We spend our money on the wrong things

Wednesday 3rd December 2008, 2:59PM GMT.

From Alan Le Rossignol.
I FIND it intriguing that an additional sum of £500,000 of taxpayers’ money is being made available for speculative visits to India, China and London for 16 delegates from the finance industry to extend its promotion.

Sadly, in the same week it was announced that yet another grower is going out of business because no States subsidy has been made available even though it has been requested.

What short-sighted policy. It seems such a shame that with the demise of the de la Mare glasshouse business at Grouville, following the disappearance of others, most of our flowers will now have to be imported from Holland and not grown here.

This is hardly a green policy, and we are becoming yet more reliant on importation with all the extra unnecessary costs of fuel for transport. Higher prices will follow and we will have to pay them.

Another loss of a local business means that we are putting even more eggs into the one basket. In a few years we may well really regret that we have no growing industry left, having built more houses on sites which may again be viable.

Wouldn’t it make sense to subsidise a diversity of industry and widen our economic base, instead of accepting the disappearance of an attractive asset to Jersey?

In the not-so-distant future we may well revalue our growing industries and our ability to produce locally, especially considering the growing world population and increased demand for resources. The sum of half a million and a lot more seems quite a figure for a speculative trip.
2 Ville du Bocage,
St Peter.

1
JP

December 3, 2008 at 5:46 pm

£500 grand, 500 GRAND!! Is this a joke, what are they intending to do out there with that amount of money, i mean its not like they are off to monte carlo, is it? Where will they stay, india is cheap to stay in, they surely dont feel they have the right to stay in the most up market places our money can buy.

Oh what am i saying, they are states members, they should just get whatever they want. Meanwhle i look forward to paying higher taxes to fund their incompetence.

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2
TN

December 9, 2008 at 2:34 pm

It is a great concern that Jersey growers are going out of business and the island must rally around those whose livelihoods are at stake.

It’s also difficult to witness a decline in the agricultural industry in Jersey, a name so long associated in people’s minds with excellent produce.

It is, however, a fact of the developed world that needs change and with them the industries that meet those needs. Nokia was originally a timber company but now does not fell a single tree.

Jersey’s extraordinary sustained success over the centuries has lain in its ability to respond to those changes rather than be killed off by them. From being a world-leading brand in woollens and having an economy based on cider, we moved to breeding and exporting the world’s most productive dairy cow. For a few decades, we made a fortune from fishing in Canada and reinvesting the profits first in rum and fruit, and then in iron ore. Then the American war of independence put a stop to that and we became a British leader in distinctive tasting early crop potatoes and tomatoes, and a leading British tourist destination, but the ability of British supermarkets to source from further afield and the advent of low cost airlines have made it impossible for us to maintain any kind of leadership position in those sectors because our climate is no longer the best available to Britain. We must face the truth or die.

At the same time, the standard of living in Jersey has risen beyond all recognition and with it our expectations in terms of schools, roads, healthcare etc. – not to mention salaries and disposable income. We are not content (nor have we ever been) to settle for either the simple life or the back seat.

So our question is where is Jersey’s next opportunity to be a world leader? As an international financial centre, Jersey’s world ranking continues to climb – we’re currently number 14 where London, New York and Hong Kong are 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Here is an opportunity to continue the Jersey tradition. Furthermore, 66% of our extraordinarily high standard of living is already funded by taxes on the finance industry – we need to encourage this the way Switzerland does if we want to continue to enjoy the benefits it has brought us.

The £500,000 was not to fund speculative trips but the establishment of three offices: one in London, one in India and one in Hong Kong. This is a miniscule amount for one, let alone 3, offices. It wouldn’t even buy a 3 bedroom house on this island! This grant extends the island’s investment in establishing itself as a world leader in the finance sector to £1.5 million a year – a fraction of what we invest in promoting tourism and agriculture, which contribute a tiny proportion of what the finance does towards the island’s well-being.

Let us indeed be concerned for people’s livelihoods; let us indeed keep public servants accountable; but in the process, let’s not break with centuries of successful responding to the times and shoot ourselves in the foot.

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