WHILE I can perhaps understand the thinking behind the reluctance of the Youth Hostels Association to rush back to Haut de la Garenne, that does not mean I wholeheartedly support it.

Indeed, I think it’s a shame that the association appear to have all but ruled out a return to premises which seemed not long ago to be tailor made for the purpose. Furthermore, Herself has a mate – from the colonies across the water as it happens, but everyone’s got to come from somewhere – who enjoys walking and cycling holidays and has stayed at the hostel. She reckoned it was great.

Of course I take the point made by the association’s chief executive Caroline White that they – in common with us who live here and, thanks to an often distorted dissemination of the ‘facts’ by the national and international media, many away from these shores – are well aware of the offences alleged to have been committed on the premises.
But, as I said in response to calls to knock the place down when these ‘facts’ were first made public, it’s people rather than buildings that offend against people – a view shared by Herself’s mate from Guernsey.

I would much rather Ms White and her association would have resisted taking their largely emotional stance in all but writing off any chance of the Haut de la Garenne ‘persona’ – for want of a better description – redeeming itself and, once the police investigations have been completed and the appropriate remedial work carried out, once again becoming a place which can offer the sort of holiday accommodation which was so successful that it provided around 12,500 bed nights a year.

By all means talk to the States about a potential short-term fix – and using Elizabeth Castle would be eminently sensible – but please Ms White, don’t rule out a possible return to Haut de la Garenne at some stage in the future.
In support of that view, I can recall at least a couple of cases over the years – and I am certain there are bound to be more – where school premises were used for the commission of offences against young people. In neither case was there any suggestion that a sanction other than the punishment at law of the offenders should be imposed.

In other words, the buildings were left intact and without seeking to minimise in any way whatsoever what any victim went through – I can think of few things more distressing – so they should have been.

I’ve been accused in the past of many things, including being either the driving force behind the Simon Crowcroft fan club or, at the very least, a fully paid up member of that supposed organisation.

That said, I do not subscribe to the view expressed by him recently that Green Street cemetery is actually meant to look in the state that it’s in. While I have sympathy with the St Helier ratepayers whose hard earned cash is used in part to maintain such places, the fact of the matter is that they probably have a legal obligation to do so.

Sorry Simon, but while there may well be those who consider that allowing the place to look like what it did a couple of hundred years ago when it was a meadow rather than a cemetery does give the impression that it is neglected.

As my old granny might have said had she been around to offer a comment, if you’ve got to ask or, as is the case in this instance, something called an interpretation board is necessary to explain what’s going on, all that means is that what’s happening is not immediately apparent.

In writing this I am mindful of the fact that the cemetery contains the grave – along with an elaborate memorial which vividly illustrates public feeling of that age – to one Centenier Le Cronier, a police officer who gave his life in the execution of his duty.

To me that serves not only as a fitting memorial to someone who, by all accounts, was a brave and dedicated officer, but also reminds us all that police officers everywhere work in the knowledge that theirs is a hazardous and frequently thankless task for which they all too often receive less than their fair share of plaudits.

I probably wasn’t the only person whose jaw almost dropped into whatever they were consuming at the time – in my case a daily medicinal fix of Calvados – when reading that it will cost the princely sum of £107,944 to rebuild a public toilet block at the Sir Winston Churchill Park in St Brelade to replace the one destroyed by mindless morons who set fire to it.

While it may well have been a comfort to the short-sighted among us that, according to someone from something called Property Holdings (I assume that’s the outfit responsible for publicly owned buildings), in effect, because he said that it was important to stress the point, the work will be paid for by an insurance company and not the taxpayer. I do not share that view.

According to the rules by which I operate, there’s no such thing as a free lunch because in the end, no matter what the bill is for, someone is going to have to write out the cheque to pay it.

Indeed, it’s largely academic whether it’s the taxpayer or the insurance company because if the latter pays then the whole of the amount will be recouped by the company by way of increased premiums and those can only be paid by the public, be they individuals or corporate entities such as States departments. In addition, a few quid short of a hundred and eight grand does seem a lot for a loo or three.

And finally … The police gave out a thousand panic alarms in the space of an hour the other day, yet we’re told that it’s safe to walk the streets of town. Strange, isn’t it.