SINCE when has something being too big and too expensive been a reason not to build it in Jersey?

Rather, most of the time they seem to be criteria on the approval ticklist:
Could this project go over budget and be pricey enough to make people gasp anyway? Could this project go wildly over-schedule? Is it big enough to see from the other side of the Island, or better still from France or one of the other islands? Could we all have a long and fairly interminable argument about whether or not the project is actually a good idea?

If the answer to most or all of these questions is yes, then everyone can get excitable – whether that is in a good way or not – about the prospect of it starting. Actually, that is not quite true because you have to factor in the argument time.

The latest example of too big and too expensive is the proposal for a new incinerator and, on top of it being both those things, the chairman of the Environment Scrutiny Panel Deputy Rob Duhamel threw in the fact that it would make Jersey and environmental laughing stock. Well, we’re used to standing alone, right?

In many ways it is difficult to see the new plant as doing anything so much as pandering to our own laziness. Why are we so behind other places in our ability to recycle and the targets that we aim to reach in recycling?

If Jersey goes ahead with the new plant, is it just holding two fingers up to the rest of the world and saying: ‘You know what guys, recycling is your problem. We will send you some stuff to cut up and mush up every so often but we will burn the rest because we are an island and it’s just too hard – we’re quite busy here you know?’

When Guernsey and the UK are looking at recycling targets of 50 per cent, why are we even struggling to raise ourselves above the 35 per cent bar?
I am as guilty as everyone else, but why is that? Do we cushion ourselves with some kind of dillusional invulnerability?

This would be more understandable if Jersey had taken an anti-environment stand. Perhaps by listening to all the arguments and deciding that, on balance, recycling was all a load of (ha ha) rubbish and so we weren’t going to get involved in this global silliness.

But there’s no bravery about it: we are just being a bit slack, that and the difficulty of moving all the stuff that gets separated, if it gets separated.

One of the arguments in the incinerator’s favour – apart from the it-just-gets-rid-of-it angle – is that it will produce something at the other end of the process. That product will be energy. Apparently it could generate about seven per cent of the Island’s electricity, which is hardly a staggering figure but I guess it’ll be a case of anything goes once we eventually run out of oil or it becomes prohibitively expensive.

That said, I was always under the impression that, electric-wise, we were going to be all right because the French are big on nuclear fision (an argument for another day, but let’s see how long the scruples hold out when the lights go out) and we’ve got cables and stuff to France. Maybe that is just another element to my grand delusion.

The £106 million price tag, it has been argued by the Transport Minister Guy de Faye, is that high because we have wibbled about it for so long and if don’t stop then that figure will continue to rise.
But to stop that dithering don’t we need to be sure that this plant is not just an excuse for us to carry on putting up a poor show when it comes to recycling?

One last head-scratcher, while we are on the subject: a friend pointed out recently, actually in connection with another local project, that a probe has been sent to Mars for the budget price of about £250 million, which rather makes you wonder about the sums doesn’t it.
As his partner then said: ‘Why don’t we send our rubbish there, it would probably be cheaper.’