THE name rang a bell, so to speak, but it took several days – not to mention a bit of prompting from Herself, who claimed to have known all along – for me to recall what it meant to me.

When the penny dropped I said it aloud. He used to write letters to the paper and it was Herself who recalled that he used to live at St Ouen – if we’re not mistaken, it may have been at St George’s Estate.

We were talking about one Mike Le Cornu after someone of that name, living in sunny Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, had a letter published last week. I have a feeling that it’s that long ago that I first read the name that it may well have been in the days when this newspaper was a broadsheet and was printed in town.

Anyhow, enough of the history lesson. The Mike Le Cornu who lives in Essex was commenting on Freddie the Planner’s loophole (my expression) for coastal development in which Senator Cohen apparently asserted that ‘exceptional development’ could be permitted.

Mr Le Cornu suggests that if the Planning Minister wants to enjoy credibility and fulfil the aspirations of the Line in the Sand protesters, ‘the permission for any future development should only be sanctioned by the unanimous approval of the National Trust for Jersey, the Société Jersiaise as well as the Planning Committee which he leads. Only in this way can the “development please” lobby be controlled and democracy prevail’.

Quite so, Mr Le Cornu, quite so. Except that if you bothered to reflect upon what you have written, preferably in the cold light of day, you will find that you are advocating handing over responsibility for a proper function of government to a couple of bodies whose combined functions, admirable as many people find them, do not include such a responsibility.

Indeed, knowing what a sensible chap Mike Stentiford is, I’d risk a quid with Honest Nev that he wouldn’t want the National Trust to go within ten miles of such a suggestion. Mr Le Cornu contends that only by doing this will democracy prevail. What utter nonsense. What on earth is democratic about removing part of an elected politician’s responsibility and giving it to a couple of, in this context, pressure groups?

As far as this bolshie little crapaud is concerned, there are already too many outfits – and I do not include either the National Trust or the Société in this comment – whose membership seem to believe that they have a divine right to involvement in the decision-making process, as well as consultation in regard to their particular spheres of activity.

There comes a time when those elected to govern have to make decisions. The machinery exists, both within the Big House and at the polls, to remove those whose decisions are unacceptable to the majority. And that, rather than the involvement of unelected (other than by their own comparatively small membership) pressure groups, is how democracy prevails, Mr Le Cornu.

John Arrowsmith has done it again. His response to the (well, it’s that time of the year again, I suppose) annual killjoy letter regarding private individuals putting on firework displays was absolutely spot-on.

Until a few years ago I used to do the same in conjunction with a neighbouring farmer – his land, my organisation and we and a couple of others shared the cost – until this idiot who had brought his family to the free show and had had his nose in the trough all evening had the nerve to tell me that if one of his lot had been injured, he would have sued me. That was it. We finished that event off there and then and we’ve never done it since, despite pleas to change our minds.

When the parent who had referred to suing me asked about the bonfire night the following year, my farmer friend told him his fortune. Our prospective litigant and his family returned to England soon afterwards. Our gain is England’s loss.

As to John Arrowsmith, keep at it pal. There are too many busybodies using old people and animals as an excuse to put a dampener on good old-fashioned family fun. But for heaven’s sake leave the insulating properties of calvados until after all the blue bits of paper have been duly disposed of.

WHILE I’m on the subject of fireworks, not one of our tree-hugging, global-warming, scare-mongering environmentalists ever responded when I suggested that the Battle of Britain Air Display would make a greater carbon footprint (whatever that might be when it’s taken out of the box) than Terry McDonald’s attempt at a world rocket record, or whatever it was. I bet that at least half of the two-faced crowd who damn near forced Jersey’s firework man into bankruptcy were probably swilling their G and Ts or Pimm’s and humming There’ll Always Be An England as the Memorial Flight and the Red Arrows flew over Jersey, doing their bit for or against the ozone layer or whatever these creeps would have us believe is the threatened flavour of the month right now.

I read Maria Barnicoat’s response to my comments about young people and the influence of violence on television. Not surprisingly, there were copious references to experts to back up her assertions. My generation was raised on an entertainment diet of cowboy and war films – not exactly Mills & Boon. And as far as I can establish, not one of my peers has been convicted of a crime of violence.

AND finally … I haven’t seen yet the Airport perimeter fence about which someone was complaining the other day. I only hope that this time they’ve got the angled barbed wire the correct way round. Last time it prevented people getting out.