Lawyers, legal aid and the world's smallest violin

Are you a rapacious greedy shyster concerned about politicians trying to reform the gigantic scam you and your buddies sell to keep the lights on?

 Do you think access to justice is a privilege to be enjoyed by rich people rather than a human right essential to any democracy worth the name?

Do you suffer from a particularly nasty persecution complex?

Then maybe, just maybe, sir, the Jersey Law Society is just what you've been looking for!

This week in Jersey: y'all get to hear the playing of the world's smallest violin, as our lawyers threaten to go on strike over reforms to legal aid currently being pushed through the States. The reforms in question? Brand new, shiny Access to Justice laws, which introduce a new legal aid scheme intended to make it easier for more vulnerable and less well-off members of our society to access legal support if they end up in the dock. Pretty uncontroversial, right? Access to justice is a fundamental underpinning of the rule of law, right? It would be completely insane for anyone to actually get offended by the idea of helping poor people afford a lawyer, right?

Wrong.

Or, at least, the president of the Law Society of Jersey seems to think so.

Sadly, the rag's coverage didn't include the whining email that Law Society president John Kelleher sent to his members on this topic, but it did include a few choice excerpts which to my mind really demonstrate the pure stone that Kelleher's heart is truly made of. Quote: "The effect of such changes would be to increase direct political control over the guidelines, while reducing the Law Society’s influence and involvement, with the potential for arbitrary and unilateral changes to the guidelines to be imposed."

"These changes in the round, if accepted and voted in by the States of Jersey government would in all likelihood increase the legal aid burden upon all the members of the Law Society."

Oh no! Shock horror! Hold the phone! Kelleher and his bandits might be obliged to surrender some of their control over the legal aid system to our democratically elected representatives! They might even have to help slightly more working-class people use the justice system for its intended purpose!!! Oh, the sheer humanity.....

Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink. Does anyone seriously believe this gang of spivs has any intent whatsoever other than to maintain the cashflow into their own pockets? What a joke. It's worth noting, as the rag did, that while the current threshold for legal aid stands at a total household income of less than £45,000, the Law Society wants to see that reduced to £30,001.

That's less than the combined salary of two people working 40 hours a week shop floor at the McDonald's in Hillgrove Street. Go in there and check - it's right up there on the wall. £18K a year for 40 hours a week. The combined earnings of two people in McDonald's every year is over £6000 more than the Law Society's recommended maximum threshold for legal aid.

Have any of these gangsters tried surviving on £30K a year?

Go on, lads. Go on strike. Show us what you're made of.

The people of Jersey are laughing in your face and spitting in your path.

The cost-of-food scandal - an masterclass in the inefficiencies of capitalism

Tony O'Neill is sick of your shit.

In a whining letter in today's rag, chief exec of Sandpiper CI - the franchise that runs a lot of big-brand businesses in Jersey like Costa, Iceland and Cornish Bakery - has lashed out at critics who claim that his food is overpriced compared to the UK.  In his reasoning, he sets out a couple of major points explaining why this is - and, in his mind, always will be - the case. These are:

- UK food is exempt from VAT
- Transport costs are very high
- Labour costs are akin to London's
- The new retail tax has pushed up prices
- Store fit-out costs are 25% more than in the UK
- Jersey can't benefit from economies of scale to the same degree the UK can

Cry me a river, Mr O'Neill. Cry me a river.

Sandpiper is a private company - as far as they see it, their first obligation is to their shareholders, not to you or anyone else who doesn't own stock in their company. Even in a life-or-death business like food retail, their attitude is that they've still got to make a profit for their owners.

I'll leave aside the fairly obvious question of whether it's moral to profit off of something everyone needs to survive and simply ask this - why is something so critical to our very survival as an island in the hands of a corporate mafia?

It doesn't take a genius to look at Mr O'Neill's reasoning and think that a lot of that wouldn't be so much of a problem if the people importing food didn't have to make a profit - say, if they were nationalised under the management of the workers who actually do the heavy lifting, so to speak. Sadly, Sandpiper doesn't publish its accounts, so we can't actually dive into how much money citizens could potentially save if the business was run in a socialist fashion, but we can certainly ask the question - is for-profit food distribution, controlled by one large private company or a few large private companies, really the best deal for Jersey? Could cash be shaved off manager's salaries by workers' self-management, or would the lack of an obligation to make a big profit drive down prices for ordinary people? You've gotta ask - is the current system a rip-off, and if so, why is it being allowed to continue?

One need only look at Venezuela for how these oligopolies on crucial supplies like food - or even private, for-profit distribution of food at all - can be weaponised against the population they supposedly exist to serve. Since the early 2000s, opposition-affiliated corporations have systematically hoarded food and medicine in order to push up prices and undermine the socialist Bolivarian government. Opposition-controlled offshore corporations have been caught redirecting food supplies to smugglers near the Colombian border, who then sell the food back to Venezuelans at a higher price. Could this happen in Jersey if a socialist government was ever to be elected?

Corporate ownership of the crucial resource that is food distribution is an immoral, inefficient and dangerous rip-off that drives up profits for a few fat cats like Tony O'Neill and drives up prices for the rest of us. It's time these oligopolies were wound up and shut down - unless, of course, we want the cost of living to keep rocketing up and the continual increase of the amount of people living in relative income.

Do you?

Ultra-right-wing group demands the States flog off the family silver

Our old friends at the Jersey Taxpayers' Alliance have poked up their heads again - this time, they're looking for the States to hold a fire sale of anything not turning a profit.

Roger Bale, the former shipping exec who passed down the chairman's seat at Huelin-Renouf to his son Jonathan a few years back and the founder of the JPA, has called for the States to perform a complete audit of their property portfolio and sell anything not generating more than a 4% return to fund public works projects. His comments come after it was revealed that a States-owned property and historic building that the States voted to keep in public ownership in 2014, Piquet House in the Royal Square, will remain empty until at least 2020 due to funding not being available for refurbishment.

Here's the thing. Bale is a businessman, and so he's used to operating with one aim in mind - making a fat profit for his shareholders (not to mention himself - evidently he did pretty well if he was able to invest £50K into setting up the JPA). Government doesn't work like that. The objective of government isn't and shouldn't be to make a profit - it's there to serve the people. This is particularly prominent with things like historic buildings - the fact that Piquet House has been neglected isn't an argument for it to be flogged off to the highest bidder, it's an argument for further state investment in the maintenance of historic buildings. Of course, that's not actually what this is about, because the JPA is an ideological project - it's a voice for comfortable rich people like Bale who wouldn't know poverty if it slapped them in the face, in an attempt to implement their anti-tax, anti-spending agenda. Here are some facts about the JPA's national equivalent, the group the JPA follows and takes guidance from:

- 60% of its donations come from individuals or groups giving more than £5K
- Their proposals include scrapping the building of new secondary schools, abolishing child benefit and binning the Sure Start centers for young children
- Their director, Alexander Heath, lives in a farmhouse in Loire in France and hasn't paid British tax for years
- Labour MP Jon Cruddas has accused the group of being a 'front' for the Conservative party

Do we really want these insidious types gaining a foothold on Jersey's political scene? Do we really want gobby rich people pumping tens of thousands into promoting an anti-tax political agenda?

No, thanks.

Whining businessmen attack government for minimum wage pledge

Not a week into the working term, the whining business lobby have put the government in the firing line. Over what? The minimum wage. Again.

The Jersey Chamber of Commerce, a whinging cabal of entitled capitalist bastards "vibrant association of members from all business sectors who are dedicated to the promotion of trade, commerce and the general prosperity of Jersey", has directed one of its regular moans at the new Chief Minister and his partners in government, Reform Jersey. Criticising the agreement made last week between RJ and le Fondré, the Chamber said it was "concerned" about the "potentially serious impacts... on employers, employees, consumers and the wellbeing of the Jersey economy". In typical gutter-level style, Elliot Lincoln, the President of the JCC, raised Project Fear-style fears of "companies forced out of business, increased unemployment, reduced hours and raised prices for consumers".

My favourite part of this is how the JCC refers to RJ's plans to raise the minimum wage to a tenner an hour as "unresearched promises". Did they miss the part where Jersey's "living wage" was raised to the same level as London's - nearly £1.50 higher than the rest of the UK? The part where average house prices in Jersey was tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds higher than the UK average? Or perhaps the fact that a fifth of households live in relative low income, in one of the world's richest jurisdictions? The evidence is clear - Jersey needs a pay rise, badly.

The conventional business wisdom the JCC are peddling that minimum wage rises don't work is frankly ridiculous. Multiple studies done over the last few decades have shown that a rise in the minimum wage has little to no discernible effect on employment levels; below are a few sources that debunk the nonsensical myth of an unemployment-pocalypse in the event of a minimum wage rise.

Business for a Fair Minimum Wage:
https://www.businessforafairminimumwage.org/news/00135/research-shows-minimum-wage-increases-do-not-cause-job-loss 
The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/11/the-evidence-is-clear-increasing-the-minimum-wage-doesnt-cause-unemployment
Business Insider:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/britain-doubled-minimum-wage-with-no-effect-on-unemployment-2017-10
The Huffington Post:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-pacitti/raising-the-minimum-wage-_3_b_7152976.html?guccounter=1

There is no evidence for the propaganda the JCC is peddling. It simply isn't true, and the evidence proves that. It's clear what their real intentions are: to prevent a rise in the minimum wage to keep more money in the hands of the greedy capitalists that make up their members, and out of the hands of ordinary working people.

Whinging businessmen take aim at the disabled

Last week, the States passed new anti-discrimination legislation requiring that all businesses be sufficiently accessible by disabled people by 2020. Despite this being a major and important step forward for disabled rights in Jersey, Gerard Voisin, one of Jersey's more prominent activists against the rights of consumers and workers and further taxation of businesses (i.e. er, anything that might threaten his profits as the owner of the oldest family-run department store in Britain) has once again decided to speak up for those poor, oppressed business owners, warning that "some people might be put out of business" by the costs of installing disabled access, while lawyer Lindsay Edwards-Thatcher warned that "Jersey is introducing large amounts of regulation too quickly", adding that "this year is probably going to be the worst ever for employers".

Oh, cry me a river. These business types crying out at the supposed oppression of the businessman do my head in - frankly, if you can't comply with basic discrimination laws, you shouldn't be in business. End of. Laws against discrimination based on sex, race, religion, sexual orientation and, yes, disability are a cornerstone of any even nominally free society, and for businesses to whine that they can't afford to allow people who already suffer so much hardship in life to access their premises is pathetic. Certainly Mr Voisin, a man from one of Jersey's oldest mercantile families and owner of the Island's largest department store, has no right to be whinging that he can't afford it. Maybe some of that sweet family cash would help plug the gap, eh, Gerard?

Disabled rights are an area where progress is vitally needed - it should not be allowed to be discredited in the name of the profit margins of crybaby capitalists.