IT was one of those nights last week when, having woken in the clammy, airless early hours, I found it hard to re-enter the oblivion of sleep.

Like a computer flicked on from its slumbers, my brain clicked into gear and started mulling over the problems of the Island. As the discordant melody of glasshouse vents squeaking and groaning jarred in the still night, I resorted to the usual methods of inducing sleep.

When counting sheep proved useless, I turned to counting States Members scurrying hither and thither around the Royal Square. Nor did that work because there are only 53, and as you count they all keep coming back again and again.

By the fourth lap, the vision was bordering on nightmarish proportions so I found myself drifting not into sleep but in a surreal world of bizarre scenarios.

How, I found myself pondering, would I react if while sitting on a rock at low water contemplating life, the universe and everything, a flying saucer landed and out popped a little green man demanding to be taken to my leader?

The first step, according to every space traveller’s essential bedtime reading – The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – is: ‘Don’t panic.’

First establish if the alien if friendly or the scout of a Vogonesque destructor fleet on a mission to demolish the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. If, after making acquaintances, I felt reassured to assist the little green man, exactly which among our ‘leaders’ would I take him to?

There are some who would say that there is no point taking a visiting alien to meet the Council of Ministers, as they come from another planet anyway and have most probably met loads of them – green or of whatever hue. A good starting point could be your friendly neighbourhood Constable of the Parish.

Should this unlikely scenario ever occur to yours truly on a foray to the nether tidal regions of the Royal Bay of Grouville, I wonder how Dan Murphy and his good lady would react – let alone Toby, their dog – if I turned up on their doorstep with a little green man in tow for a cup of tea and a digestive or two?

On second thoughts, I’m not sure if a Constable is the appropriate leader to introduce to an alien: how do you explain the notion of the officeholder being regarded as the ‘Father of the Parish?’ That concept could take some explaining to one not familiar with our idiosyncratic parochial ways.

There’s also the threat of a twinning offer and another tatty back street of St Helier being renamed Rue du Clingon or Avenue de l’Ursa Minor Beta.

As the first light of dawn began to break the sticky gloom, a vision appeared in the form of the jolly green giant of Island politics, Deputy Daniel Wimberley.What better ‘leader’ to meet and greet little green men than one who has devoted himself to good causes and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to save the planet?

He is also the only politician to have made a resoundingly sensible suggestion during the Silly Season. While his colleagues decide how many of them there should be, what should and should not be cut or who to slag off next on their tedious blogs, the man from St Mary has come up with a sensible solution to a scourge of modern Jersey – speeding cars.

Deputy Wimberley has been ticked off in his short political career for not being the most organised of the current shift of the Laughter Factory, but his proposals to revise the Island’s speed limits aren’t at all bad.

To begin with, Deputy Wimberley wants to up the maximum speed in green lanes, but only if the law was enforced more rigorously and transgressors were properly penalised.

But before the boy- and middle-aged-racers start reaching for their gear sticks, his proposed hike is only from 15 mph to 20 mph.

Furthermore, he would like to see three ‘easy and consistent’ speed bands, reflecting the growing trend in the enlightened countries of northern Europe: 20 mph for urban areas, village centres, near schools when pupils are on the move and on all narrow roads; 30 mph in built-up areas; and 40 mph everywhere else.

No doubt the St Martin honorary police are already hard at work making more of their dinky home-made card and crayon road signs. Don’t they just fill in the letters so neatly? And what excellent practice for keeping a firm grip on speed guns as they hopefully direct them on more occasions in the direction of those drivers who regard Grande Route de Faldouet and Maufant as link roads to Silverstone.

Now before the local branch of the Jeremy Clarkson Fan Club get on their high horse-powers, perhaps they might like to explain why anyone needs a high-performance car in a place as small as Jersey.

Moreover, why do so many motorists insist on blatantly ignoring speed limits and then complain like billy-o when they get caught? Speed limit exists for a reason: excessive speed kills!

Twenty means 20, just as 30, 40 and 15 mean what the digits show on road signs.
Yet when Islanders get behind the wheel, they seem to take these limits as minimums and not maximums.

Speeders are the most obvious lawbreakers in this Island, and in the absence of speed cameras and even a modicum of enforcement, let alone a rigorous campaign to reduce car speeds, those who habitually stick two fingers up at law-abiding road users simply get away with breaking the law on an hourly basis.

No doubt the review group looking at Islandwide speed limits has heard many suggestions like those put forward by the Deputy of St Mary. His simple proposal makes common sense – which is something that this Island lacks, much the same as reason goes flying out the windscreen when the advocates of speed are asked to keep the pressure off the throttle.

To make it to the statute book, a proposal must be applied against Hedley’s Law: ‘If something makes common sense, is simple and inexpensive to implement, and is capable of being easily understood by the good burghers of Jersey, it cannot possible work.’

Unfortunately, as Deputy Wimberley’s proposal makes common sense, it is doomed to fail.
Nice try, though.