HOW about this for joined-up thinking? We had a swimming pool at Fort Regent, publicly owned and well used.

Then private enterprise comes along with an all-singing and all-dancing one, so that lot in the Big House close ours down, only to admit almost before the water’s disappeared down the plug hole that it should never have been closed.

Then, if my memory serves me right, we’re told that the private enterprise one down at the Waterfront needs some cash thrown at it if it’s to remain open.

We used to have a lot of churches and chapels but many of them have disappeared (in terms of their original use), having been demolished and the land used as a car park, as happened at Royal Crescent in Don Road, been used for storage, converted into housing or, as was the case with the one in Wesley Street, used as an electrical equipment store until it was boarded up.

Now, so we are told, they want to turn the Fort Regent pool into a church, and the fire-damaged shell of the church in Wesley Street into 62 flats, including a nine-storey block, which isn’t very high, but only when compared with the television mast at Frémont.

All this may well be a handful of good ideas. Who knows? However, and it’s a pretty big however, a look around town or in the ‘flats for sale’ advertisements in this newspaper and in the front windows of estate agents’ offices indicates even to a simple country boy like me that we probably need more flats as much as we need a six-lane motorway along the north coast between Rozel and Plémont. Or indeed, as much as we need another church building.

Just taking the Fort Regent situation on its own for a moment, ever since our elected representatives got their grubby little mitts on the quarter of a million quid someone bequeathed in order to create a ‘kursaal’ – a building for the use of visitors, according to my dictionary – the great white elephant on the hill (as it has been dubbed) has lurched about drunkenly trying to be all things to all the population and, with some notable exceptions, failing miserably.

Such were its losses that I remember someone once calculated that it would be a cheaper use of public money if a ten-year-old was plonked at the end of the Albert Pier and asked to throw pound coins into the water at the rate of one every 20 seconds.

On the other hand – and here I suppose I’m joining those who want the place to be all things to everyone – Herself and I have enjoyed watching and listening to some world-class entertainers (in the broadest sense of the word).

There have been prestigious and economically beneficial conferences held there and the place has been used and enjoyed by as good a cross section of this community as it’s possible to get, from toddlers to sportsmen, and from the older members of our society to those who – on their doctor’s orders or because their clothes are getting tight – simply want to be fitter and healthier.

I don’t know to what extent the Planning Minister is empowered to look at other matters when considering applications or whether he must concentrate only on issues in isolation. One would hope that, in relation to churches, swimming pools and yet more flats, Freddie Cohen is able to look at things in the round and consider what best meets the needs of this community.

Otherwise we may see again a repetition of a farcical situation of more than 30 years ago. Then the Maufant Village development was being built on flat land yet less than two miles away sloping land – I won’t go so far as to say it was a valley but it wasn’t far removed – had to be filled in with thousands of loads of earth in order to create what eventually became the Grainville schools and playing fields complex.
Joined-up thinking or what?

I have a measure of sympathy with the view expressed recently by our somewhat mercurial Minister for Economic Development, Philip Ozouf, about valuable resources at Highlands College having to be used to teach students what they should have learned at primary and secondary school, although he will probably think that support in this column is something akin to the kiss of death.

Strange as it may seem, I have sympathy also with the comments in a letter about Highlands from Lorraine Fiander-Hill. Like her, although in a very much more limited way, I am aware of young people who might be described as being failures at secondary school but, thanks to Highlands College, have progressed in academic life to an extent which has astonished everyone around them.

I don’t know what the answer is – nor, I suspect does young Senator Ozouf, but he has a duty to say what he did if indeed his comments reflect the views of those at the sharp end of the Island’s economic development – but budget cuts will not reduce either our dependency on one huge and voracious (in terms of resources) industry and nor will it reduce our equally draining dependency on imported skilled labour for that and other industries.

It seems to me that despite their inevitable protestations to the contrary, our elected representatives seem to think that we can afford (in every respect, and not simply financial) to go on and on cutting public spending in this sort of area because of the ease with which the very skills we should be providing are arriving by the plane load.

Not only is it short-sighted but it is also foolish, unless, of course, we really want another 62 flats on every town site that suddenly becomes available.

And finally . . . Better late than never is how I feel about possible legislation to control the insidious practice of wheelclamping, and many victims will no doubt agree.