WHEN I suggested in this column some weeks ago that we should all be working towards creating a Small Society in Jersey to mirror the UK’s Big Society initiative, I had no idea there were so many important people working behind the scenes on a similar idea.

I therefore welcomed whole-heartedly last week’s launch of the business group calling itself the Small Society.

I thought – at last – here’s a group of intelligent people who are really going to make a significant contribution to solving some of the island’s intractable problems, and get away from this constant battle between spending and saving. My euphoria lasted about eight minutes.

It didn’t take long to conclude that the Small Society is actually just a front for taxpayers whose only solution to our problems is to cut spending.

I should have realised from the list of members, which includes many of the usual suspects, that this isn’t so much a Small Society as a Small Minded Society.

It’s certainly light years away from the initiative that I was suggesting which would have recognised that Jersey is actually not a small society – it’s a big society in a small island.

My view is that there’s not much point going back to the horse and cart when Islanders, including members of the Small Minded Society, want to drive limousines and make money in a sophisticated international finance centre.

So all we have got so far from the Small Minded Society is the usual: States spending is going up too fast, we’re only a small island so we shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money running it and – the knock-out punch as far as they are concerned – we don’t want more taxes.

There may be some more useful, relevant material to come, although I would have thought that if they had any particularly good ideas we would have heard about them by now.

It’s pretty obvious that the Small Minded Society is merely a response to the unions who want to tax and borrow as well as spend. I’m a bit surprised that the society members believe anyone will blindly accept the unions’ argument any more than they will blindly accept the businessmen’s argument. Both of them fall far short of making a useful contribution to the debate.

What is really needed is for everyone to realise that it’s not as simple as either group seems to believe. And what we don’t need is yet another group showing their prejudices.

Of course as you would expect from some of the Island’s leading businessmen, the Small Society has come up with a number of very cogent arguments.

These all basically boil down to mathematics. Government spending has doubled in ten years and the size of government should be proportional to the size of the population, the Small Society says.

There’s no denying the former but where does that get us? Do they mean that spending has doubled because of waste or because the States have decided to provide services that the public don’t want? Well, if that’s the case, why not come out and say so – after all, the society includes several businessmen who have spent a lot of time complaining about States spending and prying into budgets, without ever coming up with any good ideas as to how the cuts are to be achieved.

However, it’s the contention that the Island’s government should be proportional to the size of its population that is truly laughable.

It’s indeed blindingly, blooming obvious that Jersey is not your average community of 90,000 souls. What small town of 90,000 in the UK has an international airport or even a small harbour, for that matter? What community of 90,000 has to pay for its own defence (or at least make a very small contribution)?

What community of 90,000 needs three telecoms providers? What small community of 90,000 spends millions in overseas aid? What jurisdiction with a population of 90,000 has to make its living by winning business around the globe in the highly competitive and complex financial services industry?

Small Society indeed! Presumably those organisations that support the society, including quite a few that rely heavily on the taxpayer, will now see the light and refuse any more States help because they now accept that a small society can’t afford it. No hypocrisy there, then.

But what are unlikely bedfellows like the Jersey Association of Trust Companies, the Jersey Hospitality Association and the Royal Jersey Agricultural and Horticultural Society doing supporting a pressure group like Small Society? I’m sure that it wasn’t just a case of a few committee members getting together over a pint in the pub – or more likely in this case, a whisky in the club – to decide to support this taxpayers’ initiative.

I’m sure all of the society’s members were consulted before their name was attached to the JEP ad and the press releases.

But even if that’s not the case, I supposed no harm has been done. It’s not as though the Small Society is actually going to do anything. They certainly haven’t got the guts to put up election candidates.

It’s simply an attempt to get a lot of highly respected organisations to come together to make it look as though all their members know what needs to be done so that they can scare the Council of Ministers a little. It’s a free country (something else we have to pay for) and a debate is obviously very necessary. But it’s a shame that there’s no sign, at least yet, that the Small Society will raise the level of that debate.

I mean you only have to look at the latest contribution from one of the businessmen named as a supporter of the society.

In the JEP recently he was complaining that the States is trying to stifle us like an over-zealous nanny, apparently because a government department has tried to reduce the number of Islanders dying from lung cancer.

He’s obviously right, of course. Government should step back from providing unnecessary services and allow thrifty, resourceful, independent islanders to get on with their own lives and not worry about anyone else.

After all, it’s a jungle out there and we’re wasting taxpayers’ money by pretending otherwise.

But looking on the bright side, at least this kind of argument does raise the prospect of a new niche for the Island’s tourism industry – why not come over and visit the dinosaurs.

Peter Body is editor of Business Brief magazine.