IS it just my imagination, or is the Council of Ministers going around in circles?

The bit of policy I’m struggling with is the ‘Keeping Jersey Special’ findings, which I have to say look remarkably like Economic Development’s existing business plan, except that they are supposed to have been thought up by members of the public.

The circular argument goes like this: firstly, the Island has to produce economic growth in order to pay for its health and social services and the like.

In order to grow, it has to bring in experienced personnel from outside the Island (540 people a year, plus families) to produce the economic growth to pay for the health and social services.

Those people will require housing, so more houses (up to 8,200) will have to be built to house the people from outside the Island and their families who are needed to produce the economic growth to pay for health and social services.
Because the industry on which the Island depends for economic growth – the finance industry – needs to keep competitive, the Island’s corporate tax has to go down to zero, thereby leaving a big hole (which seems to have mysteriously grown, all of a sudden, from £80 million to £140 million). So all the people who live here will have to pay more tax.

Now, all these houses and all these people will need more public services like street lighting, electricity, water, telecoms, hospitals and pensions, so not only will people have to work harder (to provide all the services to all the people who live here already and those who have come from outside the Island to provide the growth to pay for health, education and social services), but they will also have to work longer (four years longer).
I’ll be retiring at 69, then.

And because we need to protect the environment, the homes and the people and the work will have to be sensitively placed outside the green space. So most of the people who can’t afford green lawns and boat moorings will be living in town, in the refurbished offices which have been abandoned by the banks and finance houses who will need nice new offices on the waterfront to impress their clients to produce the economic growth to pay the people who have come to the

Island to grow the economy to pay for all the health and social services and education that the people need who are already living here.

And, in time, when all these people have grown old, they will need to bring in more young people to pay for the health and social services and pensions of the people who were here already and the people who have come here to produce the economic growth that pays for the health and social services and pensions of the people who were here already and the new people and their families who have come here since.

That’s how we can Keep Jersey Special. It will be so special that there will be so many people here that there won’t be room to swing a cat. Or even a Jersey toad.

THE national media is full of ways for us ordinary mortals to survive the credit crunch. The seriousness with which consumers are taking the financial slump is now showing up at supermarket level.

According to the latest figures, the ‘discount’ supermarkets, such as European brands Aldi and Lidl, are securing a bigger slice of market growth than larger and better known competitors. Discounters now account for 5.9% of all grocery shopping in the UK, with Aldi and Lidl achieving year-on-year growth of 19.5% and 14.3% respectively, in the 12 weeks to 13 July. Those are the kind of figures that would get Checkers and the CI Co-op quite excited.

The increase, say analysts, is no doubt due to food price inflation of 5.8% in the three months to mid-June.
Nevertheless, Tesco is still the market heavyweight, bagging 31% of all UK grocery purchases, compared to Aldi’s 2.9% and Lidl’s 2.4%. So they have a way to go to reach the level of sales on the European mainland. In France the discounters net 11% of the market; in Germany it’s 38%.

I’ve never been to Aldi, but I have been to several Lidl shops in the past couple of years. Surprisingly, a lot of the goods are upmarket – for example, bumper packs of smoked salmon – and would normally appeal to the more discerning palate. Much of it is, of course, European in origin and quality. The system works because there is only ever one brand of each item, and the discounters buy in bulk and pile them high. Few frills, but bargains to be had.

The reason Jersey should be interested is that Economic Development Minister Philip Ozouf this month reiterated his penchant for discount supermarkets. So in years to come we could be pushing Aldi or Lidl trolleys.

I LOVE the idea that a map of all the locations of all the mobile phone masts in Jersey is going to be published on the internet.

I love it particularly because, many moons ago, as a cub reporter, I was asked to find out where Jersey Telecom had located their phone masts.

At the time JT were the monopoly telecoms company in Jersey. They only had nine masts.

When I phoned them to ask where the nine masts were located, I was told that this was sensitive information. They refused to tell me, in case the masts were sabotaged.
How times have changed.