ACCORDING to the calendar pinned up on the door of The Shed, Thursday of next week is Maundy Thursday – the day when the Queen gives as many elderly men and women as her age (83) specially minted Maundy coins.

It’s a nice little earner for many of them, who simply flog them to the highest bidder before they’ve cooled down from being in Her Majesty’s hot little mitt.
However, Thursday week is also 1 April, All Fools’ Day, April Fools’ Day and – especially for our Gallic cousins – Poisson d’Avril. It is the day when the media (national and local) vie with each other to see if any of the population are taken in by the most outrageous stories masquerading as fact.

A goodly percentage usually are, if the more gullible members of Herself’s family – among very many others, I have to say – are anything to go by. I remember when George Baird announced his retirement as States Treasurer and this newspaper published a story saying that banknotes with his signature would no longer be legal tender after his departure.

I am told that one former member of the Big House rang to protest, saying that he and other elderly people were distressed by the report – even after they had established it was all nothing more than a bit of a laugh.

I wish I had taken the call, because I would have told him that the only people likely to be distressed were those with loads of cash in biscuit tins under their beds – something which they were clearly keeping hidden from Geoff Hamon’s successor as head lad at the Income Tax office.

Well, when you think about it, who else would be distressed? I mentioned the gullibility of Herself’s family because they were among the hundreds who drove one Saturday to the headland just past where the old Sorel Pavilion pub (of blessed memory) once stood to view the leisure centre that had been created out of Ronez’s quarry.

Although I’ve never been involved in dreaming up these wonderful figments of the imagination – other such figments are Father Christmas and poor Jersey lawyers – I would imagine that nowadays it is difficult, verging on the impossible.

I say that because there have been so many things either announced or suggested by that lot in the Big House recently that have prompted ‘I thought it was an April Fool joke’ comments that for the average reader virtually anything with a political handle on will be capable of being believed. It won’t be agreed with, but given what our elected representatives come out with on occasions, it is not surprising that it’s difficult to tell the difference between government policy and April Fool jokes.

As someone once remarked, the only jokes I know are political ones, and most of those are up for re-election.

It’s a sign of the times, but nonetheless sad for those directly involved, that job losses are being announced much more frequently than was the case even in the relatively recent past. The announcement that 30 jobs are to go at Kleinwort Benson is a tragedy for each of the individuals involved and their families, and in no way do I seek to minimise how they and theirs must be feeling.

That said, the reason given for the redundancies – the fact that the Jersey regulatory authorities are refusing to licence the firm which last year took over Kleinwort Benson and so the jobs are to be created in Guernsey as a result – is something I think most people would support, and actually speaks volumes for the way each island does business.

It appears that the Belgian firm which took over Kleinwort Benson is not ranked in the world’s top 500 banks – the minimum licensing criteria for banks to be licensed by the Jersey Financial Services Commission – so they’ve decided to move their deposit-taking operation to Guernsey.

No matter how reputable the firm is – and this one certainly had the wherewithal to acquire something as substantial as Kleinwort Benson, so there must be a few bob behind it – I think we ought to be grateful to the FSC for sticking to the criteria that has existed for many years. After all, in these somewhat straightened times, there must always be a temptation on the part of the powers that be to relax the rules in order to do a bit of business.

In this context, those from the UK who seek to criticise this place about its financial services industry should remember the financial débâcle that was BCCI many years ago. Jersey refused that outfit a licence – the Bank of England gave them one. BCCI eventually went pear-shaped and lots of little people lost lots of their hard-earned cash while some of the richer customers managed to pull their money out just in time.

In terms of jobs, Jersey’s loss may well be Guernsey’s gain, but I for one am pleased that despite the undoubted stature of the business concerned, the regulators in Jersey appear to have refused to bend the rules.

AND finally . . . in the almost 60 years since what has become the States of Jersey police was created, there have been seven chief officers. If he is appointed by the States next month, the current acting chief, David Warcup, will be the eighth.

In every single case, from Henry Le Brocq’s appointment in 1951 to the present day, the appointment has been debated by States Members behind closed doors with the public and media excluded. This is simply because the law does not allow anything else.

I point this out only because the conspiracy theorists – my message to them is always that ‘Elvis’ is an anagram of ‘lives’ – have already started their nonsensical rants.

It is also interesting to note that when Mr Warcup was appointed deputy chief, it was clearly stated that it was with the intention of his taking over from Graham Power – the sort of succession planning we crave in other areas.