Stuart the Prophet of Doom - was he right?

On a day when the radio this morning mentioned the decline of Jersey's Trust Industry and the 2000+ unemployed are growing in number all the time, I vaguely remember back when Stuart Syvret started blogging in 2008 that he forecast the collapse of Jersey, mass unemployment, etc.

I have found it hard to find the real foretelling of doom, it may have been on other forums or website comment sections, but it's worth re-reading his earliest blog entry -
http://stuartsyvret.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/introduction-to-microcosm-it-seems.html

.. and others -
http://stuartsyvret.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/growing-problems.html

http://stuartsyvret.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/in-your-name.html

http://stuartsyvret.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/jersey-election-special-7.html
"an island so wrecked, expensive, and economically knackered that your children and grandchildren all emigrate."

So far we haven't had a total collapse, but one has to wonder just how close are we to a runaway "tipping point"?

Far too many people are out of work, and finding it impossible to find any, facing the loss of their home and the slide towards the state of having almost nothing left - the point at which Income Support may finally help you; once you've finally lost your home and seen your savings dwindle to 20% of sweet F.A. and need a States flat because you're out on the street, but sorry there's a waiting list as long as St.Catherine's breakwater.

All this, while reading in the paper that there are bucketloads of jobs available if only you were qualified enough to tick all the many boxes on the forms pushed around by the HR dept in question, and apparently jobs are easy to come by if only we weren't so lazy and were prepared to do those menial seasonal jobs that the European imports are so happy to do.

All very well doing a 'summer job' .... what happens in the autumn then? What use is that to someone with a mortgage to pay? Everyone I know says they are struggling, and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

So I'm wondering, how much of Stuart's Doom and Gloom was correct, 5 years ago, and can anyone provide any links to support their views?

Fire away!

Landslide 74% victory for Vote D

So, very nearly 3/4 of the voters supported the Option D that I promoted in my last post here - don't vote - showing their disdain for the flawed and risable electoral commission.

I win! :)

Except that I don't really win. The Establishment's hijacked commision (what happened to "independent"?!) will convince themselves that people who turned up to vote have more sway than those who made the decision not to legitimise the whole farce by making an appearance at the polling stations, so the results (that they rigged in their favour with the way the options and voting system were arranged) will be taken as a ringing endorsement of change. They will get their way, there will be less opposition to their domination of the States with the drop to 42 members, the popular and widely supported Senators will go (don't tell me support for Senators has just vanished into thin air since the last opinion poll showed a strong desire to keep them).....  their me-me-me right-wing "strong governement" will carry on downtreading the less fortunate while the gap between rich and poor widens even further.

WTF does "strong government" even mean, Mr Shenton? The most powerful group gets to bully the oppostion and get their own way no matter what? Is that really the best that democracy has to offer?

Jersey will remain apathetic to what the States manages to achieve. When all is said and done, politicians are still mainly loathsome creatures supported by the fools who vote for them. The correct way to handle politics is to stand well back and observe from a distance, then join specific campaigns for issues you really care about.

Politics in general is a seething mass of irrelevance that we just don't feel empowered to influence except for very specific areas of life where we have a chance of supporting a movement calling for some direction we want. That's the best we can hope for. We are resigned to letting them do what they do, and hoping that they don't mess things up so much that we have to demonstrate in the Square (not that even that helps much, either).

For me, the most amusing part of this charade was the proof that Ian Le M supporting something (Option C) was only enough to convince 19% of the electorate to visit the booths. He didn't do much to atttract voters to his point of view, did he? And, as Senator, his career in the States seems a little doomed.

Oh well. Life goes on. At least we still get to moan about it, whether people think we have a right to, or not.