Let’s see if we can vote off the worst performers

Friday 26th November 2010, 3:00PM GMT.

From Andrew Bennett.
IT has probably not escaped many of your readers that Wagner is clinging on to his place in the X Factor house, not due to talent, but due to a Facebook campaign.

Maybe it doesn’t matter whether or not you like the show, but it is a shame that talented singers are losing out due to some cranks who want to spoil things. Perhaps they will change the rules and allow the public to vote for the person they want to send home. If so, I suspect it would be até-logo to our friend from Brazil.

Anyway, when I sat down to read the JEP, on 25 November, I felt that perhaps we ought to apply a similar modified voting system to Jersey politics. But not for the Treasury Minister, who like all finance ministers in Europe is fighting to balance the books in the midst of an economic downturn the like of which most of your readers have never before experienced.

No, we should save this for Deputy Southern and his Rent A (small) Mob, who seem to think that hiring Fort Regent and flying in Laurence Faircloth, a union crony from the UK, is good for Jersey politics. ‘I sent out 6,000 letters,’ we are told…but only about 200 turned up.

Apparently one of the few who attended the protest was Pinocchio, the union puppet, with Mr Faircloth and his JDA friends pulling the strings. Why doesn’t he stay in the UK, together with the tourist protesters that were shipped in for the so called protest march in the summer?

We are told by our friend from the UK that this low turnout at the mass protest shows there is apathy within the Jersey electorate, but maybe it is just a rejection of the sort of politics that the organisers of that event profess.

I had to laugh during the summer when, after the Senatorial elections, the JDA said that Jersey was ‘not ready for party politics’. Well, who knows? But what this told me was that Jersey was not ready for the politics of that party, the JDA.
So back to the X Factor. Wouldn’t it be good if we could change the rules and vote off the worst performer?

But more interestingly, maybe we could do this in next year’s Jersey election. Given the track record of Unite, the JDA and those (few) who support it, au revoir perhaps to them.

1
Pip Clement

November 26, 2010 at 10:10 pm

On past performance it will be au revoir to very few of them.
A large number of country Constables and Deputies will be returned unopposed and the Jersey electorate seldom ejects an incumbent so 90% of the present house will be there next November fighting the same old battles over sandwiches, etc.
There will be little reform, the States have no stomach for it, so we will continue with the present mess!

Report abuse
2
Sally Anne

November 27, 2010 at 8:22 am

Of course I understand that the aims of Unite and the JDA would seem alien to people living in million pound plus houses and who have seen their incomes soar beyond all measure of their actual abilities due to the quirks of our finance industry. That doesn’t negate the logic of the arguements put forward by Unite or JDA. Its amazing how when people over here get a lucky break they start believing their own inflated hagiographies and it goes to their heads and they confuse their own personal circumstances and conflicted stance with logical reasoning to inflict on the rest of our society.

Report abuse
3
peterprice

November 27, 2010 at 12:40 pm

I think Mr Bennett is going to have a huge surprise on election day. The people of Jersey have had enough of the currnet system and change will come of that I’m sure

Report abuse
4
Sanity

November 27, 2010 at 6:01 pm

Pip and Peter. You are correct that things will not change at the next election because most people seeing the effects of the austerity measures in UK, Ireland Greece can see first-hand just what the politics of the UNITE union and the JDA will lead. They are like children who have just been given a credit card and have taken a very expensive holiday. Eventually as Ireland has just found out the bills will have to be paid, except for Jersey there will be no EU to bail us out. 200 hundred people at a JDA mass rally suggests to me that the election results are a fair reflection of public opinion and that the majority of Constables and deputies however elected vote in accordance with the view of the majority.

Report abuse
5
Tony B

November 27, 2010 at 6:34 pm

Lets hark back to ’60s! Suppose they held an election, and no one came?

Report abuse
6
Pip Clement

November 27, 2010 at 7:09 pm

There is wide spread dissatisfaction at the way Jersey is run but the political system is unable to express this.
I would guess that Phillip Ozouf’s policies command only minority support but there is no effective way to oppose them.
The JDA et al cannot articulate the widespread anger felt by middle Jersey at the manager led bungling of the States.
I would bet on the Pitmans, Southern, Labey at al being returned next year but so will Reed, Gallichan and the rest.
No change there, the paralysis and stupidity will continue!
The voters will almost certainly take personal revenge on Phillip Ozouf in 2014 when he comes up for reelection as a Senator.
None of his allies in the States will support him if they think he is going, nothing focuses the mind of a States member like keeping their own seat and it is one of the few times some of them show any decision or independence at all.

Report abuse