Nonce-catcher O'Connor calls for paedos to face tougher sentences

The JEP has reported that the veteran paedo-catcher Cheyenne O'Connor has called for convicted paedophiles to face tougher sentences and warned that Jersey's loose anti-nonce laws could encourage paedophiles to come to Jersey to abuse children. Well, imagine my shock.

O'Connor, a vigilante who poses as teenage boys and girls in order to catch child sex criminals, said that although courts have the power to impose the same sentences as in the UK, they too-often let abusers off with a slap on the wrist, and said that she would support a two-year jail term for the first offence and a five-year term for repeat offenders.

However ironic the JEPaedo's newfound support for campaigners against child abuse, O'Connor is sadly entirely right. Jersey is, and always has been, a safe haven for those who want to abuse children. All you need to do is just look at O'Connor's Facebook page, Unknown Jersey, which documents Cheyenne's efforts to expose nonces and the trials and sentencing of the abusers in question. Robert Lupton le Masurier - attempted to meet a child for sexual grooming, got seven months. Luis Daniel da Silva Ferreria - attempted to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex after six months of grooming, got ten months. Jason Sutton - tried to meet an underage boy for sex in a car park, got ten months. The law states that these guys could've gotten up to 10 years - the courts are setting a consistent pattern of major undersentencing of serious criminals.

I guess my reaction to this sort of thing amounts to "it's a shame, but it's not a shock". Anyone who followed closely the "Independent" Jersey Care Inquiry or the Trevor and Shona Pitman bankruptcy case will know that until a couple of years ago, the Royal Court counted among its Jurats evidenced participants in the Victoria College child abuse coverup. The police investigation into the "paedophile yatchsmen" case, where huge numbers of children from Haut de la Garenne were loaned to rich boatsmen as sex slaves, took 1,776 statements from 192 alleged victims and identified 151 alleged abusers - of those abusers, precisely seven were successfully prosecuted. You have senior politicians who lied to the Care Inquiry, the coverup of serial murder and rape, the illegal dismissal of a police chief because his child abuse investigation refused to be the stage-managed puppet show the official inquiry ended up being and the Mugabe-esque house raid of a senior opposition politician.

You also have the people who masterminded all this - the coverups, the paedophilia, the corruption, the elaborate piece of theatre that was the Care Inquiry - remaining either in major leadership positions or in cushy retirement.. You've got your William Bailhache, your Tim le Cocq, your Philip Bailhache, your Frank Walker, your Terry le Main. All masterminds behind the coverup of the vilest crimes imaginable, and all the ones that got to walk away - along with virtually everyone else the Care Inquiry could've and should've exposed. This society of ours is infested from top to bottom with those who either engaged in or conspired to cover up some of the most disgusting crimes against hundreds of people that you can possibly imagine.

Is it any wonder that these low-level paedos are getting a slap on the wrist? I mean, at least they're getting some sort of punishment. Of course, if they were rich and part of the establishment, the feudal forces who actually dominate our so-called democracy would probably have worked night and day to ensure they got to walk away.

Just like the rest of them.

A shame?

Yes.

A shock?

Hardly.

Richard Buchanan and the democracy problem

Richard Buchanan is not a man I expected to like.

63 years old, a banker by trade and an ex-copper, Buchanan perhaps exemplifies the classic ultra-conservative Jerseyman the likes of which I would prefer to see flushed along with their ideas about Jersey’s political system back to the 19th century. Having faced no election, since joining the States he has been catapulted into the position of Assistant Chief Minister, where his principal job so far has been to put on John le Fondré’s hat and speak for the Chief Minister while said Chief Minister takes a cosy 3-week holiday.

His latest venture into the spotlight has been in comments made relating to Senator Sam Mézec and his criticisms of the parish system (which we’ve already covered extensively). Buchanan has not only alleged that Mézec is showing a “clear lack lack of understanding of how the parish system worked” and called him “misinformed” - he also called the parishes “inclusive” and said there was “plenty of information” about the upcoming elections!

It’s worth pointing out that our Richard has been involved in with the Parish of St Ouen for over a decade as an honorary policeman and Centinier, and now obviously runs the place. I’m sure that from his perspective, as a paid-up, card-carrying member of the parish establishment, a notification in the Gris Ventre and a small notice in the JEP gazette is just fine, but for ordinary people that just ain’t enough. I like to consider myself fairly politically aware and I found out about the last St Ouen parish assembly by accident browning the A View From the West blog - for someone who isn’t particularly political, this stuff will pass right over their heads.

The Connétable needs to appreciate the reality of the situation. His last rates meeting was attended by about 30 people, the vast majority of which were interested in basically spectating. Two questions from the floor, and a seat on the Accounts Committee left empty. A dry experience? To say the least of it. Of course it is! What do you expect from an antidemocratic system, hijacked by establishment geriatrics and so far removed from the lives of ordinary parishioners that it may as well be taking place on Mars. This isn’t acceptable in what’s ostensibly a 21st century democracy, full stop.   As Senator Mézec said - modernise, or become an irrelevancy. I don’t want to see our parish system retreat up its own arse, but guess who has the power to do something about it? The Comité de Connétables. Write to, phone or email your representatives. Go up to them in Morrison’s, go to their surgeries, graffiti your parish hall with pro-democracy slogans - demand democracy! Democracy is what we all deserve and it’s what we all must have.

Nothing less can be accepted.

Fresh blow to Parker as civil service unions threaten strike action

Oh, Charlie... this just ain’t your month, is it?

Not 3 weeks after the hapless SOJ Chief Executive was revealed in a major scandal to have been granted full housing quallies as a condition of his employment, Charlie Parker has been humiliated once again as major civil service unions have not only rejected his latest pay offer, but have threatened to go on strike in order to get a better deal.

Since March, and as part of his grand plan to reform government in Jersey, Parker has been failing attempting to negotiate a series of two-year pay deals with unions representing States employees. Parker’s opening bid, despite an organisation-wide propaganda drive, roundly rejected by civil service unions and, since then, negotiations have been ongoing - apart from a short break in May, when SOJ negotiatiors tried to make a show of force by not bothering to show up to talks. The unions weren’t impressed.

Charlie’s latest offer is hardly much less of a piss-take than his opener, as far as civil servants are concerned - while manual workers would receive a 7.9% rise, doctors 7%, nurses and midwives 6.6% and teachers and uniformed services 6.1%, civil servants are being asked to suck up a 4.1% rise. For civil servants, more than half of their deal is made up of non-consolidated payments - essentially a one-off payment that adds nothing to their actual salary or pension. Once again, public sector unions aren’t impressed. Their response? The deal “isn’t worth the paper it’s written upon” and that they’re now seriously considering going on strike. Jersey Civil Servants Association chairman Terry Renouf, spokesperson for both Prospect and the JCSA, wasn’t having any of it, slamming Parker’s offer as a “very damaging approach” and saying it “represents a further degradation of the standard of living for our members and their families on top of the recent years where below cost of living awards have been made. The offer does nothing to counter the already low morale amongst civil service staff, who continue to receive a lack of respect from their employer. No one has a problem with doctors, nurses and so on getting paid more but not at the expense of other pay groups. Non-consolidated cash payments are not worth the paper they are written on – they are non-pensionable and not added to base salary. At the end of the day, there is only a certain amount of goodwill in the pot, and now I’m afraid to say that it has drained away. This is very disappointing for our current members, and it is going to discourage people from coming to work here because they will be able to see quite clearly that the States of Jersey is not a good employer.”.

“We will ballot our members on the current offer with a recommendation to reject and are considering an industrial action ballot if the offer is rejected.”

Yikes. I hope Parker realises that the PR battle a strike would necessarily involve isn’t something he’s got a chance in hell of winning. Both among his own staff and among the public, Parker is about as popular as plague, especially after the recent quallies fiasco. The gravy train him and his interim directors are widely perceived to be riding isn’t a great look, to say the least, and this escalation is hardly going to help matters. Civil servants shouldn’t be expected to lie down and take it - Parker’s intransigence is what has escalated things this far.

Let’s hope he doesn’t escalate further.

Connétable de St. Ouen updates Parish website after criticism

Just a quick PSA for my fellow gris ventres - following a request by yours truly to update the Parish of St. Ouen website, the Connétable, Richard Buchanan, has made significant additions to the website to include names and contact details for each and every elected parish official - Procureurs, Centiniers, Vingteniers, Constable's Officer, Roads Inspectors and the members of the Roads Committee and the Rates Assessment Committee. This comes after Deputy Sam Mézec's major attack on the current state of Parish democracy posted on his blog last Wednesday exposed the anti-democratic bent of the Comité de Connétables, the lack of information available about elected roles and the general vestigial state of Parish democracy to a massive degree (something we also analysed, asking what Jersey's democracy movement could learn from libertarian socialism and the ideas of Murray Bookchin).

St. Ouen continues its slow, slow crawl towards something resembling the 21st century!

You can view the newly-posted information here.

Jersey Finance funds pro-tax haven report

Jersey Finance, the non-profit banking cabal responsible for whitewashing Jersey's international image as a tax haven, has been funneling money to hard-right UK lobbyists to produce a pro-finance industry report, it has emerged. 

The Institute of Economic Affairs, a UK-based Thatcherite "think tank" and lobbying group founded by a disciple of the far-right economist Friedrich Hayek and behind campaigns against the National Health Service and plain packaging for tobacco products and in favour of zero-hours contracts and unpaid internships, produced a report in June defending tax havens like Jersey and Guernsey and arguing against the ongoing international crackdown on dirty money and tax avoidance. An investigation by UK authorities was launched after allegations that senior politicians were given access to and editorial say in the report in return for donations, which has in turn revealed a link to Jersey. Jersey Finance have admitted that they helped fund the propaganda research, donating an undisclosed amount to the IEA, but have denied having any editorial control over the content of the document.

Well, well, well! I should probably make it clear before we get into the real criticism here that the IEA are, as think tanks go, about as dodgy as you can get. They don't reveal their sources of funding as a matter of policy, but investigations by various organisations and news outlets have found them taking money from the casino industry, tobacco companies such as British-American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco, oil companies such as BP and from assorted American businessmen set to potentially benefit from Brexit and from the continued relative weakness of trade unions. What a surprise, then, that the IEA has campaigned for the expansion of the British gambling industry and against plain packaging for tobacco products, tobacco taxation, trade unions and in favour of a hard Brexit. Rated by the the accountability group Transparify as "highly opaque", the IEA featured near the very bottom of their list of most transparent to least transparent think tanks inside the EU. When their Head of Health and Welfare isn't too busy asserting that "all doctors are communists", he's been laying a nice consistent shit on the idea of the IEA ever revealing its sources of funding.

Speaking of funding, guess who funds Jersey Finance. You guessed it - you and I! JF is a non-profit that's partially funded by the taxpayer (although a significant amount of its funding does come from Jersey's banks and other financial institutions). That's right, ladies and gents, who paid for this propaganda organisation to dish out cash to laissez-faire capitalist loons, to produce a whitewashing report criticising the international community for daring to try and hold these institutions to account? Joe Public, that's who, along with the bankers the report lavishes praise on. Now, call me old-fashioned, but something in me doesn't exactly sit right with the idea of taxpayers' money being shipped off to the UK to pay for hard-right lobbyists to attempt to prop up the quickly-collapsing international system of dirty money being hidden in offshore tax havens like Jersey. The fact that an organisation like Jersey Finance even receives public funding is a disgrace - at a time when economic diversification is urgently needed to slow the inevitable collapse of the finance industry, we should not be splashing cash on Thatcherite propaganda. Of course, the usual suspects will carp on about how the left ideologically hates finance, how we want to destroy the economy, how we don't understand the island's economic reality, and whatever else. Rubbish. Sooner or later, the financial establishment over here is going to have to wake up to the fact that actually, the dodgy system off of which they thrive isn't going to last forever, and when it goes, unless something is gone, our entire economy goes with it. Decades of neglect for any other industry, which is only beginning to be repaired, has left Jersey a one-trick pony, and one day, the trick's going to stop fooling people.

There's a really simple choice here - we diversify, or we die.

Pushing cash into pro-tax haven propaganda isn't exactly going to help.