From the Summit of the Moral High Ground

GOLD!  The prospect of the world coming to an end on the 21st December left me with a rather tricky dilemma; do I go and see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey just in case or do I wait until 2016 and just buy the DVD extended version box set once it is available at a reduced price and get maximum value from the experience as I did with Lord of the Rings? In the end I decided that I would re-read the book and go (re-reading the book being essential so I could see what they had changed you understand). Personally I cannot believe they are going to drag it out over three films, but of course the sight of a horde of gold coins appealed to me. It was a tough choice but I succumbed to temptation and went for my first experience of 3D cinema since they did away with the red and green glasses. I think that red and green glasses are the way to go, the experience was nowhere near as good as whichever Nightmare on Elm Street it was that I saw back in 1991 in bi-colour spect...

Constable Clarke opens a fair  As part of looking back to see where the States of Jersey have gone wrong, it is probably beneficial to look back to the times when the States of Jersey got it very right. Fred Clarke served Jersey and the parish of St Helier for three terms as Constable of St Helier, now apart from the one little problem where a Centenier Pearce was unfairly dismissed  from office in order to cover up the maladministration of the then Attorney General, one Philip Martin Bailhache, later Bailiff and currently Senator, he excelled in the role, and all the while unpaid. His operation of the parish finances was remarkably similar to the operation of his company C. Le Masurier, he never spent a penny on anything that he didn't have to. So successful was Constable Clarke in running the parish that the finances remain in reasonably good health in spite of the spiralling bureaucracy which has been created by later Constables Le Brocq and Crowcroft. There was...

Jersey's Central Market viewed from the Halkett Place double gate  Reading old laws is a fascinating business; there is a totally different feel to them and to that end I present the  LOI (1885) TOUCHANT L’ADMINISTRATION DES MARCHÉS PUBLICS (the law regarding the administration of the public markets). English translations are mine and are included in brackets after the French. 1  ‎La régie, l’administration et la police des Marchés sont du ressort des États, et seront exercées selon les ordres et sous les directions de cette Assemblée, par le Ministre responsable pour Transport and Technical Services.  (The governance, administration and policing of the markets are the responsibility of States, and will be performed in accordance with the orders and directions of the Assembly by the Minister responsible for Transport and Technical Services.) The States of Jersey are solely the trustees of the Public Markets.  2 ‎Les États ou le Ministre...

Kitco reports  that the Chinese have forced down the price of gold on the markets and following the price today has made interesting reading, the price plummeted all the way down to the London PM fix at $1692 before rebounding sharply once the fix was in to back over $1700 then ending the day at $1696. The interesting thing will be to see how much physical metal was purchased today from the LBMA. It was a crazy day for bullion sales. I personally had my entire inventory purchased, with additional orders placed and booked. A quick tour of the jewellers and antique dealers revealed that gold coins for sale are near to non-existent. It is refreshing to see that many people in Jersey are heeding the warning signs of the impending end of the Anglo-Saxon domination of the world. The number one present this Christmas is going to be gold and silver bullion and coins. There is an increasing disconnect between physical sales and market prices however, physical sales continue to rise...

UK families get less back and pay more, it is official. Whilst Germany has an effective tax rate of 40% and the Netherlands 48% and the best place to live in the world is Chile where effective tax is just 20% the average family in the UK pays 73% of their earnings in tax. At the last election I tried to calculate what the effective tax rate in Jersey was, but Dr Gibaut (whilst quoted constantly by Senator Bailhache through the hustings) would not provide the figures for me. Isn't it time one of our representatives asked Dr Gibaut to provide the answer?

When will unions make arguments that everyone can support, a policy idea  Working for the government is for the vast majority basically being on 'benefits plus', they offer no more to the community and economy than those who choose not to work but live on income support or disability benefit due to 'depression' a 'bad back' or other unconfirmable but at the same time undeniable 'illness'. Changes to terms and conditions are needed; an end to paid sick pay, a reduction in paid holidays to two weeks a year, a change from final salary (or average salary) pensions to a personal pension account with a defined value. There also needs to be some evidence. We need an independent review of public sector wages taking into account: ease of recruitment into a range of jobs in the public sector versus the private sector, job comparability with a range of private sector jobs (but taking true accountability into account – businesses go bust if manager makes a...

I have noticed on Amazon that many sellers are selling goods at less than cost price and, this being an unusual state of affairs, it is important to ask why they are doing this and what the longer term consequences are going to be... The watch retail business is an interesting case study; everyone wants to sell Rolex and if you sell Rolex any brand will be desperate to put their range in your shop - of course selling Rolex is not easy, you have to have an invitation to even step onto their stand at the trade shows. The trend is for fewer and fewer Rolex agents and losing the agency is the death knell for that business, take C.T. Maine's for example. With a minimum spend of £250,000 per year of the models selected for you by Rolex (rather than the ones you want), it can be a double edged sword. There are the 'branded' watches; the Armani's, D&G's, Police etc of this world which when you open the case are £20 watches using old Citizen mass produced Miyota m...

Jersey's largest private employer and heart of the finance industry in Jersey, is to establish a 'branch' in Singapore in January, senior managers were informed last weekend. For those of you who have been following the posts on this blog which have highlighted Singapore as the favoured jurisdiction for those few people left with anything worth stealing by the banking/government colossus of fraud and exploitation may still be surprised to learn that plans are already underway for Jersey's finance industry to move its operation to this location. Of course the move will not happen all at once, expect things to happen gradually in small unnewsworthy, and thus unreported, tranches over the next 24 to 36 months until the office in Jersey is little more than a letterbox. Royal Bank of Canada employs approximately 1,000 of Jersey's 18,000 private sector workforce (out of a total workforce of 42,500 when the unproductive, make work States of Jersey, and its subsidi...

" All nations who are ruled by laws and customs are governed partly by their own particular laws and partly by those laws which are common to all mankind ." Emperor Justinian COMMON LAW - This was used in Roman Times to denote the laws which were common between the City of Rome and the various regions of Italy. It was also used by Alfred the Great to denote a 'Common Law' of England which was based upon the ten commandments which would stand above the local customs and baronial courts. In a very real sense then the Common Law is superior to the regional and subordinate laws of 'the Island of Jersey and its Dependencies' having been adopted into Jersey as part of the apocryphal 'Constitutions of King John' which, whilst the basis of Jersey law, were never actually written nor given to Jersey by the King but borrowed from Magna Carta. CUSTOMARY LAW - This is different to Common Law in that it represents the customs of a particular region, it shoul...

The man who thinks he should be paid £75,000 per year The Constable of St Saviour has lodged a proposition which has been reported in the JEP  as 'Don't give us a pay rise'. Now I find this an exceedingly interesting use of the English language and fundamentally a false statement. Firstly the use of the word 'give'. I cannot recall ever having 'given' the States members a pay rise, indeed I am with my good friend and business neighbour John Farley, former member of the States of Jersey, in believing that things started to go down hill when States Members started getting paid. If it were left to me they would not be paid at all. As an alternative those who were not of sufficient private means should be awarded income support, albeit without the need to have to look for work. Stuart Syvret served us for many years on this basis before paid States Members, for some reason, that they should be paid was about the only thing that all States members could ...

After four weeks of silence, and what a four weeks it has been, Jim Willie has published his latest research and thoughts on the ongoing destruction of the Western financial system and the long awaited return to a gold backed currency. "Since the Lehman Brother scuttle and the Fannie Mae adoption and the AIG black hole admission, the financial crisis that began with the housing bubble and subprime mortgage bust has turned virulent. The global financial crisis is better described as a global monetary war to defend the toxic USDollar, whose sunset can be seen. In the last 12 to 18 months, the monetary war has again morphed, this time into a far more serious and financially violent global Gold War . Nations are fast realizing that their only true liquid assets of value are their gold reserves, and even they have been tampered with or stolen in a vast re-hypothecation scheme." Interestingly enough I noted in the latest investment plan that the States of Jersey is to inves...

Money Week  reports that the British Pound is headed for a fall,  Max Keiser  goes into greater detail on this. Given that treasury yields are at a 300 year high there will follow an inevitable decline and when that happens interest rates WILL GO UP. Whilst mortgage rates are set by the government at 10% below the market rate (if I want to borrow for my business the rates on offer are between 10 and 12.5%). Banks are just not lending as the Daily Mail reports: The failure of high street banks to lend to consumers is highlighted by the fact that 82pc of net mortgage lending in the six months to the end of September was accounted for by one institution – the Nationwide. The reason is that the UK is up to its eyeballs in debt over 700% of GDP taking government, banking and private debt altogether, only Ireland and Japan are more endebted. The new Chief at the Bank of England has been appointed and he is a graduate of Goldman Sachs (as even reported by ...

Where the money is moving to The First Director of the JFSC  has told us that Caesar was ambitious, I mean that we are too dependent on the Finance Industry. If it is so then it is a grevious fault, and like Caesar, greviously shall we answer for it. At a meeting hosted by the Guernsey FSC the delegates were told there is too much regulation, (I remember one candidate saying that at the last Senatorial election in Jersey but was ridiculed for doing so). Meanwhile Baroness Williams proven her age by proclaiming us as one of the most secretive jurisdictions in the world the JEP  reported "JERSEY has been labelled ‘one of the most secretive tax havens in the world’ in the House of Lords after it was revealed that UK citizens hold some £19 billion in Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man accounts. In an exchange between Baroness Williams of Crosby – former Labour and SDP MP Shirley Williams – and deputy government chief whip Lord Newby, it was also revealed that the UK ta...

A Gazan missile is launched at Tel Aviv and below the Israelis respond “Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.” in·no·cence  [in-uh-suhns] noun the quality or state of being innocent; freedom from sin or moral wrong. freedom from legal or specific wrong; guiltlessness. simplicity; absence of guile or cunning; naiveté. lack of knowledge or understanding. harmlessness; innocuousness. It has been a long time since I was an innocent. My own innocence was ended in 2007 at the tender age of 35 by being dragged from my house at 3:30 am and locked in police cell denied sleep then interrogated for three hours, locked in a prison cell on Christmas Eve and held for 31 days until I was proven innocent at trial. It w...

Well it seems that Phil Ozouf has decided NOT to run for election in 2014 and has alienated what one would consider to be his natural constituency, the small to medium sized businessman (there are no big businesses in Jersey). The fundamental assumption upon which he has erred is that the tax component of the price of goods in Jersey is limited to GST and impots, this of course is not the case. We could of course respond with our own question, how come government in Jersey is so much more expensive than in either the UK or in Guernsey and, of course, in asking that question we also answer Senator Ozouf's. So let us examine in great detail why the difference between £1.22 and £2.34 (being the quoted cost of a packet of cigarettes in the UK and Jersey respectively) actually demonstrates that profits in Jersey are lower than in the United Kingdom. We will assume that the production costs are the same up to the point that they leave the factory, we will also assume that the ...

For those of you with download capability there are some rather interesting books available as a free downloads from Amazon via your kindle or such modern contraptions.

Well the judgement has been finalised, I did not win (yet), but I have to say that the Royal Commissioner has once again given a fair judgement which I cannot really argue with, other than to say that the Law is wrong to limit appeals simply to points of law but allow erroneous conclusions to stand simply because they can be arrived at. It is this matter which will be the point of appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. To sum up the judgement the Commissioner basically says, " it is your own fault for refusing to turn up to the hearing ". The highlights of the judgement are as follows (name of applicant has been changed to Miss Z, as a courtesy): 3. Article 94 of the Employment (Jersey) Law 2003 (“the Employment Law”) provides that an appeal  on a question of law only shall lie from a decision of the Tribunal to the Court with the leave of the Tribunal or of the Court. The Tribunal denied leave in this case.  4. It was held in Voisin v Brown...

  When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. f...

In my last post in this series you may remember that judgement at the end of the hearing was reserved, well a new development took place this week, one which my legal friends assure me is never done; a draft judgement was issued and I was allowed to make comments on either typographical errors or on points of law, in advance of the handing down of the final judgement. As this is a draft judgement I cannot disclose the contents, but I have taken the opportunity to point out the grounds upon which I will rely for the resultant appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (this being my last available domestic remedy) which number six, so far. Whilst five are fairly standard points of law, for one of the points I finally submitted in writing the basis of my claim for non-membership of 'the Island of Jersey and its Dependencies' the jurisdiction in which all Jersey statutes operate and all administrative Courts (the Royal Court, the Magistrate etc.) operate. I therefore tho...

The Examiner  reports that 15 individual states have filed petitions with the recently re-elected President Obama to secede from the Union echoing the actions which lead to the US civil war in 1865. "Louisiana, Texas, Montana, North Dakota, Indiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon and New York. These States have requested that the Obama Administration grant a peaceful withdrawal from the United States." The world's only honest politician, Ron Paul, has spoken The United Kingdom are of course facing our own form of secession in the form of a referendum on independence for Scotland (we of course face the BBC's assertion that the Scottish will vote against it which is not reflected in the opinions of the Scottish people I speak to) and the pressure on the UK to secede from the European Union continues to mount, and of course they will likely not be the first to seek greater independence. Big gove...

I last looked at The Construction Business in Jersey  about a year ago and I thought I would re-visit this and see what has occurred one year on. The first thing to note is that the income support allowance for accommodation has increased by just over 6% (from £661 to £701) which is of course significantly higher than inflation and significantly higher than the increase in average wages. Landlords have not been slow to pass on this 6% increase to their income support funded tenants, indeed many structure the leases to expire just weeks after the increase is announced, in order to gain full benefit of this government handout . A handout which of course does not benefit those most in need in any way, shape or form whatsoever. Housing too have not been slack in increasing their rentals which have gone up from 75% of the 'market rent' to 90% of the 'market rent'. Someone seems to have conveniently forgotten that this is caused by the increases in the...