WHEN will the economy start looking up? Not yet, if the comments of our States Members are anything to go by.

According to Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf even the sacred public sector should turn down a pay rise this year.

Sadly they are not the only workers to find themselves under pressure to help their employers by accepting terms and conditions which, even a few months ago, would have seemed outrageous and farcical.

The fact is that the cost of living is not going down and no pay rise effectively means a pay cut. No doubt the taxes of some of these public sector workers will have gone up, in line with the 20 means 20 measures. And maybe, just maybe, they might have been asked to contribute a little more to their final salary pension scheme.

Economists tell us that things will start to look up when people start buying things again. One commentator I was listening to last week suggested that low mortgage interest rates and cheaper petrol might encourage them to do so sooner, rather than later.

I don’t know about you, but the Bank of England’s 0.5% base rate doesn’t yet seem to have registered with my bank manager. No bank I know of is offering mortgages anywhere near that level. Credit cards, we are told, are charging the highest interest rates in their history.

In Jersey, petrol prices are not going to make a great deal of difference, given that we only have nine miles by five to trundle around in.

House prices, meanwhile, may have shifted down by a couple of per cent in practice, although I don’t see a noticeable decrease in the asking prices.

Meanwhile more jobs are being lost on an almost daily basis. Some people will pick up new work in firms that have been short of skilled staff for some time. But if the job losses start to exceed the gaps, what then?

So the Treasury Minister has every right to be concerned. In Jersey knock-on effects of recessions are slow to make an impact, but equally slow to react to an upturn.

In truth, even the best advised are not sure when the tide will turn for the better. There could be further woes in the European banking sector, some suggest.

One thing’s for sure: If public sector workers receive zero pay rise, their ministers will not be entitled to one either. In fact, dare I suggest that those who are well able to fund themselves might offer to do so?

IT has been a few months since I last wandered over the headland to Plémont, but no doubt it hasn’t changed much.

Approaching from Grosnez, the blotch of dilapidated holiday chalets will still be littering the horizon. And from the other vantage point at Sorel, horror of horrors, the ugliness of broken windows, flaking paintwork and ‘danger – keep out’ signs will be an unwelcome distraction from an otherwise pristine coastal path, azure sea and majestic cliffs.

The question is, can we trust the owners of this site to do any better in the future than they have in the past? Would it have been so difficult, given the strategic position of this eyesore, to pull down the grotty chalets and at least clear the site and its dangers? I’m not sure how long it has lain derelict, but I for one have been cursing the landowner every time I pass it.

The fact is that whatever is built there – be it luxury apartments, or 73 holiday chalets – will stand out like every other beacon of man-made debris that litters many beautiful coastlines around the world. As the only building site of any size along this stretch of coast it has the potential to be a carbuncle of massive proportions.

Jersey’s natural beauty is all it has got, at the present time, that will stand the test of recessions to come. You can move banks out of the Island. You can’t move the north coast. But you can destroy it with mindless vandalism.

True, not everyone appreciates a quiet stroll among the heather and bracken and, at this time of year, the fabulous mounds of yellow gorse and gentle loveliness of the spring wild flowers. Not everyone wants to look out over the waves looking for cormorants or even dolphins, or listen to the sounds of the natural world.

Some would like to see the whole of the north coast taken over by karting tracks and rifle ranges, extreme sports centres and holiday camps. Some believe the Island is losing an income and wasting its resources by not creating a Costa del Bouley Bay.

Perhaps the developer, Trevor Hemmings, with several billions to spare, is not one of them. But can we trust him?

At the same time, it seems to be the rule that if a site has been built on in the past, it must be build on in the future.

Against the promise of bigger business bucks, what chance for 10,347 Islanders’ names on a petition?

I WAS disappointed to see the demise of Tools for Self Reliance. For 15 years now this small group has been getting together to do some good in a sustainable way by mending tools that are past their prime and sending them out to countries desperately in need of resources.

They have been able to do this because the States has allowed them the use of a shed in town which is now required for, you guessed it, more ‘developments’.

I can remember reporting the activities of this charity when it first set up and being impressed by its simplicity and common sense.

Given the overt desire of so many commercial firms these days to get their fund-raising actitivities into the public eye, is there anyone out there who could – or would – step forward and enable the group to continue?

Or are simplicity and common sense simply not ‘sexy’ enough for anyone to care?