SO the creative accountants in the States Treasury have been dipping their hands into the money we pay for our car parking.

I can understand the £500,000 earmarked for the new cycle path from Gorey, because it does relate to transport and should lessen the burden for motorists in the longer term. But what sewerage and health care have to do with transport is anyone’s guess.

I’m not sure how much impact the extra ten per cent plus parking charges will have on the next quarter’s official cost of living, but in the final quarter of last year, headline inflation went up by 1.7%, compared with –0.6% in the previous quarter. That’s a substantial change.

More worrying still is the fact that according to the States statistics unit, the main ‘drivers’ for the increase were house purchase costs and fuel – both of which are not under the control of our government.

All this does make me wonder how the Treasury Minister intends to save £50 million of States costs. If they adopt the aforementioned model of borrowing from one fund to pay for another, there will be no real savings to speak of.

Much more likely are increases in taxes and the ‘user pays’ principle, both of which will hit the infamous ‘middle Jersey’ hard.

I don’t mean the middle Jersey that Deputy Sean Power is appealing to, with cheap booze and cheap housing. From where I’m standing, most of middle Jersey are not too bothered about pence on wines and spirits, but they do care about the cost of education, 20 means 20, and the slashing of mortgage interest tax relief.

We have already seen that the fee-paying school subsidies have been hit, and this is bound to have a knock-on effect on the costs for parents who are already struggling to provide what they see as the best for their children’s futures. Whereas elsewhere private education is unaffordable for but the most affluent, in this Island it has so far remained an option for the middle Jersey population.

Similarly, those with mortgages are finding their tax burden increasing rapidly as the five-year plan to erase tax relief on mortgage payments draws to a close. A couple of years from now there will be no tax advantage for mortgage payers -– which has up until now been one of the incentives for first-time buyers.

So despite the recent signs that recession in the UK at least is turning a corner, it may be 18 months before Jersey catches up. In the meantime, I suspect, parking will not be the only service that comes at a higher price.

The ugliest option at the highest price
THE purchasers of apartments within the Waterfront’s Castle Quay phase one development were sent a ‘communication’ from developers Dandara last week.
As we now know, Dandara have recently submitted plans to build phase two – three separate buildings, one of them nine storeys high.

Given that the purchasers of the phase one apartments are still waiting for this development to be completed – but are already making payments towards their future homes – it may have come as something of a surprise to discover the proposed extent of the new neighbouring development. Three more blocks of flats, with 280 flats, plus shops and ‘leisure offerings’, will be difficult to ignore.

The two-page letter from Dandara, which kindly informs the earlier purchasers about the new phase two planning application, is couched in the most positive PR-speak imaginable. It says that not only does Castle Quay ‘set a precedent in new developments in Jersey’, but that already 85 per cent of phase one has already been sold. (That leaves 15 per cent unsold, of course.)

As for phase two, well the developers wanted to ‘achieve’ a scheme that would ‘produce great public areas and world-class buildings’. And they have been ‘working very closely with the Waterfront Enterprise Board’.

Dandara also reveal that ‘there was a temptation to design a much taller building on the site’. Heavens above – so has the public of Jersey been spared a monolith of skyscraper proportions?

The developer adds: ‘As a result of intensive consultation with potential purchases, an additional benefit for all Castle Quay residents will be the offering of an exclusive membership of a gym and 20-metre indoor lap pool … meeting the desire for a lifestyle choice which reflects health and well-being’.

I do hope that the correct procedures will be followed during the building works, because the recent Scrutiny panel report raises questions about the building of Castle Quay phase one in terms of the Ramsar Convention. And are three more apartment blocks what the public of Jersey really want for their Waterfront – even with ‘exclusive’ leisure facilities?

Looks like the Waterfront Enterprise Board has once again taken the ugliest option at the highest price – and that no one will be prepared to stop them.

How to make waves in all the wrong places

THE other day, while browsing the internet, I came across a relatively recent phenomenon – a website for the Royal Court.

It has probably been there for some time, but the curious thing is that the contact details refer the browser to a London telephone number.

Now given the number of perfectly adequate PR and communications-trained Islanders – some of whom are currently looking for work – I would have thought that a local contact would have readier access to court proceedings and so forth than someone based in the far-flung metropolis.

It reminds me of press releases for Jersey events that are often sent out from the London headquarters of some multinational bank or financial institution. Inevitably they include a map – just in case the hapless Jersey journalist doesn’t know where to find the Town Hall, or the Pomme d’Or Hotel, or even the Radisson.

It just goes to demonstrate the extent to which Jersey’s legal framework has spread far beyond the shores of this Island. You only have to glance at the details of the latest money-laundering trial – one of Jersey’s biggest ever, we are told – involving a former president of Nigeria, Sani Abacha, and allegations that millions of dollars found their way from the Nigerian political purse into the vaults of finance houses in Jersey, namely Bank of India.

This isn’t the first time that the Island has hosted Nigerian interests. A few years ago the then Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, together with his colourful entourage, arrived in the Royal Square on a mission to thank the States of Jersey for their help in restoring more than £110 million of Nigerian funds to the impoverished country of origin.

Now, it seems, Jersey is to host a trial which once again will be a cost to the public purse, as well as attracting continued international attention to unsavoury activity of a fraudulent kind.

It may not make the mainstream headlines in the same way as the historic child abuse inquiry or the trial of drug baron Curtis Warren, but unsavoury it is, nonetheless – especially at a time when the Island’s economy is looking to India for expansion.