Geoff Challenges Water Redundancies

Deputy Geoff Southern has sent this self-explanatory open letter to Senator Alan Maclean, the Economic Development Minister:-

To: Economic Development Minister

18th November 2009

I was invited yesterday to put in writing my complaint as a consumer of the services of the JNWW Co Ltd about the actions of this States owned monopoly utility. You suggest that the receipt of a complaint is a necessary requisite for you to request under Article 6 (4) of the Competition Regulatory Authority (Jersey) Law 2001 a report from the JCRA.

My complaint rests on the following issues, which I believe fall within the remit of the JCRA in its role as regulator of utilities and a requirement to report to the States through you as the minister responsible:

1.Is a profit of over £4 million on a turnover of only £14.3 million an appropriate return from its monopoly position or could it be excessive?

2.Is the decision to outsource or privatize this mains engineering activity, with the loss of 20 jobs, solely to further increase profits and dividends in the best interests of the island and the economy overall?

3.What skill levels exist among the JAYEN employees by comparison with the current highly skilled and experienced workforce? Is there a risk to standards of service provision?

4.Is the States conflicted? Many would consider that is acting against its own best interests and against its policies in allowing these redundancies, which will further depress the economy at a time when the Economic Stimulus policy attempts to maintain and stimulate the economy through the recession.

5.Is the States fundamentally conflicted as majority and controlling shareholder in balancing its interest in pursuing higher dividend (currently £1.6 million) against its interest in reducing prices to residents?

I look forward to your prompt response.

Deputy Geoff Southern
La Rochelle
St Helier

Geoff holds ministers to account on Water redundancies et al

Deputy Geoff Southern has hatched a whole clutch of written questions regarding the implications of the proposed redundancies at Jersey Water. He also will be challenging Terry le Sueur's complacency about the Foot Report.
Here is a preview of his questions:-


To Treasury & Resources min

1. As the representative of the States majority and controlling shareholding in the JNWCo ltd (holding 100% of the issued “A” ordinary shares, 50% of the issued ordinary shares and 100% of the 7.5 – 10% cumulative fifth preference shares), will the minister inform members of his position on the following aspects of the JNWC ltd announcement of the company’s intention to make 20 of its employees redundant?

Given that the company announced a profit of £4,034,000 for 2008, an increase of 14% on the previous year, and a dividend of 194 pence per share (up by 15%) on the ordinary and “A” ordinary shares of the company, does the minister accept that the States in condoning the actions of the company, appears to put potential increased dividend above its support for employment?

Will the minister inform members how much the States received in dividend on its shareholding in 2008 and what additional dividend might be generated by these redundancies in 2009? Will he further produce an estimate of the likely impact of these redundancies on States revenues in lost tax and social security collected and additional Income Support payments?

T&R
2. Will the Minister use his powers to act in the public interest contained in article 23 of the Water (Jersey) Law 1972 to reduce water rates across the island in the light of the Water company’s actions in exploiting its monopoly position to pursue increased profits and dividends at any cost?

Economic Development
3. Will the minister use his powers under the competition law to request the JCRA to investigate the level water rates and charges of the JNWC ltd and to act to reduce the level of profits produced by its monopoly position?

Social Security
4. Will the minister inform members whether the “redundancies” recently announced by JNWC ltd fail to meet the conditions set out in Article 2 of the Employment (Jersey) Law 2003?

Chief Minister
5. Will the CM accept that the Deloitte estimate of lost tax to HMRC through the activities of offshore centres given in the Foot Report as £2 billion is a gross underestimate which cannot be relied on, differing as is does from the figure of over £11 billion derived from the TUC investigation, for the following reasons:


The Deloitte estimate:
a) used one amazingly aberrant year - 2008 - as their sample base when a lot of companies - especially banks made losses

b) Used a different definition of profit

c) On some occasions used a different definition of tax

d) Consciously turned a blind eye to a lot of avoidance saying it was 'officially sanctioned' ?

Not Enough Birds of the Right Feather

Today, our old friend Monty Tadier was on the radio announcing the formation of a Reform group amongst the States Members – a long-held tactical objective of the JDA, too.

Disappointingly, though, he put the number at a maximum of fifteen. Fifteen swallows do not a summer make, when there are still nearly forty turkeys not wanting to vote for Christmas.

To achieve anything, the aspiring reformers must convince as many more again that they will be able to deliver their political objectives better in a reformed House. And the catch to that will be that some of them seem to have political objectives that are best served by a dysfunctional institution.

Anyway, good on them for trying. I just think the odds of success are very poor, and so we must not judge the probable failure harshly.

David Rotherham

The C-Word: Don't read this if of a Sensitive Disposition

Already, it is time for the JDA to be looking through our 2008 policies and scrapping the many things that have been overtaken by events, and then to be shaping a new raft of policies to take us into the 2011 elections.

The hard thing with looking two years ahead though, is that the short-term future is looking exceptionally unpredictable right now. Will our economy return to growth? Will it continue to gently decline? Will something spook the finance industry and leave our economy with bricks where the wheels were? All three possibilities are two-figure percentage chances from where I am looking.

If growth returns, then it will be easy to write a nice manifesto. There is a need for some alternative taxation to fill the “Black Hole” that is Terry le Sueur's legacy, but with more money about, it would not need to bite too hard. All we have to do is firmly outvote any expensive pet projects that anyone might put forward for the party, and we should be all right.

The tougher parts will be to prepare for further decline and outright crash. One senior member of the JDA was appalled that I even mentioned cuts at a recent Council meeting, but if the money is not appearing in the income column of the ledger, it should not be in the expenditure column, either.

The only eager votes for a manifesto of cut this, slash that and snatch the other are going to come from the hard-right wingers we exist to oppose, so we can't be shouting too loudly about intentions to do it. However, if things are grim by 2011, and the old guard are the scapegoats in the General election, then the erstwhile opposition are going to be faced with a dirty job that someone has got to do, and we really ought to have a clear idea of how we are going to go about it.

A fall of a few percent in revenue can largely be made up in the traditional manner, by corresponding rises in the rates of existing taxes and duties. However, these have already been jacked up faster than many people can easily adjust to in recent years, and any government doing much more of that will rapidly lose public confidence. Therefore, the C-word does have to be bandied about:

CUTS!

In a diverse career, I have been an established officer in the UK Civil Service for a spell, and I get a little irritated at attacks made on a stereotype sixty years or more gone in real life. I think the popular image of the idle and arrogant man in a pinstripe suit and bowler hat leisurely making arbitrary decisions about the affairs of the hoi-polloi may have been true to life once, but not in my lifetime, or at least not at the levels that commonly interact with the general public.

However, any organisation will tend to gather dead wood over a few decades, and a thorough audit, once in a generation, on the principles Leslie Chapman laid down in the 1960's, will inevitably show up a few jobs that are there because they have been done, rather than because they still need to be done. I know that the States of Jersey do already have an Audit Department that does these kind of surveys, due to a small quango that I used to be involved with receiving their attention, but they don't get the publicity they deserve.

So, the first level of cutting should be a rolling out of this thinking on a broad front. If a few percent of public sector jobs can be identified as dispensable, then their holders can be transferred to other more essential posts as they fall vacant through natural wastage, and the overall size reduced. A key factor will have to be the independence of the audit, though. If senior management are challenged to produce plans for reducing their own empires, then, humans being human, they tend to select those who would be most sorely missed as the priority for cuts, so making the plans unacceptable.

The big challenge, though, is how we would cope with a big fall in the size of Jersey's economy, say a quarter or a third. There would need to be expenditure on helping the unexpectedly destitute, on top of all the usual business, so even more of the latter would have to be stopped. Law and order, and sanitation infrastructure would remain essential, and nobody would want to see medical care or education shaved too closely. But what of the rest? Opinions will be shaped by individual circumstances, but where would the consensus be found? No more roadworks, save essential utility repairs? Close the States Communication Unit, that just produces derided propaganda, and the Statistics Unit that only publishes useless and misleading “information”? Refreeze the Town Park, and halve the gardening in the existing parks? Across-the-board culls of Civil Servants? Whatever you look at, there would be more losers,than winners, but don't forget I am not asking how do we want Jersey 2012 to be, but how would we cope if the bottom had fallen out by 2011?

I am writing this to open a debate, not have a rant, so I beg you to consider what your idea of the “least-worst” cuts in a collapsing economy would be, and submit them by clicking the Comments option. (Tip: If you have never commented on a website before; if your answer is more than a few words, then draft in a word processor, copy and paste, because blogs don't reliably save at the first try.)

David Rotherham

We Told You So!

The JDA have never had any confidence in the Zero-ten tax scheme, especially after our expert, Preston Hobbs, submitted the damning report, which we published over two years ago.

http://www.esnips.com/doc/56d9e7b6-fe27-462b-924f-efc5511ab2b2/JDA-Zero-ten-Statement

Now, it seems that we were right, and the EU have seen through it. Terry le Sueur's position as Chief Minister will no longer really be tenable after the inevitable questions are asked, and Geoff Southern will ask them, if noone beats him in the queue. However, the man has more than enough brass neck to make up for any shortcomings in his abilities, so I suppose we can look forward to two more years of his "leadership"

David Rotherham

Geoff responds to Kevin Keen on Pay Freeze

The letter from Kevin Keen, until recently the manager of the Dairy, “Sorry, States workers” (JEP, 9 Oct), demonstrated not only a deep prejudice against the public sector workers but also a fundamental misunderstanding of basic economics and industrial relations. It also gave a less than accurate picture of the state of the economy.

To suggest that they should feel lucky not to be made redundant or be forced to take a pay cut is simply offensive. The first draft of the Health Business Plan did indeed threaten redundancies for some staff. Thankfully these were later withdrawn. Whilst, regrettably, there have been some redundancies in the private sector, their numbers have been fewer than many anticipated.

As to pay, whilst some employers have taken the opportunity to cut or to freeze their employees pay, this has not been the rule, but the exception. Cost of living pay rises have been awarded by many companies and bonuses have continued to be paid, especially in the finance sector.

The difference is one of representation. Where employees are represented by a trade union or strong employee association, they have been better treated. I have a list of 14 private sector groups where the workers are represented by Unite, whose representatives have negotiated pay awards at or above the March RPI of 2.1% through the normal process of collective bargaining. The public sector has similar representation, but they have had their rights to bargain removed by the arbitrary, unilateral and late decision to impose a pay freeze.

In the meantime the details of the Fiscal Stimulus Plan have been announced, with some £26 million going into building and renovation projects and a further £6 million on infrastructure. The vast majority of this money will be pumped into local private sector companies. This is exactly what government should be doing in a recession; spending money to keep the economy going and save jobs. This is £32 m to support the private sector. Does Mr Keen and the Chamber of Commerce object to this? Of course they do not. But in the same breath, he objects to some £3.5 m going to the public sector to stimulate the economy. This is sheer hypocrisy.

The need for government to maintain spending through a recession is a basic tenet of economics. As David Blanchflower, until recently a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee recently commented “Lesson one in a deep recession is you don’t cut public spending until you are in the boom phase”. Commenting on the Tory party proposals to cut public spending and freeze pay, he said that they would “push the economy into a death spiral”.

All the public sector representatives are asking for is the restoration of their collective bargaining rights. The Chief Minister, along with his supporters should recognise the justice of the public sector workers’case and step back from the confrontation with their employees that they have provoked.

Geoff Southern

Missing Sin

The missing sin from the list of 7 deadly sins is:
Knowledge without character.
Thanks to our alert follower who drew my attention to the ommission.

Pandora

Hidden Proposals

The Health department have rapidly created new proposals for their spending cuts following public outrage at the original plans.They have not been formally announced but we should be ready to act now.

Buried in the list of new proposals is a £43,000 cut from mental health service efficiencies and reprioritisations. Are people aware that the psychiatric service is already collapsing due to lack of funding? In the last 18 months ,3 different consultants have been recruited from the UK.They all left after 3 months after finding it impossible to work within the bureaucratic shambles this Island has become. Community Psychiatric Nurses are pushed to the limit and seem unable to attract new recruits.

Statistics show that 1 in 4 people will suffer from mental health problems at some point in their lives; Jersey has a population of about 96,000 and there are less than 20 beds available in Orchard House ! Citizens Advice group are currently campaigning for more volunteers to cope with the large increase in people needing help
Where are vulnerable people to go for help? Jersey already has a higher number of suicides per head of population than the UK and with rising job losses, relationship problems etc this figure will increase.
We must lobby against these proposed cuts before the States Business Plan is accepted. Pandora

Seven Deadly Sins

Mahatma Gandhi devised his own list of 7 deadly sins:

Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Science without humanity
Politics without principle
Commerce without morality
Worship without sacrifice

These words should be nailed to the door of the States Building for all to read as they enter.

Pandora

Give up Apathy

We all need to become 'active' citizens instead of paper members.Everyone can play a part to help make this Island a better place to live in. You really can make a difference.

First identify the problems which you believe are really important. What do you want changed?
Share your ideas and possible solutions and together we can make it happen.

Decide to give up apathy,become active.
Change can come if enough people demand it.


Pandora

Economics lesson

My father-in-law forwarded us this email, that is doing the rounds. It looks like a joke, but it is actually a neat and nail-on-the-head explanation of credit-based economics:-

It is the month of June, on the shores of Britain . It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town.

He enters the only hotel, lays a £100 note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one.

The hotel proprietor takes the £100 note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher.

The Butcher takes the £100 note and runs to pay his debt to the pig grower.

The pig grower takes the £100 note, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel.

The supplier of feed and fuel takes the £100 note and runs to pay his debt to the town's prostitute that in these hard times, gave her "services" on credit.

The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the £100 note to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.

The hotel proprietor then lays the £100 note back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not suspect anything.

At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his £100 note, after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town.

No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism.......

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the British Government is doing business today.

Modern day economics

Dave Rotherham

Geoff dismantles Ferguson's defence of Ozouf

When I pointed out last week that the Treasury Minister’s new initiatives to centralise powers under his control looked like a dangerous bid to create one-person government, I did not expect the head of the Corporate Affairs Scrutiny Panel, Senator Sarah Ferguson, the person charged with holding him to account, to rush to his defence. But in the weird world that passes for politics in Jersey, I suppose I should not have been surprised. After all they share very similar political views on most subjects apart from climate change.

I was not surprised in the least however by the loose way in which she marshalled the work of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in support. After all her election platform was almost entirely based on a misrepresentation of the CAG’s report into the potential for £35 million of further budget cuts. He said they were extremely difficult and many would result in service Business Plan cuts surely indicate who was right.

Worse still in her defence of Senator Ozouf was her use of selective quoting from the CAG: “… the lack of discipline in financial recording has assisted departments in obscuring cost profiles and this has been regarded by some as convenient.” The fact is that the past master of “convenient lack of discipline” is none other than Senator Ozouf himself, in his time in charge of Economic Development. He it was who restructured the ED budget under large generic titles such as “Promotion” and “Marketing” to hide subsidies of the order of £1m to prop up airline routes, many of which have now ceased.

That policy may have been right or wrong. Who knows? Whatever it was, it was not transparent, and it certainly lacked accountability.

To obscure costs in the larger budgets of Health and of Education is one thing; to do so in the ED budget of only £14 m requires rare talent and dedication. Senator Ozouf managed it. Apparently, the poacher has now turned gamekeeper, and according to Senator Ferguson we should now place our trust in him. I hope she will understand if I withhold mine.

Geoff Southern

ACTION AGAINST ISLANDS

Those who chose to ridicule the views of Lord Wallace of Saltaire should take more notice of the following report in today's newspapers :

Britain assumed day-to-day control of the Turks and Caicos Islands amid allegations of corruption.Local government in the islands will be suspended for up to 2 years while the overseas territory's are put back in 'good order' according to the Foreign Office.

Jersey could be next!

Pandora

Geoff Lambasts Terry's Slippery and Misleading Tactics

How clever and slippery is our Chief Minister. He appears to have convinced representatives of States employees that he has reopened negotiations over 2009 pay and public sector cuts, when nothing could be further from the truth. In the words of the report (JEP 12th August) “they won’t budge over £4m cuts and the pay freeze”.

Negotiations may take place, but they will be “within policy”. That policy, decided not by the States, but imposed by the States Employment Board (SEB) and sanctioned by the Council of Ministers, is simple: there will be a pay freeze and service cuts. These are not negotiable; the Chief Minister is just playing for time.

It will surely not take long for union representatives to realise that they have again been misled by Senators Le Sueur and Ozouf. It is highly unlikely that a meeting between representatives and SEB can take place before the first week of September and yet the Business Plan will be in place and set in concrete by the 22nd. Such a timescale makes real negotiation impossible.

Earlier in the year, whilst the Treasury Minister presented zero pay awards as the norm on the basis of zero evidence, the Chief Minister was equally slippery with the facts in debate over the pay freeze in the States. He presented comparisons which purported to show not only that public sector workers were better off than their counterparts in the UK, but that they were also better paid than those in the private sector in Jersey. His figures were designed to mislead.

To start with, he failed to compare the cost of living in Jersey and the UK before comparing wages. The best data can be obtained from the Jersey Household Expenditure Survey (HES) 2004-5. This reveals that the cost of living in Jersey is a massive 46% higher than the UK. This is the benchmark for any real comparison of wages, and yet it was not mentioned in the report to the States.

Figures presented by the Chief Minister suggested that public sector workers were far better off than their colleagues in the UK. On average Jersey States workers were 39% better paid. This does not make them 39% better off. To be better off, Jersey workers would have to be paid at least the benchmark figure of 46% more to match the cost of living here. They are in fact 7% worse off.

Similar remarks could be made about the figures presented for comparison of Jersey public and private sectors in order to justify a pay freeze. For example, public sector nurses are supposed to be 1% better off than their private sector colleagues. The data reveal that they are in fact 6% worse off. In the meantime recruitment and retention rates for nurses are hitting all-time lows, an entire ward has been closed because of staff shortages, and a waiting list is looming for cancer treatment.

The Chief Minister may sit back and think he has got away with his handling of a pay freeze for the moment, but he is merely storing up long-term pain as a result of his short -term political gain.

Geoff Southern

Migrating jobs

The Minister of the Inferior has stamped his foot and told local unemployed people they will be forced to take low paid jobs normally reserved for immigrant workers.

At the same time,the Big Plan boasts that at least 325 immigrants a year will be allowed into the Island for the next 5 years. Meanwhile the economic downturn is causing job losses for immigrants who have been here for less than 5 years.

What does the Minister intend to do with the resulting cheap labour force...build a pyramid on the Waterfront?

Pandora

Blog on the Run

Someone hacked into my computer, crashed it and killed my internet connection. Was it something I said ?

I will not be silenced, so will continue to blog 'on the run' whenever possible.

Pandora

Technical Hitch

Someone close to "Pandora", our most prolific contributor, tells me that she is having technical problems with her internet connection.

She has not run out of things to say; she just is physically unable to post them on here at present. Don't give up - she'll be back soon.

David Rotherham

Black Hole in the Treasury

States Treasurer,Ian Black, has not been sacked or even suspended following a secret disciplinary hearing over the incinerator fiasco. By failing to fix the exchange rate for the new incinerator contract, he has probably cost the Island millions of pounds.

The Chief Minister's department refuses to comment on disciplinary matters involving his staff but did say : " ..we have a contractual obligation of duty of care to our employees."

Excuse me,what about your duty of care to the electorate who were promised transparent and honest government? What about your duty of care to the taxpayers whose money has been lost and who are still expected to pay the final bill?

Pandora

Hidden Agenda

Does the Treasury Minister have a hidden agenda behind the public outcry he is causing as he slowly releases details of the Business Cuts? Is he deliberately targeting vulnerable groups to create as much public opposition as possible ? Then he will u-turn round & say that if we won't do what he wants,then he has no option but to increase GST.

Whatever the plan,we must watch very carefully. Now is the time for all good men(and women) to come to the aid of the Party!!

Pandora

Open letter on Business Plan:- What is Going on?

As the debate around the 2010 Business Plan (ABP) plumbs new depths of incompetence from the Council of Ministers, one has to ask whether the Jersey electorate can retain any measure of faith or confidence in its government. One thing is apparent – with two ministers already changing their minds on what to support – it is not the Council of Ministers’ Plan. Nor does it appear to be the Chief Minister’s Plan; it bears all the marks of being the work of the Treasury Minister, Senator Ozouf.

First we had an air of mystery and secrecy. In presenting the ABP to States members on Monday 20th July, the Chief Minister and Treasury Minister managed to bring the usual stock of well-spun platitudes, but failed to produce a copy of the Business Plan itself. Of course the media had seen their copies on the previous Friday, but mysterious last-minute changes meant that States members could not see it either in hard copy or electronic form.

Within an hour of the close of this meeting, the first group of States workers at Grands Vaux Family Centre were being told that their centre was to close, and their jobs were under threat. The following day, it was the turn of Patient Transport workers to get the same chilling news that their service was to be cut. States members did not finally see the Annex to the ABP, containing the details of how some cuts were to be delivered until Friday 24th, well after the final States meeting, thus preventing any detailed questions to ministers.

Even now, no-one knows exactly what cuts are to be delivered. The Health minister has abandoned many of the proposals she had previously sanctioned. The Education minister opposes many of the changes forced on him. States members and scrutiny officers are studying the figures and seeking clarity from ministers. The answers are few and far between. Who has the definitive list of where the axe will fall?

The Treasury Minister says that the 0.8% across the board savings he imposed must be achieved and if some cuts are aborted others must be found. On Sunday, he stated that some ministers have yet to finalise their priorities. When will the workers, the public and States members know? The Chief Minister has offered a meeting for the 3rd September to finally explain it all – just too late to finalise amendments to the plan. This is sheer incompetence.
Of course the spin machine rolls on. If we are to believe Senator Ozouf’s thatcherite dogma, cuts are “efficiency savings” and every business can bring in 0.8% savings each and every year. This of course has no basis in reality. He describes the funding of front line services (such as Williamson proposes) as “new money”. This is a lie; the money comes from cuts made elsewhere, and he knows it. The driving force is “value for money”, he says. Here speaks a man who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

The nostrum he peddles is one beloved of right-wing politicians and economists everywhere: small government with low public service spending accompanied by low flat-rate taxes. He is aware that Jersey is bottom of any league table comparing spending on social protection. The quality of our public services is remarkable in the light of the low spend, but it is not out of the ordinary. Yet he continues to portray it as either grossly inefficient, or as a luxury “Rolls-Royce” oversupply. Neither is remotely true. Having set himself against my proposals for progressive tax measures, proper reform of Social Security supplementation, and evaluation of Land Value Tax, his only option is to substantially reduce public services and the cut standard of living of ordinary workers with a wage freeze.

The real driving force behind these policies is Senator Ozouf’s political ambition. He knows full well that increased spending by government is an appropriate and correct response to a recession. After all he has a Fiscal Stimulus war chest of over £100m to do so, with £44m already allocated to spend this year (again only he knows the details). Yet that pragmatic approach cannot be applied to public sector services and wages to the tune of £17m. “Why not?” one may legitimately ask. Could the answer be that the Fiscal Stimulus money is almost entirely within the control of the Treasury Minister himself, whereas the other funding is not?
Perhaps a little light is shed on his motives by his recent initiatives. A drive towards a centralisation of power and control is evident. At a time when the financial advisers employed by the States to invest a variety of funds have managed to produce a loss of around £250 m from stock market holdings, the Minister proposes to increase the level of risk by increasing investment of the Strategic Reserve and other funds in shares to 50%. Control of these funds would rest with the minister (subject to advice).

The minister’s ludicrous attempt to use standing orders to prevent scrutiny from examining the Banking Depositor Compensation Scheme (DCS) is also revealing. It showed his already well-known contempt for the scrutiny process. While standing for election in November Senator Ozouf informed voters that a DCS was not needed. Six months later not only was DCS vital, but Scrutiny was not to delay his plans. His subsequent involvement in organising a vote of no confidence in the Scrutiny Chairman concerned was shamefully anti-democratic.

A further glimpse into the ambitions of Senator Ozouf is revealed by his move to centralise control of departmental budgets. By making departmental finance officers report to him, the minister will at one fell swoop reduce the number of decision–makers from ten down to one. Incidentally, while all other departments suffer budget cuts, Treasury funds will increase by £600,000 to enable this control. If this proposal succeeds, we will have witnessed a bloodless coup and one–person government will have arrived.

What is going on? A fundamental and anti-democratic shift in the balance of power is under way, led by Senator Ozouf. It must be opposed.

Geoff Southern 07797 772 632
La Rochelle
St Helier