How can you justify this extra expense?

Thursday 25th March 2010, 3:00PM GMT.

From John Shield.
WOULD one of our elected members, or one of their civil service masters, care to answer the following?

I came to live in Jersey early in the 1970s before the UK introduced VAT. As I recall, the prices of fuel, alcohol and cigarettes were a little over half of those in the UK and the Island did not appear to be suffering from any great lack of public services.

Now, Jersey and UK prices are near enough the same. As the differences must be mainly due to increases in local taxation, I wonder why Jersey has been spending so much more than the UK, in comparable terms, and what we have gained that they have not.

This has contributed to our financial problems, but might it highlight overspending which could even now be reversed?

Can anyone justify the costs of importing senior civil servants and the consultancy services they cannot live without, bearing in mind the state they have allowed us to get into?

1
joker

March 26, 2010 at 5:32 pm

John

If you bothered to check you would see that duties on most items are still considerably cheaper than the UK but the mark up placed by retailers is a lot higher and that is why prices are similar.

The reason prices have caught up is mainly because of inflation. Jersey’s and Guernsey’s inflation rates were nearly double that of the UK’s for a number of years due to the success of finance industry and the wealth and inherent demand it brings to many. Increased demand = inflation = increased charges to compensate.

Due to this public sector expense has increased faster than personal taxation which is still fairly low compared to other jurisdictions.

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