Ben Quérée « « This Is Jersey

The amendment to extend winter fuel payments was well placed and well directed

TRY, just try, to come up with an interpretation of last week’s attempt to get rid of the Treasury Minister that doesn’t end with him coming out of it ahead on points. TRY, just try, to come up with an interpretation of last week’s attempt to get rid of the Treasury Minister that doesn’t end [...]

The one thing States Members have in common is that they all reckon they get a hostile press, and that no one else does

SO here’s a question: which is worse – to break an election promise to ‘robustly oppose any increase in GST’ or to blag people into signing a petition to sack the Treasury Minister by telling them it’s an anti-GST campaign? Here’s the answer: it doesn’t matter. By the time you’ve asked the question, it’s all [...]

Shouldn’t States Members show a little less interest in themselves and more in us?

The erosion of democracy. A grave mistake. A strike at the very heart of our centuries-old traditions of representation. A decision that could jeopardise our political stability. A move that might force the UK government to send gunboats into St Aubin’s Bay with nary a whiff of a UN Resolution…

No prizes for guessing 2010 Villain of the Year

AS we lurch, slip and slide towards 2011 and Jersey’s first general election, let’s take a look back on the fun, pride and pleasure that our £2.3m worth of elected representatives gave us in 2010…

The former Bailiff has a perfect right to his views – but what exactly are they?

IT was the strangest thing: a statement that challenged the conventional wisdom in a way that I just didn’t see coming.

Message from the UK: Go ahead, sign a couple of treaties. But don’t count on us if it all goes belly-up

Blackadder: It is the way of the world Baldrick – the abused always kick downwards. I’m annoyed, and so I kick the cat, the cat pounces on the mouse, and finally the mouse…bites you on the behind.

Confusion abounds. No, make that madness. Now we’re back to confusion. But then again …

Confusion abounds. Two weeks ago four Members of the Council of Ministers were describing plans to cut more than £4 million from the annual subsidies to fee-paying schools ‘a dead duck’ and ‘a bloody mess’.

Now that the lonely Education Minister has been hung out to dry, what is there left to cut?

LINGUISTICALLY speaking, they’ve done a lot for us, the Australians. There’s that brilliant new Fosters call-centre ad for a start. There’s the word ‘strewth’. And there’s the Monty Python sketch in which everyone is called ‘Bruce’.

Promises, promises and the Minister’s U-turn when facing a particularly taxing problem

POOR old us. We can’t even get the little things right. The Brits got ‘We will fight them on the beaches’, the Yanks got ‘Nothing to fear but fear itself’ and what do we get?

The rise in GST is an example of a ministerial secret we’ve all been in on since the start

IF you tried to pinpoint the moment at which you realised that all this deficit talk was going to end up with a proposal to increase GST, my bet is that it wouldn’t have been Friday’s Budget announcement.