National Poetry Day

The theme of NPD is heroes and this morning on BBC Radio Jersey I read a poem I wrote about one of my local heroes, Gerard Le Claire. Several listeners have asked to read it, so here it is:

In Memory of Gerard Le Claire

He tried so hard to look older:
glasses, goatee, gruelling missions
to the world’s end on shoestring budgets;
fresh-faced for all his pains, as if some shaman
had slipped him an elixir, at lectures
they would think a schoolboy had come to the dais.

Imagine him at sixty, walking the shoreline
between South Hill and the Dicq,
with crows’ feet, at last, and his hair silver!

Loving this place, he loved the world more -
‘The local is global’ - et cetera:
rivers in the wrong places,
downpours drumming on the sea,
the earth crazed like old china …

‘We must meet up for a beer,’ he’d say,
pumping my hand, and we had years to arrange it:
this table with its view of the sea,
a cargo ship crossing St Aubin’s Bay,
and two glasses, one empty, the other full.

Anonymous writes: ' Will you be building a toilet block in the new park so you can convert it at a later date to a cafe?'

We have been pursuing a policy wherever possible of combining the refurbishment of toilet facilities with the addition of revenue raising opportunities such as the cafés introduced in Broad Street, The Parade and Havre des Pas. Apart from helping to enhance town life in these areas (I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't think the new public square in Broad Street, with its cafe, fountains and seating, a vast improvement on what was there before), these new concessions have provided local people with job opportunities and have helped to offset the cost of toilet provision by the Parish.

It is of course unfair that St Helier ratepayers should bear the cost of toilet provision which is used by the Island and visitors. I along with most of the Parish Deputies have argued in the States Assembly that a contribution to this service should be made by the States out of general taxation. To date these arguments have fallen on deaf ears but I will continue to seek a fair deal for St Helier ratepayers in the provision of all public amenities.

Thank you, Senator Maclean

The Council of Ministers has been forced to reinstate the funding for the Millennium Town Park by one of their own members pressing the wrong button when it came to the vote. After many hours of debate -which will be available on Hansard (www.statesassembly.gov.je) in a fortnight or so - Deputy Geoff Southern summed up and called for the 'appel'. Senator Alan Maclean, formerly a Deputy for St. Helier No. 2 District in which the promised park and car park are to be built, had previously spoken against the proposition, and, one assumes, fully intended to vote against it, too.

But, he told the Greffier who was in the chair, the papers on his desk meant that the 'pour' button was pressed by mistake. The result, 23 in favour, 22 against. I missed seeing the look on the Treasury Minister's face as the Senator behind him tried in vain to have his vote changed, as I was too busy enjoying this momentous day in the States Assembly; there was even a burst of applause (most unparliamentary behaviour) over the traditional footstamping, and for States Members who have campaigned, argued, and pleaded for this particular promise by the States to be kept, it was an emotional few moments.

The four JDA members all spoke well, especially Deputy Southern, and there were persuasive arguments from the other St. Helier Deputies, apart from Deputy Ben Fox who inexplicably voted against. Daniel Wimberley, Deputy of St. Mary, made the best researched contribution, although Senator Maclean (how he must regret his hubris) chortled as he mocked the length of Daniel's speech. Perhaps the most compelling speech came from Senator Ian Le Marquand early in the debate, when he distanced himself from the Council of Ministers, recognising that the North of St. Helier Masterplan was simply a delaying tactic to avoid delivering the long-awaited preferred Millennium project for Jersey.

The Next Big Thing

Yesterday I attended the Council of Ministers for a presentation on the much hyped and slightly overdue Masterplan for the North of St. Helier, aka How to deliver the Millennium Town Park without it costing the States of Jersey a penny. This project, as its name implies, is already a decade overdue since it was voted by Jersey people as their preferred States sponsored project to mark the new Millennium, a green lung stretching from Bath Street, adjacent to the Odeon, across the private car park (the 'Talman site') and the Gas Place car park. It's also a decade since more than 16,000 people signed a petition calling for the whole site to be used for the purposes of a park, with underground car parking. And if the Council of Ministers have their way it'll be another decade before the first sod is turned and the first blade of grass sprouted.



Amongst the plethora of hiccups, false starts and delays that have probably already cost a small fortune and put a smile on the faces of a whole host of UK consultants, there have been two main problems in delivering the project: first, the issue of the contamination of the ground due to its previous use as the Island's gasworks. But I think even those most committed to the goal of stalling the project would have to admit that there is now enough information to go on in terms of dealing with the contamination - and there's even a couple of million left in the States' coffers to pay for this. (All the rest of the promised States' funding has gone, but the decontamination money is safe for the time being, so it's not all bad!)



The second reason for the delays has been the need to provide alternative car parking, as consultants' reports filed at some stage down the years determined that the original aim of underground car parking was simply not feasible. That was when the idea was dreamed up of putting a car park on the site of Ann Court ... once the residents had been rehoused and the outworn accommodation demolished, you understand. The information sign alongside the site still gives this as the timetable for delivering the park by 2012. Yet when the Housing Department started moving people out of Ann Court, nearby residents began to wonder at the wisdom of putting a multi storey car park there, rather than new sheltered housing, for example, or some decent open space - with a perfectly serviceable multi storey car park a hundred yards away in Minden Place, why build another one on Ann Court? And didn't the Island's commitment to a sustainable less car-reliant future mean that we would think twice about such a project?



The solution dreamed up by the Planning Minister was to have a masterplan of the whole area, originally promised in a few months but actually it's taken nearly twice as long, but then delay really is the common theme of this project. The consultancy that won the contract was Hopkins, who've only recently completed the Esplanade Quarter Masterplan. They asked to see me at the start of the exercise and I was pleased to have a chance to share my vision for the kind of regeneration that would follow the creation of the Town Park. These were not my views alone; they were the dreams and aspirations of literally hundreds of men, women and children who had been part of the popular movement that led to the petition; they were primary school children (now adults) whose models of the kind of park they would like to play in were put on display in the Town Hall back in the 1990s; they were members of the Millennium Park support group who canvassed the views of residents of the area.



The most important thing, I told the consultants, was that people want the whole area for a park. They don't want to be offered a compensatory area somewhere else and a smaller park here, after all, this is a pretty small park by any standard. If you run between Robin Place and Gas Place it takes how many seconds? (it will take a fit child much less). The extra width at the bottleneck of the park can be provided by incorporating the two streets as extensions of the open space, even though they would have to be paved to allow essential and emergency access. The original design, completed at the end of a two-day workshop, accepted this as gospel: that's why the petition was so specific - we don't want you to build on the park. Not a car park, not a cafe, not a toilet block, but parklkand, from one end to the other and from one side to the other (we could and should be getting the Le Seilleur building incorporated into the scheme to provide complementary services for the park). This is what I told Hopkins: by all means look at the opportunities to regenerate the surrounding area; by all means supply artists' impressions of a leafy traffic-calmed David Place, and dream of the gentrification of Bath Street, but your key job is to solve the problem of where to provide the car parking that will be displaced by the Town Park.



What have Hopkins done? They have come up with a scheme that shows a line of three-storey houses along the northern side of the bottleneck, and housing on three sides of the Gas Place car park. The site needs 'enclosing', you see (the consultants employed ten years ago argued that the creation of the park would lead to the redevelopment of the park-side properties anyway, as night follows day.) Green Street car park has found its way into the Masterplan, too, with lots of redevelopment there, and (no surprises for guessing this one) they are proposing underground car parks for the Town Park, as well as for Ann Court! Underground parking, is, after all, perfectly feasible. All of this, and there's more, at no cost to the States.



The Council of Ministers were impressed, as you would expect. Surely this would be the death knell for Deputy Southern's amendment to the Business Plan which seeks to reinstate some States funding for this States sponsored Millennium project! But more exciting than defeating Deputy Southern (such victories pall after a time) here was the perfect replacement for the Esplanade Quarter Masterplan, the multi million pound project likely to be mothballed due to the credit crunch - here was the Next Big Thing! Would it deliver the Town Park? Not in the lifetime of this Council of Ministers. But what a splendid opportunity for more consultants, and for more delay!



There is a lot to admire in the Hopkins Masterplan for the north of St. Helier, don't get me wrong. But as far as delivering the Town Park is concerned it's a blind alley. A decade ago we voted to create a park across the whole of the site, and to put the parking underground - why don't we just get on with it?

St Helier's new party scene

One of St. Helier's main traffic arteries was blocked on Sunday 2nd August by the Stopford Road street party, organised by Rod Bryans (pictured). I walked over to see how it was going and was really impressed by the difference the lack of traffic makes to a community. No surprises there - there's plenty of evidence that interraction between town residents is reduced in direct proportion to the speed and volume of traffic, but it was good to see that demonstrated in practice. There were tables down the middle of the road with food and drink (thanks to the Co-operative Society of the Channel Islands for sponsoring that) and people of all ages (8 weeks upwards) mixing, many of them for the first time. There were also leaflets available describing the history of the road, how it got its name, and some of its more famous residents.

As I met and talked to some of the residents I had a curious sense of this happening across the town, and how good that would be if, say, on the last Sunday of the month, April through to September, town residents were able to turn their stretch of the highway into a village green.

It's probably no coincidence that the first St. Helier street party in many a year has taken place in one of our Residents' Parking Zones or RPZs. Since their inception a dozen years ago, one of the key arguments for creating RPZs was that it would foster a sense of neighbourliness, of belonging to an association of people who share common experiences (like having to move their cars every two hours in the pre-RPZ days) and common needs, like the ownership of a car on Sundays as well as during the rest of the week. I still get a buzz out of seeing the RPZ permits on people's dashboards as I walk past their cars, though the buzz of a street party is even better. So thank you, Rod, and to everyone who helped run the Stopford Road street party. I hope we can use the 'event plan' that was required to snip through the red tape as a template for future street parties, both in your street and elsewhere in the Parish.

Racism in Jersey in 2009

I suppose what I find shocking about racism in Jersey in 2009 is the way it issues forth from the mouths of people whom I know well - or believed that I did - people with whom I associate, work, do business, socialise; that it comes from older people who are naturally shell-shocked with the changes that have come upon their island in the past few decades I can understand, but to hear racist attitudes spouting from 16 year-olds, who have recently been granted the right to vote? It makes me wonder what our expensive education system is doing to inculcate tolerance, fairness, and, au fond, intelligence in our young people. It makes me wonder what we have learnt from the lessons of the holocaust when people can rise up to protest against the renaming of a shabby backwater of a street, a street with few residential addresses and only a handful of businesses, and seize upon all manner of excuses to defend their xenophobia.

But we’re not racist, they protest. Why we know Portuguese people ‘and they’re quite nice, really’ - this is verbatim, from last night’s Parish Assembly; ‘though I wish they wouldn’t talk to each other in their own language when they’re serving us.’ Ironic, that ... And here’s a call logged on my answerphone this evening - the caller gave her name but no number so there’s not much I can do to seek to show her the error of her ways, to convince her - if that would be possible - of how darkened her mind is:

“I’ve just heard on the news that it’s been approved that we now have a Route (sic) de Funchal, and I just wanted to voice my disapproval and absolute horror at that appalling decision. I think it’s a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, we are local people, this is Jersey, if we wanted Portuguese we would go to Portugal, we don’t have a St Helier in Portugal and why the hell should they have a Funchal in Jersey. I really think you should think long and hard before you make these irrational decisions, and upset half of the island. You’ve had people most I would imagine were unemployed Portuguese while the locals are busy trying to work to support this island. I think you need to think long and hard Mr Crowcroft, you’re Constable but the time will come when you will need our votes, and you won’t be getting mine if you continue down this vein.”

Make what you will of that. Or compare it with an email I received earlier the same day from a young man who was at last night’s Assembly:

“First of all I would like to let you know that I am pleased the proposal was approved last night to rename the street. I am also aware that before this could have got to the stage of being presented to the Parish Assembly last night, there was a lot of work involved, which means that there were a lot of people like yourself who were of the opinion this should be done and supported you all the way. For that I am very grateful and pleased.

I went to the meeting last night expecting to find some opposition and prepared for the possibility of people not approving the proposal. I thought people would not like to lose the street's name and all the bother associated with a change of address.

After a while of listening to people with objections against this change, I felt some genuine worries, however most the people I felt they were purely racist and many of them used what could be seen as genuine reasons/ objections, but I couldn't but feel that they were purely describing their true motivation.

Less than half way through of the debate, I really felt so disgusted and humiliated. I wished I had not gone to the meeting, I didn't think I would be able to stay until the end. I really felt there was a lot of hostility and a particular group of narrow minded people who kept claiming they were not racist, but their attitudes denied this.

Last night, I was pleased that the proposal was approved and thought that all the feelings caused by the racist comments I had witnessed would go away and would make me feel better by the approval of the name change. I was wrong, this feeling only lasted a couple of minutes, as I walked out of the Parish's doors I felt humiliated again and like these people had put me back in my place. I even got to the conclusion that no matter how hard I would try, I would never be able to mix in and be a part of the community.”

Despite the victory of 21st century inclusiveness, fairness and open-mindedness that last night’s Parish Assembly represents, the hurt caused to this parishioner at the same meeting is enough to make me weep. I have not felt so disgusted with the behaviour of my fellow islanders since it was reported to me that a person or persons lay in wait for a gay couple to exit a town take-away, in order to hurl them through the windows of a shop in Bath Street on 16th July (St. Helier Day). To date no prosecutions have been brought.

You may rest assured, parishioners who are disgusted by my desire to promote the naming of Rue de Funchal and to raise the profile of our Portuguese community, that I will continue to do all that I can for this community. And I will also do all that I can to make sure that those whose narrow-mindedness and ignorance leads them to mock, abuse or injure homosexuals get shown the pitiful error of their ways.

Dressing up

Last month 'Anonymous' commented, a propos of the fining of 2 Parish Deputies, and the absence of any public comments from the Town Hall about it, "Its all very well dressing up in the fancy red gown but your job has its unpleasant duties too." Well, thanks for that - who would have guessed that the constable's job is not entirely a bed of roses!

Actually there're loads of pleasant duties involved in my job, but dressing up is not one of them, especially for the pilgrimage from the Town Church to the Hermitage beyond Elizabeth Castle which this year takes place on Sunday 19th July. The St Helier pilgrimage is quite short, as pilgrimages go, and takes about half an hour depending on how fast you walk. But if you have to dress up in heavy robes, as a lot of the pilgrims do, it is quite hard work. The members of the Church wear their cassocks, and the Dean of Jersey who leads the procession through town and out across the causeway to the Castle, has to don his ornate surplice. I am expected to wear the red robe that has been worn by St Helier constables for about a century, together with the chain of office made of gold – these are quite heavy too, on top of a suit – and I’m sure I’m not the only constable who has asked himself why we celebrate the life of St Helier in the middle of the summer!

Then there's Minden Day, which this year takes place on Sunday 2nd August, and commemorates the 250th Anniversary of the Battle of Minden - it's usually pretty baking hot for that one, too, which takes place, surprisingly enough, in Minden Place.

Most of other occasions when I wear the robe and chain of office centre on ceremonies for past and serving members of the armed forces at the Cenotaph. Several - the D Day ceremony, Armed Forces Day, the launch of the Poppy Appeal, and Remembrance Sunday - are followed by a reception in the Assembly Room, and we also host receptions for visiting regiments and crews of naval vessels. On such occasions I am happy to take the extra trouble to dress up out of respect for the servicemen and women who are present, and feel that it's a privilege to meet them, to listen to their stories and to acknowledge their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice.