DURING an enjoyable holiday in southern Ireland, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I stayed for the night in a bed-and-breakfast in a little place in County Kerry.

In the morning I sat tucking in to a light breakfast of bacon, sausage, black pudding, fried egg, hash browns, baked beans, toast, marmalade, a pot of tea and a few other ingredients that made me think that it would probably keep me going for an hour or two until lunch (the other half had pointedly asked for muesli). As we – or rather I – ate, the friendly landlady joined us for a chat.

Where were we from? Jersey? Were we millionaires, then? You can imagine the predictable lines along which the conversation proceeded.

She and her husband had been to Jersey once, many years before. Her memory was how cheap the booze and petrol were. She was a country girl and loved seeing Jersey cows grazing wherever they went around the Island.

She and her husband stayed at a small hotel by the Esplanade with a nice view out to Elizabeth Castle, and almost every evening there was a different cabaret for them to enjoy, or perhaps a ‘crazy nite’ down at the Château Plaisir. Then there was the French atmosphere in town. She would like to visit us again, she told us.

I took a deep breath: ‘You’d notice a few changes,’ I began, more gently and cautiously than is my usual style.

There certainly have been ‘a few changes’ since they came visiting – a tsunami of change, to go with the other tsunami of building development, and like all floods, the water has rushed in, leaving us on one side of the flood and stranded from our past on the other side.

I thought that the budget this week would be yet another torrent that would make the familiar old Jersey seem that much more of a foreign country to us who have known and who remember the Island as once it was.

The idea of a Jersey where the price of booze would be no different from the UK, and petrol no cheaper either – it’s enough to drive anyone to drink (if they could still afford it).

Which is why I was so pleased with Deputy Sean Power, who led the successful rebellion on proposed huge increases in duty on cigarettes, drinks and fuel in this past week’s budget. The Deputy said that ‘middle-income Jersey’ was struggling and that it was wrong to increase taxes in a recession.

He certainly has his finger on the pulse, that one, and I would certainly buy him a drink (not something I do lightly) for coming out with such a common-sensical and humane remark – common sense and common humanity being not invariably the product of the deliberations in the Big House.

And yes, I know that those proposed increases were in line with States policies, and that they would have closed a £4.2 million tax deficit, and that now the money has got to come from something else, which means that the boy Ozouf is having to scratch his head now because he has to find the money from something else.

But, at the end of the day, it’s a tough world out there, and for too long the ordinary private taxpayer has been paying a disproportionate amount of taxation compared to the corporate sector.

No, I’m not encouraging public drunkenness or unhealthy smoking habits or excessive use of the car. But do we deserve to be socially re-engineered, on top of everything else?

We certainly do not deserve to be told about how more expensive booze means we can’t drink as much and will be more healthy, when actually all that is happening is that the government want more of our money, and they perceive drinkers, smokers and drivers as being a soft touch.

As Deputy Power pointed out, the States own the lease of the duty-free shop at the Airport, which has the lowest prices for alcohol in the Island. His successful amendment will be good news for everybody involved in tourism and hospitality, and in the licensed trade, and will be good news for ‘middle-income Jersey’.

I know some will say that in my reaction is all too predictable, in view of the fact that perhaps I have unwisely often talked about my liking for a glass of alcohol-enhanced apple juice.

But I hope that more people will agree with me that the successful amendment for Deputy Power and his supporters was a victory for those who hold the opinion that the economy should serve the public, and not that the public should serve the economy.

AND finally … not only three cheers for the Deputy, but also some more cheers for someone else – the National Trust for Jersey, the organisation that seems to be always in the headlines at the moment, and for all the right reasons.
The trust is also fighting, on another front, the battle to keep Jersey a recognisably familiar and attractive place.

In the latest chapter of its campaign to keep the Island’s coastline free of ugly and inappropriate development, its president, Mike Stentiford, offers Chief Minister Terry Le Sueur the compliments of the season and asks for a bit of decisiveness on saving the Plémont coastline.

For years the trust has been campaigning to return it to nature. Can’t the boys in the Big House make up their mind finally, the trust asks, as the whole question would already have been resolved without this chronic indecisiveness – ‘this very indecisiveness which was used to justify the change from committee to ministerial government’.

Whether you agree with the National Trust’s viewpoint or not, there is no question about the fact that they know how to write a darn good letter.