Biting The Hand That Feeds

Did anyone else in addition to Clameur de Haro pick up on the snide little dig from the Jersey Evening [sic] Post’s Elaine Byrne in her reporting of the winners of the Christmas Lottery?

In her “you have to be in the finance industry to win anything in Jersey” intro, La Byrne couldn’t resist, could she, doing a little resentful biting of the hand that feeds, conveniently forgetting which sector of the economy it is that predominantly generates the tax revenues needed to fund public services. Perhaps she needs reminding that governments on their own can provide nothing without first extracting the financial wherewithal from private citizens and firms through taxation.

Possibly she’s one of those who likes to propagate the myth that Jersey suffers from a class divide between the finance sector and the rest. Unfortunately, this fallacy is more widely held than it should be.

What it does is to deflect attention from the real class divide in Jersey, which is the divide between those employed in the public sector – enjoying salaries in many cases on a par with private sector counterparts carrying more responsibility, plus the added benefits of job protection, security of employment and taxpayer-funded pension arrangements which the private sector can only dream about – and those in the productive, wealth-generating private sector of the economy struggling to cope with the downturn, and having to accept pay cuts and job losses as the price of survival.

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Wimberley Runs Up The Red Flag

Clameur de Haro was not remotely surprised to see the traditional banner of redistributive tax-and-spend socialism unequivocally hoisted to the Daniel Wimberley masthead this week. In his letter on Tuesday to the Jersey Evening [sic] Post about the Angry Men, Mr Wimberley rehearsed all the predictable mantras associated with the philosophy.

We had, most notably, the attempted excoriation of what he terms as the low-tax, low-spend ideology implemented over the past three decades, and which according to him must be resisted. Apart from providing an explicit statement of his predatory stance on public sector finances, it is also less than accurate.

Does Mr Wimberley really believe that we have had a low-spend government? If only we had been so blessed - we might not be in the position that we now are. The problems we face at present are in very great measure due to the runaway, uncontrolled public spending and public sector growth that we have seen in the last ten years, and the inability or unwillingness of most politicians to tackle it.

He then follows the usual scare tactics of the political left by implying that the Angry Men favour curtailing public expenditure by abandoning respite care for the disabled, the Town Park, and the problems of Bellozanne, and essential infrastructure maintenance. But nowhere in Mr Trower’s conversation with the JEP’s Ben Queree is any of this even hinted at.

What Mr Trower and his colleagues quite rightly protest against is the sheer size, reach, dubious utility and uncontrolled expense of much of the bureaucratic empire, allied to inadequate financial and budgetary discipline – and the inclination to tax in order to fund it, rather than address the underlying problem. Remember the contract for the incinerator, Mr Wimberley? Advocates of a smaller, leaner, less activist but more efficient government have been saying for years that the public sector does too much that is unnecessary, and does it at far greater cost than necessary.

Mr Wimberley appears to recoil in horror that States’ departments were forced to make efficiency savings in order to limit the necessity for taxation increases. Obviously he adheres to the collectivist assumption that public spending is somehow a good in itself, and finds the notion that individuals should be able to retain more of their own money as heresy.

He needs to be reminded that the state, and the public sector, has no resources of its own other than what it confiscates from individuals and firms by way of taxation. As Ludwig Von Mises put it -

“At the bottom of the interventionist argument there is always the idea that the government or the state is an entity outside and above the social process of production - that it owns something which is not derived from taxing its subjects - and that it can spend this mythical something for definite purposes.

This is the Santa Claus fable raised by Keynes to the dignity of an economic doctrine and enthusiastically endorsed by all those who expect personal advantage from government spending.

As against these popular fallacies there is need to emphasize the truism that a government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens - and that its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens’ spending and investment to the full extent of its quantity.”

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Don’t Put Your Data With The State, Mrs Worthington!

Several more examples of firstly, the way in which the authoritarian state continues to acquire data of questionable legality on law-abiding citizens, and secondly, a cavalier attitude by corporates and public sector bodies alike to data protection, and the security and privacy of individuals’ personal data, came to Clameur de Haro’s attention in the past week.

In the financial world, Zurich Insurance finally admitted losing the personal account details for over half a million people, more than a year ago. The personal details of no fewer than 51, 000 British customers were among data backed up on a tape which was on its way to a South African data storage centre when it was lost in August 2008.

That’s bad enough, but at least people can choose to place their business with an alternative provider and not with Zurich if they feel its custodianship of their personal details is negligent or deficient. Unfortunately no such choice arises in the case of data required to be held by public sector or government agencies. 

The Home Office, in a written answer to a Parliamentary question, admitted that the estimated number of people whose DNA profile is stored by the government has, for the first time, gone through 5m, with some 5,094,568 individuals now thought to be represented on the National DNA Database: on an estimated replication rate of about 13.8 per cent, this means that the number of actual DNA profiles is 5,910,172 - about one for every ten people in Britain.

This unrestricted growth of what is, on a per capita basis, the world's largest repository of human DNA information has continued despite the New Labour regime’s defeat at the hands of the European Court of Human Rights last December, when the ECHR ruled that the policy of retaining – permanently - the DNA profile of every single person ever even arrested (not charged or convicted) in relation to any offence, no matter how comparatively trivial, was manifestly illegal. So far the New Labour regime has taken no action to comply with the ruling.

The UK Information Commissioner revealed (tellingly, only as a result of a demand under Freedom of Information legislation) that there are more data loss reports being submitted to him from companies and governments than ever before – 356 for the period November 2008 to September 2009, compared with 190 in the equivalent period in the previous year. The biggest cause of loss, in 198 incidents, was lost or stolen hardware, usually laptops and memory sticks, while 78 were due to data disclosed in error, typically discs or memory sticks being mis-addressed.

The most recent figures released by the Commissioner in normal course (October 2008) also showed that, of 277 incidents since HMRC lost the entire UK child benefit recipients database a year earlier, no fewer than 197 came from the public sector.

Then it emerged that the UK's Rural Payments Agency (RPA), five months ago, lost tapes which contained the payment details of more than 100,000 farmers in the UK. The agency told DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), but DEFRA told nobody else, and certainly not the farmers affected.

DEFRA appears to be trying to finger IBM for the loss. Apparently, 39 backup tapes were transferred by the RPA from its Reading offices to Newcastle, following which the tapes then “went missing”: 37 were subsequently found, but not the other two. DEFRA is alleging that the tapes were simply placed on the wrong shelf by the IBM staff who actually operate the RPA data centre in Newcastle.

The last definite record of the tapes' existence was in June 2008: it was only in May 2009, according to the report seen by CdeH, that IBM staff realised the tapes were missing and reported the loss to the RPA, who then told DEFRA. DEFRA has suggested “that it is likely that the lost tapes have been destroyed without anybody realising”. Vaporisation perhaps? Spontaneous self-combustion, maybe?

While bad, none of this should have been too serious in practical effect however, because the tapes and the data on them would have been encrypted and passworded, surely? Er………no, ‘fraid not, this is a government department we’re talking about, after all.

DEFRA has tried saying that all this doesn’t matter, because “extremely specialised equipment” would be needed to extract the data off the tapes. Clameur de Haro’s techie adviser, when asked about this, just laughed – seemingly, said “extremely specialised equipment” basically consists of a tape drive and backup software, the kind of equipment stocked by every tape-using IT store and freely purchasable over the internet.

This may all seem a bit remote from Jersey – but just how comfortable can we be that, somewhere within the vast edifice of personal data held by the States, there isn’t a similarly cavalier approach to data security, or worse, a similar debacle already perpetrated but being feverishly concealed from public view?

Meanwhile, the only sensible approach seems to be to give the state as little personal data as possible.

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Clameur De Haro's Political Compass

With fellow bloggers St Ouennais and Nick Palmer both having been kind enough to reveal their positions after taking the assessment questionnaire on The Political Compass, Clameur de Haro can hardly refrain from showing his own.

Attempting reverse analysis here is an inexact science, because the answers do not have corresponding scores on each of the axes, but for what it's worth, CdeH guesses that on the Authoritarian - Libertarian scale, the scoring from his antipathy to excessive state power and legislative restrictions on personal freedom is probably pulled back a little by the scoring from his support for a robust stance on both defence and the protection of the family as the principal societal unit.

But - wouldn't it be interesting and revealing if we could persuade all States' Members to take the test - and then publish the results so that we can all see exactly where they stand? Do any of them have the cojones to take up the challenge?

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And The Public Sector Gravy Train Just Keeps On A-Rollin'………

Yet another example reaches Clameur de Haro's in-box of questionable workforce expansion done with a cavalier disregard for its impact on the public finances.

This time it's in Harbours, and involves the recent recruitment, apparently, of an assistant to the so-called Development Director, Myra Shacklady.

Clameur de Haro has not met the lady in question, but his friends in diverse parts of the maritime community assure him that throughout their particular world the prevailing view of Ms Shacklady's demonstrated expertise and competence is one of near-total derision: "complete waste of space" being the phrase most often employed (and also, it has to be said, the politest).

In the current straitened condition of the public finances, one might have thought that with precious little States-funded development likely to be undertaken in the Harbours in the next few years, the need for a full-time so-called development director was debatable, and that the responsible course of action would have been to reduce the role to a 3-day week, with a 40% salary cut. That, after all, is the kind of measure that many businesses in the hard-pressed private sector, both here and in the UK, are being forced to take as they struggle to survive.

But, of course, this is the public sector, and Jersey. Where not only has it been decreed that this kind of cost-saving in the public interest is unthinkable, but that moreover Ms Shacklady actually requires an assistant director, no less. And where Harbours' business case for the additional post was allegedly signed off by a Treasury Minister otherwise exhorting (not too forcefully, it has to be said) curbs on spending.

It gets worse. Clameur de Haro's source reveals that the preferred candidate found the maximum salary for the post's advertised grade to be insufficient and unacceptable, whereupon the salary offer was raised by about 10% to secure the candidate's services.

No doubt all those people affected by the redundancies announced so far this year in the private sector will be comforted by the knowledge that the direction of Harbours development is at no risk of being under-resourced.

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It's Another World Out There On Planet Public Sector

Clameur de Haro notes with exasperation that, while Jersey's wealth and tax revenue generating, but currently hard-pressed, private sector continues to shed staff as it struggles with reduced profitability and business volumes, the public sector in contrast appears to remain blissfully recession-proof - certainly as far as ongoing recruitment to the public payroll is concerned.

A quick look at the jobs vacancies section of the http://www.gov.je/ website reveals that "States of Jersey" is the second highest category for current vacancies, including this one -

Apart from the obvious irony inherent in upping headcount by recruiting a "workforce planner", CdeH wonders why, in a time of financial stringency, this isn't a function automatically required of Departmental Chief Executives and/or their existing senior staff as part of their core management role, and why it's necessary to hire an additional resource to undertake it, particularly when, assuming the part-time nature amounts to, say, a 25-hour week, the total employment costs are likely to approach at least an additional £35k on to the public payroll.

Why is no politician questioning this seemingly relentless expansion of public sector employment?

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Privatise Jersey Post – Now!

Over at Jersey 24/7, Clameur de Haro’s fellow-blogger made the point a couple of days ago that it’s time Jersey Post was sold off. His reasoning was based specifically on the potential damage likely to be inflicted on the local retail sector by Jersey Post’s new Ship2Me service, but he is undoubtedly right in the wider context as well. The case for the full privatisation of this business and its disposal out of public sector ownership and control entirely is overwhelming.

Initially, the economic philosophy argument. Generally, being naturally less efficient than private enterprise, government should restrict itself to providing only those services which the private sector is unable or unwilling to provide. Throughout Europe, mail and postal services are increasingly shown to be capable of being willingly delivered by the private sector at reasonable cost and to an acceptable return. Where is the compelling evidence that Jersey is an exception?

Subsequently, the practical points. A Jersey Post continuing in even partial public sector ownership is undesirable on at least three counts: firstly, it’s a monopoly, which is bad enough; secondly, it’s a public sector monopoly, which is even worse; and thirdly, it’s a unionised public sector monopoly, which virtually guarantees sub-optimal operation and unresponsive customer service.

Any reader who doubts the latter should try visiting Broad Street on a busy lunchtime and noting what proportion of total counter positions are actually open. Rarely does the ratio exceed 50% (even during the long queues of the annual pre-Christmas rush): presumably this is mainly because of union resistance to instituting shift patterns which would deploy the greatest numbers of customer-facing staff precisely at the times of peak customer demand, exacerbated by an inherent management disincentive, stemming from the business’ position as a semi-state-owned monopoly with guaranteed protection from competition, to even tackle this issue.

Does anyone really imagine that this degree of insensitivity to customer demand could be sustained if Jersey Post was a 100% private sector enterprise accountable to multiple shareholders, and forced moreover to compete with other mail service providers on price and service levels? As many of CdeH’s acquaintances have remarked, it was only the arrival of Sure and the ending of Jersey Telecoms’ monopoly which forced JT to provide a retail facility in the main shopping precinct.

And then, to add insult to injury, in recent years the wealth-creating private sector has had to endure the sight of Jersey Post executives both publishing excessively self-congratulatory annual statements and paying themselves handsome bonuses commensurate with private sector out-performance in the face of stiff competition; totally unjustified in the case of a protected, esentially public sector monopoly.

It’s a fairly openly-expressed opinion in the Island’s financial and business community that when the full disposal of Jersey Post was looked at a few years ago, potential buyers were scared off by the size and extent of the potential future liabilities represented by the (typically for the public sector) exceptionally generous but under-funded employees’ pension scheme. And that only by promising that the taxpayer, rather than the purchasers, would retain these liabilities could the States even get potential buyers to pursue their initial interest.

Neither that particular issue, nor the strength of the conceptual argument for full privatisation, nor the opportunity cost to the Island of the States’ non-realisation of this asset at a time of financial stringency, are going to go away at any time in the foreseeable future. And transferring Jersey Post to private ownership in its entirety would also blunt the criticisms from retailers about its (totally legitimate) expansion of fulfilment business on the grounds of its public sector component.

It’s vital therefore that the States develop the resolve to resist and defeat the inevitable specious arguments – which will be superficially predicated on fears of reduced customer service, but will actually be founded on ideological committment to state ownership and hostility to private enterprise – and move to end both Jersey Post’s increasingly indefensible monopoly and its protected, even quasi-public sector, status.

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Maybe The Kids Are Not Quite So All Right……

Is there a cultural left bias in Jersey’s Health and Social Services towards subverting parental authority and undermining the role of the family by condoning under-age sex?

Tracking at random through a few recent back editions of the Jersey Evening [sic] Post, Clameur de Haro’s eye was caught by one of the facts given by Brook Jersey executive director Bronia Lever on the numbers of teenagers and young adults said to be seeking contraception advice and emergency contraception, “…some as young as 12….”.

For the record, and in case anyone should allege otherwise, CdeH thinks that Brook generally, and its Jersey clinic in particular, fulfils a vital function in the community, and that the advice and contraception sensitively dispensed by the Brook counsellors contribute significantly to reduced incidences of, particularly, early to mid-teen pregnancy – and also that it obviously discharges its functions in a very caring and empathetic way, the very numbers seeking Brook Jersey’s services being, apart from any other implications, a visible testament to its success.

But what we were not told by Ms Lever, however, is how many of those recipients or requestors of contraception advice or emergency contraception were under 16.

Now CdeH is no prude, and recalls with a contradictory mixture of wistful fondness and acute embarrassment his own adolescent fumblings, undertaken, on one or two occasions, while hoping to heaven that his co-fumbler’s assurances that she was 16, yes really, might just be truthful. But at the risk of appearing antediluvian, let’s not forget that 16 remains (until it’s changed by the legislature) the legal age of consent: so it follows, surely, that in the case of a sub-16 female client requesting post-coital emergency contraception, there is prima facie evidence before the clinic and its counsellors of the statutory offence of unlawful sex with a minor having been committed.

CdeH’s original intention, when the idea for this post was taking shape, was to pose the question – “Given that the law of the land has clearly been broken in such a case, to what extent is any judicial process invoked?” – because the idea of a public authority turning a blind eye to a serious breach of law isn’t an easy one to feel comfortable with. But recalling that Jersey seems to be considering the creation of a Sexual Offenders’ Register (of which subject more on another occasion), and then reading in this special briefing in the current issue of The Economist the often appalling consequences for people who can be placed on such a register for comparatively minor “technical” misdemeanours, it strikes CdeH that our local Brook counsellors are probably better using their discretion in mostly declining to get PC Plod involved.

But possibly even more importantly, when and to what extent, in the case of the very sub-16 clients, are the parents brought into the process?

CdeH of course acknowledges the confidentiality argument, and the reality that many of Brook’s clients would probably not consult it at all – with adverse consequences in some cases - if they thought their parents would be informed. But on the other hand, and writing as an erstwhile parent of daughters, it’s also not easy to feel entirely comfortable with the idea of a public authority concealing from loving, concerned, and would-be responsible parents its condoning, to the point of even facilitating, their offspring’s under-age sex.

What also disturbs Clameur de Haro here is the danger that all this isn’t just about sexual health advice and preventing unwanted teenage pregnancy – that it’s also, more insidiously, about furthering, even unwittingly, the cultural left’s agenda for the state to undermine parental authority and the position of the family as the principal societal unit, and to eventually supplant it as the prime nurturer of future generations.

Cultural marxism frequently seeks, whether via economic or social policy means, to weaken the position and authority of the unitary family as a discrete social unit, and to undermine parental rights and responsibilities to this end: it does this because the strong individual family unit, secure against the depredations of the state, is one of the bedrocks of a free society and therefore an inherent threat to the belief that only state activism can guarantee desired social outcomes.

Given the prevalence of cultural left attitudes in the UK social services, and the extent of recruitment and secondment from the UK that Jersey practises, it would be surprising if some of those attitudes had not found their way, either openly or covertly, into our social services locally. Indeed, there have been grounds in recent years for believing that this is so.

Should we therefore be worried that our justified focus on the numbers and youthfulness of some of Brook Jersey’s clients may in fact be masking the less apparent, the less immediate, but the no less significant danger that the role of parents is surreptitiously being diminished?

Clameur de Haro recalls Ms Lever’s, and Brook’s, endorsement a couple of years ago for the initiative launched by the Jersey Police to encourage parents to take greater responsibility for their children. Would it not be unfortunate, to say the least, if a misplaced sociological view of a vulnerable minor’s absolute right to confidentiality contributed to putting obstacles in the way of parents who want to do exactly that?

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A Clear Case of Black (Ian) and White (Wash)

It's not often that Clameur de Haro finds himself agreeing with Geoff Southern about anything, but CdeH stands four-square with Mr Southern in his condemnation of the glossing-over by a clearly embarrassed and defensive Establishment of the incompetence and dereliction of fiduciary duty to the taxpayer exhibited by States' Treasurer Ian Black (who, CdeH notes, reportedly attempted to deflect the blame on to the former TTS CEO) in failing to ensure that the incinerator contract was hedged against an adverse exchange rate movement.

This is such a basic requirement - in CdeH's private sector worlds, both past and present, even comparatively junior mid-level finance executives are aware of the need to hedge a substantial currency risk exposure - that its omission virtually defies belief.

Are we to assume that no-one at all, in either the Treasury or TTS, realised the need? Because if that really is the case, then the implications for the management of Jersey's public finances, politely describable as sub-optimal at the best of times, are truly frightening. And the proposal to place Treasury accountants in all departments suddenly looks like not a very good idea at all.

Catching up on the last couple of weeks' Jersey Evening [sic] Post's back numbers since returning to the fold, Clameur de Haro spied Christine Herbert's Business Focus of 28 July, revealing that the Treasury is to deploy more public funds into the markets: presumably this will involve Mr Black's professional oversight of the investment strategy and the investment advisers.

Time for Under The Mattress as a safer option, maybe?

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Back to Jersey – and Back to the Blogosphere

Clameur de Haro found it a stimulating and rewarding experience living and working again in the Far East for the past few months: but with his last-ever overseas assignment having come to an end, and now lately arrived back on the Blessed Rock for good, he feels it’s time to pick up once again the reins of rightwards-inclined posting, to balance a little the local blogosphere’s majority leftward slant.

So, catching up, to what extent have the numerous undesirable features of the Island’s politico-economic landscape which CdeH hitherto railed against improved in his absence? And despite keeping intermittently in touch with events from afar, what does CdeH find on his return the land of his birthright?

Many of the answers, sadly, are not encouraging.

A still-bloated public sector, where spending appears predominantly out of control, where budgetary discipline seems lax or non-existent, and where sufficient determination to tackle either to the large extent actually necessary (as opposed to some cosmetic tinkering at the margins) looks less likely than snowdrifts in August.

Terry the Taxer and Ozo the Bozo purporting to direct an economic strategy which announced an appallingly cynical curtailment of front-line patient services and public facilities, but retracted immediately when objections were made – if cuts were (wrongly) thought necessary in the first place, why were they not defended robustly, however unjustifiable they were? And their cohorts and satraps already musing about raising indirect tax rates.

A government which almost certainly will have neither the vision nor the courage to go through with implementing much-needed staffing cuts, an absolute pay freeze, and pensions reform in public sector employment, nor any inclination to contemplate shrinking the size of the state by withdrawing from activities better undertaken by private enterprise.

A policing function with an effectiveness reportedly all but paralysed by internal strife, but still retaining the ability to commit the unbelievably ham-fisted bungling of what ought to have been a low-key routine investigation, thereby giving that malignant pipsqueak Syvret a golden opportunity to revel in his much-loved but self-proclaimed martyr status.

How depressing too, to see that the vast majority of the local politics blogs remain firmly anchored at the left-green end of the spectrum: some still obsessing, ostrich-like, with conspiracy theories about cover-ups or justice-denial to the exclusion of all else (and goodness knows, there’s no shortage of other things to get worked up about in this mis-governed island), while others continue to proselytize pernicious eco-authoritarian greenery.

At least Ratleskutle, Tony’s Musings, and Jersey 24/7 are still out there, providing a bit of much-needed wider variety of subject-matter.

So Clameur de Haro looks forward to a resumption of both promoting the alternative free-market and liberal prescriptions of a smaller state, reduced public spending, lower taxes and enhanced individual freedoms, and rebutting the authoritarian collectivist fallacies peddled by the pink leftists and their green fascist allies of convenience. Just as a taster for the latter, CdeH spied, on his pre-departure sojourn in a certain Far East airport, this entertaining piece in the Jakarta Globe about a ceiling collapse in a virtually new school building in Cirebon, West Java. Do, please, note the last sentence –

“Dedi Windiagiri, the head of the Cirebon school board, denied that the contractor was to blame. Climate change, he said, was the true cause of the accident.”

Really, you couldn’t make it up, could you? Ridiculous? Of course. But as an example of the fundamental dishonesty of so many genuflectors before the altar of the green religion, and their desire desperation to attribute any misfortune at all, whatever its cause, to the great holy mantra of climate change, regrettably not untypical.

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Hour's Not To Reason Why

Clameur de Haro? notes with despair the breathless enthusiasm with which the Jersey Evening [sic] Post is pushing the fatuous “Earth Hour” on 28 March, when we are all beseeched to plunge ourselves into darkness in order to do nothing less than save the planet, a (“vote for action against global warming”).

On no fewer than three occasions in the past week or so, an excited Elaine Byrne has eco-warbled enthusiastically (and repetitiously, to the point of tedium), despite her pieces being mind-numbingly long on regurgitated greenist propaganda and suspiciously short on hard scientific information.

This whole idea is arrant nonsense, and politicos like Cohen and the so called Eco-Active Team are achieving nothing more than signing themselves up to the nauseating marriage of gesture politics and muddled thinking which is the defining characteristic of populist environmentalism.

Firstly, a pinprick interruption to the overwhelming majority of residential light use which occurs at night will have no emission-reducing effects whatsoever, on anything. Most power stations run, during the night, at the same capacity as during daytime peak demand periods, and produce electricity (and therefore some amount of greenhouse gas) anyway, whether it is being used to create light or not. There is no way to store this excess power produced at night - that is why electricity generators sell off-peak power so cheaply to run our electric hot water systems at night, which function as virtual batteries. Hydro plants are responsive to fluctuating power demand, as are gas-fired plants, but others are not. Jersey’s certainly isn’t.

Secondly, in Britain, domestic household consumption accounts for only 30 percent of overall energy use — and lighting accounts for only 9 percent of that domestic usage. (By contrast, heating and hot water account for 80 percent of household energy use.) In short, less than 2.7 percent of total energy consumption in Britain can be blamed on the heinous eco-ignorant populace recklessly “destroying the planet” by having the lights switched on at night.

Thirdly, just consider the language used to justify this minor measure that will achieve staggeringly little, if anything (apart, possibly, from an increase in traffic accidents or petty crime). “Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing people and nature”, pontificates the WWFN. Well, thank heavens for that – CdeH? mistakenly thought that the effects of the global economic downturn, declining heath and nutrition standards in the third world, and Islamist terrorism were far more serious than a (by no means unanimously) predicted temperature rise of about 0.8 degrees…….

So this little eco-mentalist war on light is itself based on an utterly false prospectus. But of course it’s a golden opportunity for the greenists and our putative lords and masters to combine to present it (and themselves) as epoch-definingly heroic, to show how supremely committed they are to “saving the world”, and to condemn anyone who says “just a minute………” as either a sceptic, or a heretic to the green religion, or of course, a perpetrator of that ultimate crime, being a “global warming denier”.

CdeH? observes that we taxpayers in the beleaguered productive sector of the Island’s economy appear to be funding one Olivia Copsey, described as “Education and Awareness Officer” at the Environment Department. With access to information almost universally available over the internet, might we know precisely what she has been engaged to educate us about and make us aware of? And more to the point in these straitened times, how much we are paying for the privilege?

Clameur de Haro? will not be succumbing to the collective flight from the light of rational thought into the darkness of unreason on 28 March, even at the risk of not being able to tell himself what a good and caring person he is. He will, in protest, be switching on every damn light that he has, if only to ensure that the militant eco-mentalists don’t seize the opportunity presented by the darkness to come and vandalize his fleet of 4x4s.

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Tax Avoidance, International Financial Centres, and Jersey – Part I: Neither Illegitimate Nor Immoral

Judging from several posts over the end of November / beginning of December, Clameur de Haro?’s fellow-blogger Jersey 24/7 seems to be somewhat confused both about modern banking and financial services themselves, and their contribution to what he or she clearly believes is the latent immorality of Jersey’s role as an international financial centre, namely helping – or presumably, in his view, influencing - overseas taxpayers to reduce their liability to taxation in their own jurisdictions.

Jersey 24/7, however, isn’t alone in this misconception – several recent election candidates from the leftist and green extremities of the political spectrum postulated much the same thing, adding in for good measure the alleged iniquities of depriving high-tax “home” economies and populations of taxation revenue (though, curiously, they failed to go on to advise electors to avoid a low-price Co-Op in favour of a high-price Checkers so as not to deprive the latter’s ultimate shareholders of profit). So CdeH? is grateful for the opportunity to counter their false arguments.

Clameur de Haro?’s basic philosophy on this starts from the premise that tax levied on the private citizen, whether an individual or a corporation, by the state, on pain of criminal sanction, is nothing less than the state’s self-legitimated appropriation for itself of that private citizen’s legally-acquired wealth, whether in the form of income, capital gain, inheritance, or whatever. [Note the phrase “legally-acquired” - and be in no doubt, incidentally, that CdeH? has no objection whatsoever to the confiscation, by the judicial arm of the state, of wealth acquired directly as the proceeds of crime]

CdeH? entirely accepts that some such appropriation is necessary, and does not, for example, espouse the extreme libertarian position of believing that the state has no role in society. CdeH? readily acknowledges that there are economic goods and public services needed by some or all of the population which only the state can or will fund (though there are many instances where such goods or services, while necessarily funded by the state, are not necessarily provided better or more cheaply by agencies of the state): and that taxation is both an acceptable and practical way of raising the revenue needed.

However, because the state appropriates for itself, in the form of taxation, part of the private citizen’s legally-acquired wealth, CdeH? believes that the state then has an overwhelming, corresponding moral duty (1) to spend the resulting revenue prudently and not recklessly or wastefully, and (2) to extract from the private citizen no more than the absolute minimum of his legally-acquired wealth than is necessary for the state to fund or undertake those functions that it, and only it, can or will do.

But states everywhere either ignore or abuse (or in most cases both ignore AND abuse) this moral obligation [and Jersey is no different]. They waste, or otherwise deploy recklessly or imprudently, the taxation revenue they extract from the private citizen: or they employ it in undertaking activities which the state need not, or should not, undertake because the private, non-state sector of the economy would willingly undertake them itself (often better and cheaper). Most states are guilty on both counts [and again Jersey is no different].

In these circumstances, not the slightest degree of opprobrium or immorality can attach to the private citizen, whether an individual or a corporation, who so arranges his financial affairs as to legally minimise or avoid the appropriation of his wealth by the state. [Note the words “legally” and “avoid” – and the latter’s important distinction from the word “evade” – and again be in no doubt that CdeH? has no truck with the illegal evasion of obligations in contravention of the law of the land]

And by extension therefore, not the slightest degree of illegitimacy or immorality can be inferred to an economy or polity which chooses to provide services to meet a clear, substantial, and unsatisfied demand from the makers of such legal arrangements. So Jersey can and should continue to uphold and develop its prime industry with a clear conscience.

Clameur de Haro? has no doubt that the real immorality here lies with those high-taxing, excessive and wasteful-spending governments - notably the UK under the present administration and most EU countries under any administration - who impose systems and levels of taxation which extract unjustified proportions of their citizens’ wealth, thereby driving them to seek external alternatives.

Jersey need entertain no qualms whatsoever about benefitting its own population by supplying those citizens with an alternative to mere acquiescence in their governments’ rapaciousness.

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GST Exemptions: Easy, Principled Adjustment - or Expensive, Bureaucratic Nightmare?

Clameur de Haro? has been looking in a little more detail today at Deputies’ Election candidates’ positions (well, their stated positions, anyway) on the thorny subject of GST exemptions.

Inexplicably, a sizeable number don’t actually mention the subject at all, which in view of its prominence, strikes CdeH? as extremely odd, to say the least.

Of those that do, and with the honourable exceptions of Ian Gorst in St Clement, Rod Bryans in St Helier, and John Le Fondre in St Lawrence, candidates universally declare their objection to its general application, and call for exemptions on, variously, food, heating supplies, and children’s clothing, or more usually a combination of all three.

But not a single one of them offers either the slightest estimate of the revenue shortfall which would result, or any proposal for meeting that shortfall, whether by reduced States’ spending or compensatory increases in tax elsewhere. This omission is fiscal irresponsibility of a high order.

Over at Tony’s Musings, Tony has (as usual) a thoughtful critique of Sean Power’s position (basically - it’s here, so let’s leave it settle for a while), and suggests that to exempt foodstuffs, heating and lighting, and children’s clothes really can’t be difficult or bureaucracy-creating to any significant degree.

Clameur de Haro? disagrees with Tony on this, though –

On foodstuffs, should we exempt, say, caviar, yet apply GST on toothpaste? That hardly seems to be in the spirit of what’s proposed.

On heating and lighting, say, should we really make no distinction between heating for the pensioner’s apartment, and heating for the multi-millionaire’s swimming pool? Or between lighting for the pensioner’s apartment kitchen and lighting for the multi-millionaire’s driveway? Both cases involve use of the same materials from the same supply sources. But that doesn’t seem equitable.

On children’s clothing, should we exempt, say, the expensive designer tops the relatively affluent might buy for diminutive but highly fashion-conscious 13-year old daughters, yet levy GST on the suit the man of modest means struggles to buy for his tall, well-built 16-year old son, newly left school and going for his first job interview? That hardly seems fair.

CdeH? is afraid that these kinds of dilemmas over definition and rating would occur all the time, and that additional, costly, bureaucracy and administration will be the inevitable result – producing a double-whammy, in fact, because the extra costs of it would have to be layered on to a smaller tax base. Which neatly completes the circle, because none of the exemption-favouring candidates either knows, or will tell us if they do know, how they would address the consequences.

For this reason, Clameur de Haro? will be sticking with one of the realists who, rightly, eschew facile, ill thought out promises, and have the courage to tell it like it is. But at the same time imploring them to grasp, in return, the nettle of arresting the inexorable growth of public spending by an administration to whom stringent fiscal discipline seems a wholly alien concept.

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A New Direction of Travel

Welcome to this the opening post from Clameur de Haro?

CdeH? is angry: in fact positively seething with exasperation and frustration at the poor quality of both the political philosophies currently on offer to the people of Jersey – and echoing the cry of Mercutio in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.. “a plague a’ both your houses!”.

CdeH? is most definitely NOT an enthusiastic standard-bearer for Jersey’s current Council of Ministers and the present States’ Establishment, and believes that the wider electorate’s manifest disillusionment with both is amply justified. Yet, like so many of the Island’s silent majority, CdeH? shudders at the prospect of the potential damage should what may be called the Stuart Svvret Tendency and the JDA/Green Coalition gain political ascendancy.

CdeH? is convinced that there really does exist a radical alternative direction for the Island – one between, at the one extreme, the complacently inefficient, overly bureaucratic, excessively mercantilist, and fiscally irresponsible current government: and at the other extreme, the assorted collective of tax-and-spend egalitarian socialists, muddled-thinking talk-gooders, and mendacious eco-authoritarians, masquerading under a disparate variety of labels of the left, but all essentially wanting the same thing - a much more interventionist, enterprise-averse, anti-freedom and aggressively redistributive regime.

CdeH? contends that a significant number of Jersey’s current domestic problems stem from one thing – the sheer size, scale, and therefore cost of government and administration: that Jersey’s public sector is too large for the size of the population, and generally does too much: and that it compounds that error by doing so expensively and inefficiently – much, much more expensively and inefficiently than would private enterprise, because of government’s ability, and natural inclination, to increase the tax burden to cover expenditure, rather than control its activity and therefore its cost, so as to keep expenditure below the tax revenue achievable consistent with a flourishing, dynamic but also equitable society.

So – for CdeH? the direction of travel has to be to reducing the size and impact of the state, curtailing its remit, controlling its cost, and lowering its burden on the economy – by applying free-market and libertarian economic and social policy prescriptions, and eschewing the deceptively and superficially attractive solutions dangled by both persuasions.

From CdeH?'s position, poised in the Royal Square on the steps of the States' Assembly, this will be the approach put forward in the coming days, weeks and months.

Watch this space.

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