JULY was a funny month. First of all, we had the cost-cutting Public Accounts Committee complaining that the States weren’t spending enough money.

Everyone knows that the States have fallen behind on their maintenance programme and face a huge repair bill. But I wonder why.

Is it because States departments want to see buildings falling down around their ears? I hardly think so, because that would cost a lot more money in the long run. Perhaps it’s because States departments have been put under relentless pressure to cut costs by — among others — the Public Accounts Committee.

Everyone is now busy preparing the same old arguments as we go into another round of spending plans. Those plans do not include some very important objectives because an arbitrary cap has been imposed on States spending, supported by PAC. That doesn’t apply to the police, of course, who as soon as they concluded their investigations at Haut de la Garenne found a new site of interest in their historic child abuse investigations. That’s just as well because if I have to watch another TV reporter talking twaddle in front of the looming presence of the former children’s home, I shall scream.

No doubt there are some people who believe that you can’t put a price on justice and that the police should be allowed to dig up any part of the Island where there is even the remotest chance of uncovering evidence. But you can’t put a price on good education and healthcare, either, and the money comes out of the same small pot.

So after five months of intense activity we’re getting very close to the time when the police and prosecutors should put up or shut up. The inquiry will probably never be successfully closed, but we need to restore a sense of perspective as quickly as possible.

That certainly applies to a certain Senator who obviously believes he is the only person in the States who knows ‘the truth’ about child abuse in Jersey. Unable to find sufficient support among his fellow States members, he has joined up with a couple of Westminster MPs to bring it all out into the open.

Considering they don’t have any responsibilities for the Island, the concern of the Westminster MPs for local victims of child abuse is quite touching. We should obviously all be grateful that we have someone at Westminster looking after the Island’s best interests. And we’re not even paying for them.

JULY was also the month in which it became obvious to all that importing practically all of our food makes us very vulnerable to rocketing global prices. We’re always going to have to import a lot of our food, of course, and even items we do produce ourselves can still be cheaper to import.

Whether it should be cheaper is perhaps something worth investigating, and there is obviously much more scope for small-scale local producers to compete with imports, if not on price then certainly on quality. The farm shops are doing a good job, and the Co-op recently announced that they use more than 40 local suppliers, but we need to do even more. It’s a policy of the Economic Development department to encourage local production, but it doesn’t seem to have had much impact yet.

Escalating food and energy prices had some Chamber of Commerce leaders talking us into recession in July. One Chamber spokesman interviewed on radio was quite emphatic that the UK was already in recession and that Jersey was not far behind.

Had he checked the figures and the economists’ definition of recession, he would have found that he was wrong on both counts. The UK economy has indeed slowed down, but it’s not in recession. It is also not the case that should the UK experience ‘negative growth for two quarters’, as some economists expect, that Jersey will inevitably follow suit. That’s if we don’t talk ourselves into a recession, of course.

THEN July was another month of mixed messages for the tourism industry. I don’t suppose we can expect a rapid turnaround in tourism after a decade or so of hard slog, but there’s not much sign of any sustainable growth either.
The figures at the end of June show a modest increase of 3.3% in gross arrivals for the year so far. But the June monthly figure was down 1.1%, so the growth could quickly disappear.

Not all of the 17,000 increase in arrivals will be tourists, either, and there seems to be a bit of a problem with the ferries which rely most on tourism. Arrivals by sea were down 4.5% for the first half of the year, with arrivals from the UK down 6.2%.

The news during the month that Travelodge is looking for a Jersey hotel could provide a boost to an industry which is relying more and more on low-cost airlines, but where low-cost accommodation is pretty scarce. But the interesting thing about the Travelodge initiative is that it is part of a huge investment by the group, who expect many more tourists to holiday closer to home.

This could be the best news our tourism industry has had for years. The question is whether we are quick enough to capitalise on the changing market.

The Island is ideally suited as a location close to home, but still requiring the flight or a ferry trip which makes it a ‘real’ holiday. UK tourists can spend their pounds here without having to worry about exchange rates, and we pay enough for security at the Airport so that there shouldn’t be any long delays there (that factor alone could be enough to attract some travelers).

There are bargain fares on offer, and a fuel surcharge shouldn’t have as much impact as it will on long-haul flights, and a short flight to Jersey is ‘greener’ than a longer flight to Spain or Portugal. So where are all the ads pointing out these advantages to UK travellers? I haven’t seen any.

Perhaps I read the wrong newspapers or magazines, because I rarely see any ads for Jersey at all. Or perhaps it is that we’re not spending enough to make any kind of impact.These ads may well be in preparation as I write, but it would be a crying shame if we were to miss what appears to be a golden opportunity to give tourism a much-needed boost.

• Peter Body is editor of Business Brief magazine