Monty's been suspended!

Are you an irritating and conservative obstructionist bent on defying your employer?

Do you think that people suffering extreme pain should grin and bear it, in order that you don't have to sacrifice your principles?

Do you just really hate your patients?

Well, the hospital may soon be looking for a new leading pain specialist, and methinks it sounds like just the job for you?

This week in Jersey politics, our culture minister has been suspended for the heinous crime of emailing a few States members, calling for a pain specialist at the hospital who refuses on principle to prescribe medicinal cannabis to be sacked.

I think we all know that he's essentially correct (if a little crass), and that someone who hoards drugs away from their patients based upon moral principles rather than empirical evidence would be better placed in the hospital's chapel, rather than its pain clinic. However, what really interests me about this case is the justification that JLF and his cronies have given for Monty's sacking, which is a paragraph in the ministerial code that gives ministers a "duty" to uphold the political impartiality of civil servants and "should act with courtesy and respect at all times towards officers".

Do we really think that setting a precedent, where ministers can be sacked for suggesting a civil servant may not be of the highest possible calibre, is really a good idea?

I support our civil servants, and I think the way they've been treated recently is appalling. However, it is a fact of life, inevitable in any government of any size, that some civil servants will be bad at their jobs, will be corrupt, will be pursuing political agendas of various sizes and scopes. We're told we live in a democracy - our elected representatives, whatever you might think of them, have a right to hold these unelected civil servants to account and ensure they're executing the government's will properly. Sometimes, that means asking awkward questions and saying things that might ruffle a few feathers - but that's part and parcel of representative democracy, if that's what you believe in.

(I can't say I do, but that's by the by.)

We've got to be honest about the failings of our civil servants, just as we've got to be honest about the way they're treated by the States Employment Board and other bodies. If we can't criticise, if we can't point out flaws, if ministers can't ask difficult questions and say difficult things, then the agenda is not being set by the politicians, but by the bureaucrats, and that isn't democracy.

Otherwise, this island is nothing more than a bureaucratic dictatorship.

Independence and the finance industry - time for a REAL discussion

"They're planning on doing what?"

What's even better than one finance industry stooge pissing himself?

That's right - two finance industry stooges pissing themselves!

You might say that British MPs Andrew Mitchell and Margaret Hodge have been getting a bit of criticism as of late for their plans to strongarm British crown dependencies and overseas territories into introducing public registers of beneficial ownership.

This has, of course, been done before - Mitchell and Hodge are veterans of the struggle against the organised, legalised system of mass theft that is the offshore financial system - but it comes at a time when Theresa May's zombie government, desperate to scrape up enough votes to pass their Brexit deal, will jump on any old wagon to buy a few more MPs to their cause.

In other words - it's for real this time.

This hasn't really gone down well in the halls of power.

Now, anyone can see that JLF, St Pier and co. are running scared, that they're desperate to knock up the sort of supposedly impenetrable constitutional argument that Jersey, Guernsey and other tax-avoidance hives of villainy have used for years, that it constitutes colonialism for the British state to interfere in the day-to-day affairs of crown dependencies. Anyone can also see that this is a bust-up between two sections of the same international capitalist class - one that anyone who is both an anti-imperialist and an anti-capitalist has no dog in - but the thing which has really wound me up with the discussion around all this is the whisperings of "independence".

I didn't used to believe in Jersey independence - I didn't used to identify myself as a nationalist, and I remain somewhat skeptical about movements towards independence while we remain within a capitalist system. James Connolly famously once said that "If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs." - English imperialism is more than political influence and the occasional bit of "advice" from our friends at the Home Office. However, I've always found the dialogue around independence whenever a tax crackdown is mooted to be incredibly insulting and offensive. It's like we've been so co-opted by international capital, so "Anglo-Saxon-ised", that the only point at which we'd consider asserting ourselves is if our ability to get away with robbing the British taxpayer blind was potentially compromised. 

Jersey is so, so much more than the finance industry. We have our own language, our own culture - we form a nation, albeit one without a nation-state. We have a different climate, a different way of thinking about things, a different way of doing things - we aren't English, and we never will be. I was never attracted to Jèrriais nationalism on economic grounds - it's about who we are, what this island represents. 

Too often, the arguments for and against independence are reduced to "muh finance industry". Rubbish! As the 21st century matures, Jèrriais grows, and the finance industry inevitably declines, the discussion about independence is something we're going to have to have at one point or another. That discussion, when we do have it, has to be of substance, it has to mean something - it cannot be "it's the economy, stupid". 

Jersey has enough problems with internalised racism as it is. We are already a cog in the death machine that is international finance - our language is already on life support. 

We do not need to debase the discussion about asserting ourselves as a nation by worrying about what international capitalists think.