From Clifford Wilson.
BACK in 2008 certain of our States Members were, in my view, seen to be running around like the proverbial headless chickens, in unseemly haste, entreating their fellow States Members to ‘sign up before it is too late’ to the tender and contract offered by the favoured supplier of a new incinerator to be constructed at la Collette.

We were led to understand that they were anxious lest the all-powerful incinerator supplier should decide to increase the price of the installation beyond the circa £100 million that had been quoted. (The fortunate supplier must surely have been rapturous that, in Jersey, Christmas really does come early.)

It was at around this time that we, the electorate, were treated via the medium of the Jersey Evening Post to a most splendid computer-generated picture of the proposed incinerator, set relatively comfortably within the context of the La Collette landscape.

It is my recollection that the indicated overall mass, scale and, therefore, resultant aesthetic impact of the illustrated proposed incinerator was most significantly less than the truly vast, dominating and abysmally ugly edifice which is actually now under construction. If this is the case, then the public of this Island have been dismally misled. If so, then who will bear responsibility, or would yet another States inquiry inconclusively ensue, ending in a whitewash?

I believe that it is only reasonable to assume that the visual image of the proposed incinerator first displayed in the Jersey Evening Post was released by, or if not released on behalf of the body politic of this Island – the States of Jersey. Assuming that this is confirmed to be the case, then there are a great many of the Island’s electorate who will seek and demand a comprehensive explanation as to a gross and misleading inconsistency.

How the States of Jersey were foolish enough to be coerced into allowing this monstrous structure to be erected in such a prominent exposed setting, beside one of the main gateways in to Jersey, is frankly, in my opinion, beyond all reasonable belief.

It is, I accept, always possible that I have got it completely wrong and that the new structure will be enthusiastically heralded upon completion as an ‘iconic’ 21st century building, to which the Planning and Environment Department will append with all due solemnity and self-congratulation a Grade 1 listing.