EARLIER this week a bunch of UK politicians sat down to discuss the role of the press in the banking crisis.

This particular inquiry interests me not just because I work for a local newspaper, but also because these particular politicians are members of the Treasury Committee, who last year visited Jersey as part of an ongoing probe into offshore financial services.

Their ultimate goal is to find out who or what is to blame for the current global financial problems which are making us all reluctant to spend our pennies. In the process, a large number of people are likely to be called to question, including our own political masters.

The questions asked on Wednesday, though, were of a wider nature, and included the notion of whether the financial media ‘should operate under any form of reporting restrictions during periods of market turbulence’.

The idea that journalists should be nobbled is by no means new in some other parts of the world.
When in the Middle East, for instance, I was told that reporters ‘know the questions they should not ask’. Even on Wall Street, apparently, journalists operate within boundaries, on the basis that a market over-reaction could have dire consequences.

Some UK politicians argue that if the media had not reported the pickle that Northern Rock had got itself into there might never have been a run on the bank and there never would have been a UK crisis.

As the economy continues to plummet, the rush to lay the blame at anyone’s door will be even more pressing. The banks blame the politicians for allowing them to lend money they didn’t have, the politicians blame the regulators for not pre-empting the dangers, they all blame the journalists for exposing the problems in the first place. And this week some of the journalists started pointing the blame at tax ‘havens’, like little old Jersey.

Nevertheless, the idea of being restricted in terms of reporting the news does start alarm bells ringing in my head. It all depends on who is imposing the restrictions and why they are doing so. Once a precedent has been set for one agenda, it tends to open the door for others.

LAST week it was digital television for all; this week the internet has landed. It is the intention of our new Treasury Minister to fling open the window of the World Wide Web to each and every one of us.
The internet, says Senator Philip Ozouf, is ‘an important element of the development of Jersey society’.

As yet, the way such widespread technology might be funded has not been decided. But gosh, just imagine the increase in internet shopping – Jersey Post, who are already seeing a mammoth increase in incoming parcels, will be ordering new bicycles to celebrate.

I do ask myself, though, what the States might want in return. A little public relations here and there, perhaps? An optional screen-saver of the Treasury Minister’s beaming smile, with a little message about all the things Your States of Jersey is doing for You?

Just to make it even more Orwellian, what they start pumping in to every home, they might also start syphoning out. Could it be that the powers-that-be are planning to take a closer look at what we are viewing at any one time, what we are doing, what we are buying?

The fact is that although the internet is a great source of information and a fantastic and cheap way of contacting people in any part of the world, it is also a sophisticated gatherer of information. As internet marketers are already well aware, whichever buttons you are pressing can and will be recorded for posterity. Every move you make is being tracked by a researcher asking themselves how they can get you to buy more. Before you know it your credit card number has come up and they’ve sold you something else on a one-click highway to poverty.

The idea of the internet being available to every home sounds appealing, but not every homeowner will want to expose their family to the darker sides of the web: pornography, chat rooms, spam, fraud.
It isn’t as if the internet is difficult to access. There are a number of public places with computers: the Library is one of them, and soon Broad Street post office will be another.

Personally, as one of many who spends the working day staring at the four corners of a screen, I’d like to keep the internet invasion to a minimum in my own personal space. There is life outside the internet. Honest.

TIME was when shops in Jersey would accept a cheque with little more than a local telephone number.
On the odd occasion you might have been asked to add your address as well, but by and large there was an unspoken code between Island buyer and seller that said: I trust you, and in any case I know where I can find you.

Now it seems that the familiar cheque is likely to disappear altogether. I offered one in a restaurant the other day, only to be told: ‘Sorry, we don’t accept cheques any more.’

In one fell swoop a whole generation are about to be disenfranchised. I know of at least one octogenarian who has no idea how to operate a hole in the wall and wouldn’t know a pin number if she saw one. The beauty of paying by switch card, from a data records point of view, is that every item paid for comes up in gory detail on the next bank statement. A cheque, in contrast, is recorded as just a number and the amount paid.

I may be overstating the case for privacy, but is this, or is this not, yet another attempt to close in on our personal lives? The danger is that by the time we realise just how close the long arm of technology has come, it will be too late to do anything about it.