Driving to France

Much as I would like be able to hop into the car and drive to France whenever the fancy takes me, I do not expect it to be a possibility in my lifetime. Purely because I have read Peter Walsh's ideas about the uses for the bridge, in the JEP on 23 April 2008.

Oddly Walsh states that 'more Islanders could live in Normandy and commute to France'. Presumably there has been some typo there, and he means they could live in Normandy and commute to Jersey, but that is not the odd thing, the odd thing is that if people are living in Normandy they are not Islanders! In other worlds, what he is suggesting is that a bridge would make it easier for non-islanders to work in Jersey. Remember, the Regulation of Undertakings rules require 5 years residence for most jobs, so that will effectively mean that if Islanders move to France they will lose their jobs.

Apparently the bridge would allow French businessmen access to Jersey and UK companies based on the island, and onwards to London. Why French businessmen would have to go through Jersey to get access to London is not explained. It seems inconceivable to me that Walsh is unaware that our finance industry already deals with people from all over the globe, and that if there was an advantage to French businessmen in owning a Jersey or UK company (or Liberian, BVI etc) they would already be doing it.

Then there is the money. £25 million per year to be raised by a £25 toll on Jersey resident cars - that is 500,000 cars taking a return trip annually! I don't know how many vehicles there are in Jersey, but it tends to be families that travel to France, or groups of friends, so not all the island cars are likely to get to drive onto the bridge. Walsh says local families travel to France two to four times a year. I know no-one, in my wide circle of local families, who travel there that often.

Walsh supposes 1,000,000 commuter cars will use the bridge annually raising £10 a car - that's 4,000 French cars coming into Jersey every working day. Oh yippee, more traffic! I am presuming the cars will be French as there would be no economic benefit to someone to live in expensive Jersey and work in cheaper France. It only works one way. That also supposes 4,000 jobs exist in Jersey without the need for the applicant to have 5 years residency in the island.

Walsh suggests that it would benefit Islanders to take 'a ten minute drive across the water to stock up on goods'. The Telegraph mentions a 15-20 minute trip, but frankly, at a cost of £50 for the return journey, either that trip would have to be tied into a special day out, or there would have to be substantial savings on the cost of goods in France to make the trip worth while. Especially with customs prowling the Island side of the bridge ready with their smiles and calculators to hold cars up for the 30 minutes it takes them to work out the GST.

30 MPH

Since January there have been new rules on our roads, meaning a lot of vehicles are now displaying 30 mph stickers. I find this had added an extra element to my journeys around the island. Not just playing spot the sticker, though that is part of it, but musing over why some vehicles have them, and other vehicles do not keeps me entertained.

The funniest part of it though is when I am driving on the Avenue at 40 and find myself overtaken by a vehicle with that startlingly white sticker on the back.

Terrible News

The news that part of a child's body has been found at Haut de la Garenne is shocking. It raises so many questions. The children's home closed over 20 years ago, and it is thought that the remains have been at their present location at least 5 years, which would mean since the building was converted into a Youth Hostel. It is also said that the remains date from the early 1980s, when the home may still have been open.

I cannot recall any publicised search for a missing child in Jersey in the last 30 years, let alone the last 20, so I wonder who this child is, and how their absence was not noticed. The police apparently hope to have identified whose body parts these are in a fortnight. That might seem optimistic, but given that the Police were tipped off about where to look for a body, someone willing to talk must have some idea of who the child might be.

Reasons to recycle

The 2008 telephone book has arrived in our home, with an insert called "Reasons to recycle". It states:

Every year the average bin contains enough unrealised energy for 500 baths.
1 recycled glass bottle would save enough energy to power a computer for 25 minutes.
1 recycled tin can would save enough energy to power a tv for 3 hours.

All very interesting in a theoretical way - but we don't recycle glass in Jersey, we crush it and use it in building works. I have no idea if we recycle tins (we can put them in a recycling bin at the dump, but what happens to them then?), and I am sure that out of the average bin there is a lot of items not recycled anywhere, let alone in Jersey where there is no plastic recycling whatsoever.

Nevertheless, in an exercise of hope over expectation, I shall be recycling my old telephone directory.

New Links

Had an enjoyable day looking for new Jersey blogs to read, found a couple too, and caught up reading those I have already linked to. I have changed the way I display the links to forums too.

Circus of Distraction

Sheryl Crow was interviewed by the Independent on Saturday. She talks about her experience of political spin; when the media circulated that Crow wanted people not to use so much toilet paper, taken out of it's context from a comic routine as part of a global warming tour.

Crow said, "It was on every news channel as if it was news. It was in Jay Leno's monologue, it was everywhere."

I love the term used in the interview to describe this media disinformation - a circus of distraction. Not sure if the term originated with Sheryl Crow, or the interviewer Sheryl Garratt, but whatever, thanks Sheryl!

Questions

I've had a comment from a Ryan Morrisson, a new media journalist for bbc.co.uk/jersey who is working on an article "that looks at the increasing number of community sites, blogs and personal media in the island - this will cover message boards, facebook groups and of course - blogs." He asks me the following questions:

"Can you give me an idea of 1) why you felt the need to blog, 2) what you hope to achieve, 3) the sort of things you discuss on your blog, 4) why you think so many community sites and blogs are launching in the island, 5) what you enjoy about blogging."

Well, it seems appropriate to blog about this. After all, the main thing about a blog is that it is open, visible, public. And I like that - I like knowing people's thoughts. I'm so glad I did not live in previous generations, I like living in an era when it's all hanging out. I'm pretty online - I facebook, I post on message boards and forums, and yes, I have a number of blogs. But I was asked about this blog.

So, answers:

1) why do I feel the need to blog?

Well I don't - feel any need that is. I just enjoy it.

2) what do I hope to achieve?

I was a reader of local blogs long before I was a blog writer, and partly I just wanted to join in. I still read blogs for much longer than I post.

I also find that the process of writing and editing my thoughts helps me crystalise my thinking. And that is always a good idea!

The original intent for this blog was that I wanted to spend a year focusing on the States members, as I was very confused about how they acted. However, a year later, just as confused, I gave that up a bad idea. Then I thought I would go back to the original meaning of blog, which comes, as you no doubt know, from web log. I thought I would find it enjoyable to create a log of Jersey websites. And it did, but I was quickly swamped. I had not realised the number of websites that exist - and new ones are being created all the time! So I dumped that idea too. Now this blog is for me to muse on any local matters that interest me, as and when I feel I have something to say.

Why online? Well, if I wrote it all down on bits of paper, I would no doubt lose it. This blog is free storage for my ideas, if you like. If my hard drive crashes, no matter - everything will still be here. And I like to link up with others - see if anyone has something to say about what I think.

Should I want to broadcast my thoughts, then compared to writing to the JEP there is much more freedom blogging. If I write to the JEP my letter is at the mercy of the editor - even if he prints it, he controls what responses are printed and when the discussion is closed. None of that here. If I decide the day after writing a post that I have changed my mind - I can say so, or edit or delete my post. Of course I would get more readers from a letter printed in the JEP - but I am not really writing to be read. I don't have a site meter counting the number of visitors my blog gets, though I am always delighted when I get a comment and know that someone has been reading.

The other purpose of my blog is as a handy place too keep links to the local websites that I use.

3) what do I discuss on my blog?

The obvious answer to that is why don't you just read it and see!

4) why are so many community sites and blogs launching in the island?

Well, I am not an expert on how many sites and blogs there are - some community sites seem to be set up by people have left. Beans around the world - as it were. And of course Internet use is spreading, broadband is getting more widespread, blogging has been publicised so is more known about, and setting up a blog is much, much easier than it used to be. If you go with a blogging site like blogger.com you can be up and blogging with a pretty site in half an hour, and all for free - so the numbers of people blogging are bound to be rising. If you have a group of friends online, a blog or facebook makes sense - you only have to write one message, and everyone gets it. it makes even more sense if that group is geographically diverse.

5) what do you enjoy about blogging?

All the above.

I would like to point out that Ryan has his own blogs at upyourego and 5tracks.

Bag for life anyone?

So, I was in the co-op, with a loaded trolley, and I realised that I had left my stack of "bags for life" in the car. I felt like a dork, I am always doing that. The habit of getting out of the car and wandering into the supermarket with nothing but the money to pay is too strong.

By the way, if you don't know, a bag for life is a strong plastic bag that generally costs about 10p, and which is is designed to be reused. If the bag wears out, you can return it to the store where you got it, and it will be replaced.

Anyway, when the dorky feeling passed, I realised that I was relieved. The bags for life are not as easy to pack as the free bags, being taller than they are wide. When I use my bags for life it always takes me longer to pack my bags, and means I am holding up the check out, slowing other shoppers down. And they don't sit so well in the car - I have to be very careful how I place them or they tend to topple over, spilling my shopping everywhere.

And anyway, I had very few of the free bags at home, and I reuse them to line my waste paper bins, so I needed more. I could buy bin liners I suppose, but not only would that cost me, when the free bags are, well, free, but the free bags from the co-op are supposed to degrade within months. I am not sure that any bin liners I could buy would be as "green".

Talking of green, I am not sure how green the bags for life are. The plastic is quite thick. I have had to take one back to the shop for a replacement when some plastic packaging sliced through the bottom, and I do not know what happened to the bag after that. Does the shop recycle it, or is it binned?

And although it is very satisfying to pull out a stack of bags for life, and have my green credentials out on display as it were, it is just as satisfying to shove a pile of plastic carriers into the recycle bins that almost every supermarket has now. Though can a degradable plastic bag be recycled? Perhaps I shouldn't be trying to recycle them, perhaps I should be allowing them to degrade - but how do I do that? If I throw the bag into my domestic waste, surely the bag is incinerated before it has a chance to degrade. I could chuck the bag in in the road and leave it to rot down, except that would be littering. Or would the degradable plastic bags rot better if I they were mixed in with the compost made locally? I don't know, and it's unlikely to happen even if that did turn out the be the best way of dealing with the things.

Maybe I should buy one of the hessian re-usable bags, as they are natural fibres, which would eventually degrade (if left to), and even if burnt would not cause the chemical smoke that plastic does. But we do not grow hessian in Jersey, so the bag would have to be shipped in. And I guess that bags like that are probably made in China or Taiwan and so are shipped quite far - I have heard that boats produce more carbon that airplanes - so using a hessian bag might not be as green as it seems. And I suspect that the hessian handles are quite uncomfortable when the bag is full.

Of course the plastic bags might be transported just as far.

And then there is the fundraising question. If I reuse a bag I get a penny back from the co-op to donate to the Hospice. So using the bags for life gives me a double whammy; some satisfied-with-myself-for-being-green feeling with an added soupcon of giving-to-charity glow. And don't underestimate how important those minute stirrings of pleasure are - shopping is a pretty depressing experience, likely to get worse as GST and 20-means-20 start to bite.

I saw a woman clearly as confused as me, who had decided to cut through the issue by walking her shopping home in the trolley. She was having a mighty struggle trying to get onto a pavement - it did not look like fun. Besides, I think the co-op might not support people walking out with their trolleys.

So, have I come to a conclusion? Not really. I shall probably walk the middle ground - reuse my bags for life one week, and use the degradable bags the next.

Stuart Syvret keeps his promise

He has started a blog. Click here.

Been fishing

Well maybe not fishing. Lots of things keeping me too busy to come on here. And what was I doing with this blog anyway? I had the idea of creating a kind of dictionary of Jersey websites - but I did NOT know what I was taking on. I wanted to see how big Jersey's virtual presence was, and I now know that there are huge numbers of websites in existence locally, and have lists and lists of them. But I will not be putting them online because I think it would be a full time job keeping the list accurate and up to date. I just don't have the time.

The odd thing is how many websites are advertised, either in the phone book, on business cards and headed paper, on the sides of vans, or, most bizarrely, in the JEP's feature on new businesses, but are either "in construction" or no longer exist - the host even advertising the space for some of them. Websites seem to have a fleeting life, too fleeting for me to keep a hold of. So now I have to think about whether to remove some of the ones I have on here.

I shall keep the links to local blogs, and local forums, and I shall create a list (a short list at the moment) of websites that I discover that remove VAT from goods they ship to the island, but as for the others - well. I don't know. I don't want to keep a page of broken links - and I do not seem to have the time to check them often.