thisisjersey.com

A TREMENDOUS amount of sport is played in this Island, much of it to a very high standard. You have to look no further than the recent achievements of the Jersey Rugby Football Club or badminton star Elizabeth Cann to appreciate that some of our sportsmen and women are capable of competing at very high [...]

OUR hospital needs replacing. Our roads are in a dire state. There is insufficient social housing, and what there is too often fails to meet basic standards. Our sea walls are crumbling. The Airport needs work. Some of our schools need major repairs.

PROOF, if it were wanted, that this is an Island of the disadvantaged as well as the wealthy comes in the shape of the latest information on social housing.

AT the end of December the sea around Jersey is, without fail, cold, grey and forbidding. Mid-winter seawater could, on the strength of its appearance, be a different substance from the balmy blue stuff that surrounds the Island during the summer season.

THE latest census figures, published yesterday, show that Jersey’s population has risen by an average of some 900 people a year since the last major count in 2001.

THANKS to the first major decision taken by the newly constituted States Assembly, the Jersey Development Company – heir to the Waterfront Enterprise Board – will be charged with overseeing the transformation of the Esplanade site.

FOR at least the past decade, States policies on population have leaned heavily in the direction of accepting that significant immigration is always likely to be necessary to feed the needs of the economy.

PARISHES are still at the heart of community life in Jersey and although established religion is not the force that it once was, our 12 parish churches are far more than mere historical monuments.

NOT so very long ago Jèrriais, the Island’s very own language, could be heard regularly at events such as cattle shows and farm sales. Now, however, Jèrriais is fading away – even in the depths of the country parishes.

THE appropriate rate of remuneration for the head of the Jersey Development Company – otherwise known as the successor and extension of the Waterfront Enterprise Board – must be very difficult to determine.