IT is quite clear that Environment Minister Freddie Cohen has outraged a great many Islanders through his involvement with Portelet and the development which has been permitted on a so prominent a site above the bay.

Indeed, Senator Cohen has been at the sharp end of intense criticism for his decision to give ministerial consent for buildings which are entirely out of keeping with the position that they occupy.

Some of this criticism was prompted by this newspaper’s entirely legitimate journalistic coverage – notably its ‘before and after’ News Focus spread and its invitation to readers to have their say on the matter. This coverage and the responses that it elicited will not have pleased the Senator, but he should never have been surprised that they were published.

All politicians must accept that they have to develop a thick skin to cope with adverse reactions and even attacks from the media, colleagues, pressure groups and the general public, but all those who occupy the planning hot seat – especially with today’s ministerial powers – should understand that they will require a particularly tough hide. They, more than most politicians, should understand that it is impossible to please all of the people all of the time.

It is, therefore, improbable that the Senator was ever under the illusion that he would escape flak from those who fail to share his vision of what constitutes iconic development in such a sensitive location. He might even have anticipated the barrage of broadsides that he has received from those who have failed to do their homework and have accused him of responsibility for developments – such as the Raddison Hotel – which were signed, sealed and delivered well before he assumed ministerial responsibility.

Sadly, he has also been the butt of insult and verbal injury that all right-thinking people will regard as being far beyond the pale. Abuse of all sorts directed at a man whose primary instinct is to serve the public is entirely out of order, but far, far worse are the anti-semitic slurs – issued, no doubt, by anonymous and therefore cowardly attackers – that the Senator tells us he has had to endure. Those who have stooped to such base invective debase the processes of honest criticism and will be seen by the vast majority of Islanders as utterly beyond contempt.