Whether this is by means of allowing totally inappropriate, disgraced school teachers happy to look the other way on horrifying child abuse to become Jurats; employing 'independent' lawyers who have actually been working in the system for seven years to review bizarre Attorney General decisions; or even establish 'investigative' journalism of a quality on a par with the Sunday Sport, or the political prejudice of a modern 1930s Volkisher Beobachter.

Even fake letters attacking Left-wing politicians don't just write themselves, you know!

Freedom of speech

Now this final criticism is just too laughable for words. Dear international readers - and potential Off-shore clients - tempted to take Ms McGrath Goodman's concerns seriously here just because of trivialities such as her being an acclaimed and highly respected international journalist and best-selling author. Simply ask yourself these questions: is Jersey the kind of place where we do things like send ten police officers around to illegally raid a politicians' home; even for some strange reason going through a teenage girl's underwear drawer?

Are we the kind of secretive, utterly corrupt jurisdiction that would allow a close friend of a powerful defendant to sit in judgement on their case as a Jurat (local lay judge)? Pah - I've never heard of John Le Breton or the Jersey Evening Pravda! Are we, indeed,  the kind of island where we would make selected Left-wing politicians 'criminals' for helping a few elderly or disabled people to complete an application form requesting they might be 'registered' to eventually receive a postal vote? Worse still, whilst letting Establishment candidates do the same but without prosecution?

Is Jersey really the sort of place where the government Speaker might illegally throw an elected representative out of the Assembly for six months; knowing his only route of Appeal would be to the island's Chief Judge - who just happened to be the same man?

Come on now - is Jersey really the sort of place where we would hand over hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money to four individuals - including at least one convicted petty thug - to drive a former local politician from the internet and even refuse to answer current States Members' questions as to how much taxpayers' money was being utilised -

Oh bugger! The truth of the matter is that... we are!

Crush a grape! Never mind my joining hate sites created on Facebook by internet trolls - just because of a slip of the journalist's grammatical tongue my then confusing the banning of 'a' book with all books - perhaps we had finally better start looking into why some of our senior Senators and local media don't want an in depth, independent inquiry into the institutional child abuse at Haut de la Garenne? How it is that so many of the records from this hell hole have vanished? Maybe we should even start asking who looked after Jimmy Saville and the political owner of a lovely big yacht that regularly used to be moored at Bouley Bay a couple of decades ago?

Maybe we actually need the services of a determined and internationally respected international journalist...

And I didn't even mention how in my younger days we were not allowed to dance on a Sunday thanks to the Bailiff! or how we banned classic, award-wing comedy 'the Life of Brian'! Perhaps we aren't quite perfect after all?

But who cares - these little eccentricities have made jersey a very good place for we 'better people' to live for generations. Democracy? File it in the bin with justice and equality...