SOMEHOW it has been a bit of a slow week for a columnist. There should have been a lot of material but it just was not hanging together.

Potential subjects included the forthcoming elections for Deputies but somehow it was difficult to do so without drawing unfair comparisons with the ground-breaking, record-breaking, epoch-making US election. And anyway there are still a couple of weeks for the hilarity to build up on that score.

Of course, Harcourt, the Waterfront and all things enterprise boardish could have made a showing but it seemed only fair to give the subject at least one week off before having another go. Nope, not one of these seemed to fit the bill when it really came down to it.

Generally something does, however, come along at the last minute – something that can bring on a good old-fashioned bout of righteous indignation. Even as it seemed that all hope was lost this week and that the election candidates would have to bear the brunt of my general autumnal grumpiness the Attorney General and Solicitor General stepped into the breach with the revelation about their parking arrangements. It is not the first time this matter has had an airing, but talk about a gift.

A particularly gracious move on the part of Messrs William Bailhache and Tim Le Cocq, I thought. There really is nothing like creating a situation which is a veritable sponge for criticisms of privilege is there?
And let’s face it there is nothing quite like parking to get the average Islander riled. I’ll admit that there is some self-interest given that as a town resident I pay through the nose for a parking space – and I’m one of the lucky ones because I at least have a space and I can park out of town during the day. I don’t have to do the nightly tour of one-way streets in the hope of parking reasonably close to the front door.

There is, of course, the get rid of your car and the no one is guaranteed a car parking space argument now so beloved of some of our politicians but in the light of that, I would like to know how this free town parking spaces policy for people who are important enough fits in.

You can only hope that there is, somewhere along the line, a part of the story missing and that really an amount is deducted from the annual salaries of the AG and SG to pay for their parking spaces. As important as their roles might be, I’m afraid I would sooner pay for the free parking of the Island’s nurses to make sure that they can start their shifts on time than for two of the best paid civil servants in town.
This may just seem like griping for the sake of it but can anyone really say that anyone getting free parking in town is fair? States Members and civil servants should all pay for their season tickets too.

Everyone has to be at work on time and lots of people in the private sector have to rush about to appointments and leave enough time to make sure they can park without the privilege of free or guaranteed parking. This really is one perk of the job which should be stopped now rather giving the likes of me any future ammunition on the parking front.

Knives are still drawn for Fawkes
YOU would have to have a pretty hard heart not to feel a bit sorry for Guy Fawkes. As plans go, after all, it does not get much more audacious than blowing up the Houses of Parliament. There is all the planning and, even more importantly, all that conviction. It is not a plan that you enter into blithely because one of your mates thought I might be a bit of a laugh. It is not a whim that assassinating a king seems like a good idea for a wet day in November 1605.

The potential rewards and risks are just two high, especially if, as Fawkes did, you agree to be the one conspirator who stays behind in the cellar to make sure that everything goes to plan – and then it doesn’t. He was caught guarding the powder and subsequently tortured for a few days until he gave up his real name (actually Guido, rather than Guy) and confessed. Fawkes, a Roman Catholic revolutionary, then languished in prison until the following January in order to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

Then just to drive home the general feeling of the English population towards him, we have spent the last four hundred years burning effigies of him. Anyway, the point is that you would think that all that would be enough shame and horror. But no. 402 years after bits of Fawkes were spiked up around London some bright spark at HP sauce thought he would add to all this by sticking his name in a survey to find Britain’s top anti-hero.

And what proportion of votes in this masterstroke of a marketing tool did Guido Fawkes get? Just seven per cent. Worse still, and in fact worse than anything else in the world ever, is that that is seven per cent behind X Factor judge Simon Cowell. How in the name of, well anything at all, did these two end up on the same list? One was fighting, however misguidedly and unsuccessfully, for his convictions and the other is merely irritating and fairly rude.

Cowell probably isn’t going to try and assassinate anyone – other than verbally, of course, and we will have forgotten who they were by next week anyway. Without wishing to do Cowell a disservice – actually I do wish to but that’s not the point – it is also doubtful whether his notoriety will manage to span four centuries either.

Even more bizarre, however, are the names of the others on the list namely the winner, Captain Jack Sparrow, (a film character from the blockbuster series Pirates of the Caribbean), Robin Hood and Gordon Brown. Perhaps next time HP launch themselves a survey they ought to make their parameters a little clearer.