I'm not planning on standing this time because the voting public gave me a simple choice:
I could spend another 14 years (or more) banging my head against the brick wall of utter indifference that is the Jersey electorate
Or
I could take my ideas off island to the rest of the world where I will find supporters and thereby change the world - and Jersey along with it as they are part of that same world
Which would you choose?
The reason for this is the refusal of the Jersey people to acknowledge the problems we face as an island – even though they moan about them continually
Jersey faces two sets of problems:
Those that under its control
Those that are not under its control
Although the 2nd type are bigger and nastier than the 1st, it is actually the 1st type that will destroy us because we utterly refuse to do anything about them
In the 1st type, there is really only one problem:
It is usually described as having too many people on the island. In reality, it is not that there are too many people. The reality is that there are too many arseholes
An arsehole is someone who is only interested in taking from the island and giving nothing back in return. They don't intend to retire here but plan on returning home - whether that's to
England,
Scotland,
Ireland,
Portugal,
Poland
or where ever.
And because they are not going to have to live with the consequences of their actions, they don't care what kind of wasteland they leave behind them.
Now don't get me wrong: there are people from England, Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, Poland and where ever who have made Jersey their home, raised their children here and contribute to the island's life. I consider them as every bit Jersey-born as myself. But that's because they're not arseholes.
This wouldn't be such a big problem if there weren't so many of them. Out of an island population of over 103,000, at least 100,000 of them are arseholes. Note: that also includes many Jersey people there because they have been infected by the same short-sightedness.
And until we get the number of arseholes under control, we are never going to be able to sort out this increasing mess we find ourselves in. Nor are we going to be able to deal with the 2nd type of problems that also threaten the island.
Now the good news is that this problem is self-solving. The bad news is that it will only be solved by a complete and catastrophic failure of the island's economy. The arseholes will inevitably make the island unworkable and then they will leave.
And I expect this to happen in the next 3-4 years - just in time for the 2026 election.
Now this will be very sad because an awful lot of people will get hurt when this happens and this is particularly sad because it is all avoidable if only they bothered to listen to me or someone like me.
However, I don't feel bad about this because they're not stupid and they know that this is coming. But they are not worried because they sincerely believe that they will be able to get out before it all collapses. But they won't because they'll stay here just a little longer to stuff more money into their pockets before they leave – until it is too late
So how is this collapse going to come about?
Well, it will probably start with the loss of the 15,000 jobs in the finance industry due to be replaced by AI. This was put forward at then end of 2018, just after the elections. And as the finance industry now only employs 22% of the workforce, from past highs of 70%, we can see that it is going on apace.
When those 15,000 jobs go, that will mean that at least 10,000 families will no longer be able to support their mortgages – either because they no longer have any work or having found work elsewhere suddenly lose their cheap-bank-subsidised mortgage - and will be forced to leave the island in search of work. That will be a reduction in the island population of between 20,000 to 30,000 people.
The 10,000 properties dumped onto the market will cause the collapse of the property market. This will end all new private housing development. When combined with the massive loss of tax revenues that this exodus will produce, that will end all public spending on property and will effectively mean the end of the construction industry, our second biggest employer after the States of Jersey.
That will result in another 20,000 to 30,000 people leaving and another 10,000 properties dumped on the market.
This will destroy retail and hospitality resulting in further losses and more people leaving the island.
This will bankrupt the States of Jersey resulting in yet another exodus of people as civil servants find that they no longer get paid and so leave the island as well.
At the end of this, the island will be left with a much lower population,
skill gaps,
no economy,
empty properties
and a decaying infrastructure.
In short, it will look very similar to Germany and Japan at the end of World War 2.
In fact, it will look very much like it did at the end of the Occupation in 1945.
Now you can see why some people call me a terrorist. Although there is a certain irony because this is precisely what I have been working to prevent rather than cause it. So technically, I am an anti-terrorist.
However, people consider me a terrorist because I dare to talk about these things rather than pretend that everything is peachy and will be able to continue this way forever.
For me, the saddest part of this whole thing is that all of this pain is self-administered. No one did this to us - we did it to our selves.
We had a booming economy that could survive the destructiveness of even this many the arseholes. And we killed it - because we thought that we were cleverer than Europe.
I am, of course, referring to Zero/Ten where instead of losing £8 million by the elimination of Offshore Company Tax, we chose to lose around £128 million by cutting how much the banks paid and eliminating company taxation entirely. Although, that was chronically and stupendously stupid, on its own, it was not the cause of the mess we find ourselves in today.
That was the decision that the only way to raise that lost money was by personal taxation. On paper, it didn't look so bad: £100 million divided by 100,000 is only £1,000 extra each year for every man, woman and child on the island and that only represents just over 3% out of the average earnings of £30,000 per year – ignoring the fact that many of those people are not earners – being children, the elderly, the disabled and the unemployed.
The only problem with that is something called Supply-Side Economics which states the paradox that the more taxes a government charges, the less money it actually raises.
Now we can see that clearly operating in VRD where each year it had to be raised because the money it produced was less than the year before until the whole system collapsed and it had to be scrapped/
We're now seeing it again with GST where it started with 3%, it is now 5% and they keep reducing the de minimus so more and more goods are taxed in effort to get more money simply because not only is GST not working, it is also killing local businesses because people are buying more and more online in response to the rises. And as it killls local businesses, it reduces the number of people working in those industries which reduces the income tax that is raised
And we can see the reverse in France. A few years ago, they reduced the VAT paid on building materials from 20% to 5% on a trial and then decided to keep it going because they getting more money from the lower tax.
Yet each year, the government refuses to learn this lesson and keeps adding more taxes.
And you can guarantee that after this next election, they will raise taxes again
However, they do have one idea of how to raise taxes without just increasing them.
And it is this idea that is the worst of them all.
They reasoned that if you just increased the population, it would spread the burden.
And that decision lit a fuse that is inevitably going to blow the island apart
There are 2 problems here:
The first is that we have an immigration policy that actively encourages arseholes and discourages non-arseholes.
If you are a professional people with a useful qualification like
teachers,
doctors,
nurses
engineers
and the like
that would actually contribute to the economy. You could only stay for 3 years, at which point, you would have to give up your job
Then you would be given the choice of staying on in Jersey by getting an unqualified job or leaving the island to pursue your career
What serious professional is even going to contemplate coming over here under those circumstances?
Meanwhile, you can step off the boat or the plane with
no job,
nowhere to live
no money in your pocket
no skillsets to offer
a substance addiction and
a criminal record
and you can stay for as long as you like
Why should we be surprised that the people who come over are arseholes under those conditions?
And the civil service is making it worse. They just keep increasing their own numbers even though those extra people don't actually do anything useful.
We know this because Charlie Parker told us when he first started that there were over 3,000 jobs that were useless and that he was going to get rid of them.
Instead, and in the middle of a pandemic. he actually increased them by 400 in 2020.
Now that is a lie. That is only the 400 that they could not hide by
contracts,
consultants
and quangoes.
So I hate to think what the real figure is. And this is not going to slow down because government doesn't want it to.
Every increase in civil servants, increases the paygrade of the existing civil servants. We know this because in both cases of the appointment of child commissioner and the charity commissioner, we were told that it cost an extra £1million a year. That wasn't the money paid to those two people. It was the money paid to those two people AND all of their managers
So between the arseholes we are bringing in for the private sector and the arseholes we are bringing in for the public sector, we are well and truly screwed
But that is only the first problem
The second problem is that no one has bothered to work out how many people they needed or the sheer cost of the infrastructure that is going to be needed to support them.
During the 2018 elections, the figure put forward was that we needed a 1,000 new houses.
Just after the election, I was told by a civil servant that the number was actually 8,000. So I asked the obvious question “where are we going to put them?” and I got the glib answer “oh we'll find somewhere”. So I pursued it a little further
OK, those 8,000 houses are going to need to be connected to the road system, so how much extra road is that?
Those 8,000 houses are going to need electricity, water and sewage management. How much extra will we need to invest in those utilities to support those 8,000 houses?
And what about waste management? How much extra rubbish will 8,000 extra houses produce?
And 8,000 houses means 8,000 couples or 16,000 people. So they will want car parking for 2 cars per household and an extra 2 car parking spaces in town representing a total of 32,000 car parking spaces. Where are we going to put them?
And 8,000 couples will mean at least 8,000 children. Where are they going to go to school?
So, 8,000 houses mean an increase in population of at least 24,000 or 24% increase in the population.
Can our hospital handle an increase of 24% in population?
Can our airport and harbour handle an increase of 24% more people AND 24% more freight coming into and going out of the island?
How much extra cost will those extra 8,000 houses be to the states of Jersey?
With each question, the civil servant's jaw dropped a bit more. This was the first time, he had considered this – and it was his job to consider it.
You see, each new person in the island is not just a new taxpayer. They are also a new cost for the infrastructure to adjust to in order to support them.
The question I have repeatedly asked is: can we actually afford to increase the population? To put it another way: is each new person actually costing us more than we will ever get back in tax?
And no one will answer that question because it is too damn scary
OK, so what comes after this End-of-the-world scenario I have painted?
Does the island just sink beneath the waves and become the stuff of legend like Atlantis?
Well that is one option. But it is not the only option.
There is one other option: we do what we did after World War 2 – we re-build
To do that, we must return to the spirit and vision we had before 1961: we must learn to look beyond our shores. find new markets, develop new skills and export to the world as we did in the past with such things as
lace,
cider,
ship building,
knitting Jerseys,
farming,
tourism
and even finance
and a whole bunch of things I've missed.
We have faced this very problem so many times before, and overcome it so many times before, you'd think we would be used to it by now – or at least not act quite so surprised when it happens again.
So, what new markets can we get into?
Well, it's quite obvious that we are at a real disadvantage if we move physical objects. The English Channel is a real barrier to the movement of physical objects.
So that rules out the primary and secondary economies of extraction and manufacturing – and that only leaves the tertiary economy known disparagingly by some idiots as the services economy.
The smug farmer sitting on their tractor thinking that they are contributing something of real value to the economy unlike those useless tertiary jobs forgets that
that tractor only exists (like the plough before it) because an army of tertiary engineers designed it – and the factory that built it – and the roads that connected the factory to the farm
That the farmer is only able to grow so much food because an army of tertiary chemists developed better fertilisers and pesticides to increase their yield
That the farmer is able to sell their produce because tertiary logisticians and tertiary marketers connected buyers with the farmer and organised to get that produce to those buyers
That some tertiary marketer told the farmer what was the most profitable crop to grow in the first place
And all the while, some tertiary teachers are providing the farmer's children with an education for a better future
While at the same time, tertiary doctors and nurses, tertiary firefighters, tertiary policemen and tertiary military forces keep the farmer and their family safe and healthy all of the time.
The true effect of the tertiary economy on our lives is as profound as it is ignored.
I mean, do you really think about the sheer number of skilled people it takes to keep your internet connection working? Not just locally and nationally, but internationally as well? No you don't. You just switch on your laptop and order from Amazon and never give a second thought to the army of people who make that possible.
And to take advantage of that tertiary economy and the opportunities it provides, all we have to do is reverse our present immigration policy and actively seek to encourage qualified professionals to make Jersey their home rather than actively discourage them.
And then we would have access to the very people we need to help us tackle that second set of problems I mentioned at the very beginning.
