HERSELF summed it up in her customary succinct way: they should close him down and then take on all his redundant staff, make them Planning inspectors, on appropriately high salaries, of course, and send them out into the countryside to close down everyone else who shows a bit of enterprise.

She was talking – somewhat sarcastically, in case that lot in the Big House and their hired help need it spelling out to them – about the call by the busybodies at Planning for a review of all farm shops because, allegedly, some of them might not be selling enough local produce.

Why is it that whenever someone like Stan Payn (and there have been scores of others over the years) shows a bit of initiative, decides that he’s not going to take the easy route and turn the sheds into dry storage or look for sites with half a chance of building permission for a handful of luxury houses, but instead sets up in business, some jobsworth decides to nitpick?

I’ve often said that there must be something in the genes of our elected representatives that makes them recoil in horror at the thought that as a result of a decision they take, someone might actually make a few bob.

Having visited Mr Payn’s Holme Grown, and quite a few other farm shops ranging in size from stalls on the side of roads to places like his, I’ve nothing but praise for all of them. In his case, here you have a bloke who was probably the best tomato grower of his generation. No matter what the problem, and tomato growers have faced them all – not least the escalating cost of heating glasshouses – he was there at the sharp end, trying all manner of innovative ways to keep ahead of the competition.

And when I refer to competition, I don’t mean trying to beat the bloke down the road or in the next parish, but trying to keep one step ahead of often heavily subsidised competitors from other nations.

In a word, if after all that Stan Payn can’t make a decent few quid, quite frankly I doubt that the grower who can has been born yet.

When we did visit Holme Grown – and I’ve stressed to Herself that I don’t mind going to places like that but I draw the line at traipsing around supermarkets, never mind examining the sale rail at de Gruchy’s – we stopped for what might be described as light refreshment: tea for Herself and coffee for me.

I doubt that either beverage originated in St Mary, no matter how enterprising growers out there are, so I suppose that that contributed to the more than 30 per cent of non-local produce that made Trinity Constable John Le Sueur Gallichan ‘gobsmacked’.

Perhaps he should concentrate on persuading the powers that be to extend the phone and the electric to his home patch instead of poking his nose down at Fauvic.

I can offer an explanation as to why this particular enterprise has taken off in the way it has: it simply provides what the customers want. And they can get it in pleasant surroundings with helpful, friendly staff and the perennial winning philosophy that the customer is king.
Bet you wish you’d thought of it first, Mr Gallichan.

I SUPPOSE we should all be throwing our hats in the air and gathering in the square to celebrate the fact that those who inhabit the few square yards surrounded by reality – otherwise known in this column as the Big House – have actually made a decision that doesn’t involve themselves and how many years they can stay on the gravy train.

We are to get e-gaming. And we are reliably informed that we are about to cash in on a multi-billion-pound internet gaming industry as a result of this ‘landmark decision’.

Well, to those who envisage that this is going to fill every black hole we create between now and Domesday, all I can say is forget it.

This decision, in common with most that lot make where there’s a few quid to be made, has missed the boat that sailed more than a decade ago.

There’s only one time to get on to an idea that’s going to make money, and that’s before anyone else has hopped aboard. For heaven’s sake, on this one we were even beaten by Alderney (where the biggest export hitherto was empty bottles), not to mention the Isle of Man and Gibraltar.

As others will no doubt point out, now that we’ve agreed to let people who don’t live here use our name (and reputation) to gamble on how many Manchester United players surround the referee when he gives a free kick against them, any chance that those who live here will be allowed a flutter in our own casino?
I’m not holding my breath.

NOT surprisingly, the Economic Development Minister Alan Maclean supports the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority’s move to hive off  what we’re told in the Post
Office’s most profitable bit of business.

As Mandy Rice-Davies famously said – in a quote frequently attributed to Christine Keeler that long ago that both of them must be pensioners now – he would say that, wouldn’t he?
No doubt Senator Maclean will still be insisting that the postal service continues to be run at no additional cost to taxpayers, which means that we’ll be paying through the nose for other less profitable arms of the business.

In the meantime, he will no doubt continue to communicate through his taxpayer-provided laptop.
Makes you laugh, doesn’t it?

AND finally … no noise, no vapour trails blocking out the sunshine and, as was admitted many years ago, jeopardising our position as the British Isles’ sunniest resort, and plenty of space at the Airport car park.

I know it must have been hell on earth for those stranded by the volcanic ash crisis, but
wasn’t it bliss for the rest of us?