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As we wind down from 2021 and head boldly into 2022, we thought we would take a quick look at last year’s main stories…
Until we quickly realised they were likely to also be next year’s main stories too.
In no particular order…
Just to make you realise how time flies, we have now entered the third year in which unwanted questions like, “Have you lateral-flowed today?” are a part of daily life.
Unlike WW1, no one said it would be over by Christmas, which is fortunate, as we have now had more waves than a Quo farewell gig(s).
Covid has been spamming your news bulletins ever since February 2020, so we’re not going to reprise all those stories here… apart from this one, which we think is a belter.
Congratulations, fellow islanders. You have now signed up to a couple of billion pounds of debt to fund a new ‘hospital on the hill’. Correction, YOU haven’t. But your kids have. Hang on, maybe not them either, don’t governments tend to keep on rolling debts forward? Maybe your grandkids? Or theirs?
Anyway let’s talk about trees... No?
Whatever may be lost, we are getting an £804m ‘health campus’…if the planning application succeeds. Given past history on this one (or two), don’t believe this story is done yet.
We’ve had missing dolmens, a moving crematorium, super-highways, no stroke rehab ward, and a homeless bowling club.
After a decade in gestation, the big hospital drama may only just be getting going. It’s another one which has fuelled many news bulletins in 2021, and is certain to in 2022 too.
And then this happened...
No, this one isn’t about someone who inches their Jag into the ‘Mini-only’ space in the multi-storey.
To say that 2021 saw the island award an eye-watering payout to a departing Chief Executive really doesn’t make it exceptional - but this one was to Charlie Parker, a man who admits he has ripped apart the whole structure of Jersey’s civil service, putting it back together again...but not necessarily in a way which made everyone say, “Hang on a minute, this feels better!”
Charlie said, “Be patient” – before returning to the UK, and his ‘second job’ with New River.
Enter (soon) Suzanne Wylie.
A background in the deeply partisan politics of Belfast will hopefully stand her in good stead, as she attempts to heal some very deep wounds within a civil service which some believe will take years to recover.
And I say "hello"...
For those wondering how Jersey’s ‘piggy in the middle’ situation with Brexit would pan out, 2021 provided the answer.
It was the year that the then-newly-elected Chief Minister’s 2018 task for his predecessor, External Relations Minister Senator Ian Gorst, to build closer ties with France suddenly appeared woefully naïve.
For 2021 brought with it the fishing crisis, as the UK’s departure from the EU meant the tearing up of the Bay of Granville agreement in favour of a new post-Brexit licensing regime.
In around just 72 hours, a dispute over the number of licences being granted to French vessels, and the conditions attached to them led to… the closure of the Maison de Normandie, threats to cut off Jersey’s electricity supply, and the pinnacle of Boris Johnson’s Hartlepool by-election campaign a protest by more than 70 French boats in St. Helier harbour overseen by two Royal Navy vessels offered up by the Prime Minister and a French patrol vessel, which couldn’t resist joining the fun, and an accusation from the EU that Jersey had effectively broken Brexit.
BLOW-BY-BLOW: How the fishing crisis unfolded... (live updates)
The question of the number of licences may now be settled, but the conditions question remains, with hopes of a pre-New Year truce scuppered this week…
Top-level talks with French but no breakthrough on fishing dispute
Very soon the wheels of government will grind to a halt (insert your gag here, ed.) – and politicians will enter purdah, ahead of the elections in June 2022.
With a brand new voting system (which we are not going to detail – again – here, but basically involves local ‘parish-pump’ concerns replacing island-wide, or global, issues), islanders will have to make sense both of the new structure, and what their prospective leaders are telling them.
Anyone who tells you what is going to happen is lying - quite literally, no one has a clue how this one is going to go.
Current guess is that the new structure will favour Reform Jersey, which could be the real reason why political parties have suddenly sprung up to oppose them.
The party that wants to make 'Progress'... and get members who aren't called 'Steve'...
New party aims to make political 'progress'
The 'liberal' Bailiff bandwagon, that isn't actually a party yet, or is it?
Former Bailiff spearheads new political alliance
The Ministerial 'Alliance'...whose manifesto was "literally the Government Plan"...until it wasn't?
"Our manifesto is the Government Plan"
So, as the island shudders from Brexit, covid, inflation, broken supply chains and no workers, not to mention a fractured civil service (see above), why don’t we go the whole hog and totally rip up our electoral system as well? What’s that? We have? Ah.
Here’s a tip from Express when you are choosing your candidates in June. Don’t listen to a word that anyone says. Not one.
Base your decision entirely on what they have actually DONE.
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