WELL over 20 years ago, when Dutch elm disease was decimating this small rock’s tree population – probably much of what was left was blown down in the Great Storm of October 1987 – I can remember getting into what diplomats call a full and frank exchange of views with one of the then inhabitants of the Big House.

In point of fact, we were having an extremely heated discussion – so heated that Herself ventured out of her kitchen to see what was going on.

This particular Deputy had walked past Chez Clement and, pausing to chat, had told me that he and several of his colleagues were facing a dilemma the following Tuesday over a proposal to do something useful with the wood from felled trees.

He didn’t take too kindly to my suggestion that they were elected to make decisions, and from the sound of what he was saying, what ought to happen was that they should fell the trees, saw the wood into planks and then make a fence right around the Island so that they would all have somewhere to sit.

I reckon that it was about this time that the saying that a Jerseyman’s idea of paradise was a row of trees and a chainsaw came into being, but I digress.

The only reason I’m referring to this now is that all these years later I have a measure of sympathy with the bloke. To be brutally honest, had I been in the Big House last week when our elected representatives were debating cutting residential qualifications for housing to 11 years, I would probably have faced the same dilemma.

Before anyone puts pen to paper, I know perfectly well that for more years than I care to remember I have criticised in this column the shabby way in which people without whom this community could not function as prosperously as it does are treated, particularly in respect of the accommodation they are forced to live in and the way they are ripped off by greedy landlords and employers.

Some of those landlords and employers originate elsewhere, and they have brought with them the worst of their own community’s nasty habits, but they are not all imported and there are also many here whose heritage, like mine, goes back to Norman times, who have jumped on the gravy train of greed and exploitation.

I don’t retract a word of all that, and while the situation may – and I stress, may – have improved slightly, the way some non-qualified Island residents are treated in little short of shameful.

As The Boss said in his last Liberation Day speech before retiring to a life of casting a fly and a hook from his back garden into the nearby reservoir in the hope of a nice trout or three, Island residents from all nations and creeds who contribute to this community’s well-being have a right to think of themselves as Jersey people.

Anyone reading this may well be asking where exactly my dilemma is (if I was one of that lot in the Big House) in the light of what I’ve just said. The answer is simple: affordable housing for the majority of those to whom this is a legitimate aspiration.

While the decision taken last week may well bring a crumb of comfort to those it immediately benefits, that, coupled with the almost certainty of a further one-year drop to ten years next year will simply add a fair number of people to those already chasing qualified status homes to buy or even rent.

Even a simple country boy like me understands enough about basic economics to know that when demand exceeds supply, the result is not only a shortage but a hike in price, and to be honest I’m not sure who will benefit from that, other than those who either own rental properties or just buy homes in order to sell and make a killing.

My heart tells me that I should applaud the decision to lower the qualification period and support its proposers when a further reduction is debated next year. My head tells me that all the wrong people are going to benefit, and not those it was designed to help.

As to the other matter they debated at the same time – changing the rules relating to wealthy immigrants so that even if applicants meet the financial and/or social criteria (because decisions are not necessarily made solely on wealth, despite the impression many people have), the Housing Minister of the day can veto applications – I have grave reservations.

I know all about the purported advantages of the ministerial government, but I very much fear that this may be a step too far in terms of the concentration of power in one pair of hands.

I say one pair of hands but acknowledge that such decisions would – or certainly should – be made following the most stringent inquiries and the minister won’t have time to make those him or herself.

I would much prefer the appointment by the States as a body rather than simply a minister of a tribunal similar in stature to the Jurats of the Royal Court, to which the minister of the day could refer such cases. Several heads in such matters are invariably better than one.

And finally … I wonder if the unseemly spat between our top pinstripes over who’s to blame for the expensive euro cock-up which is going to add millions to the already gold-plated incinerator is the real reason behind this ‘vaccines for everyone’ proposal over the fears of a swine flu pandemic?

I ask because the vaccine decision seems to me to be a case of public employees erring expensively on the side of caution.

As to the safety and effectiveness of such substances, from what I read, the jury is very much out on this.