Jersey Chief Minister Rubbishes Guernsey Government

With friends like Senator Walker of Jersey, the island of Guernsey does not need enemies.

Jersey and Guernsey are well known tax havens offering shelter to footloose international capital.  For external consumption their politicians slap each other on the back and  issue numerous self congratulatory statements. The reality is that they both have a rotten government. Jersey has a long history of hiring its legislature to the highest biider ( Read how Jersey hired out its legislature to Ernst & Young and Price Waterhouse for the LLP legislation). It is implicated in global money laundering and tax dodging. It has no official opposition in parliament. Most members of parliament hold ministerial positions and that is enough to silence them.  Its tax regime ensures that its pensioners and the poor pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes that many millionaires. That is now set to be further exacerbated by the new tax regime which is offering Zero tax rate to  brassplate companies. In this relentless road to the bottom Jersey is now even rubbishing the government of Guernsey, its closest ally in the dark road to the bottom.

Here is what its chief minister, Senator Frank Walker, told an interviewer for the BBC Radio Jersey's  Talkback Programme on 26 November 2006.
Senator Walker

“It’s very interesting. You know we were in Guernsey on Friday meeting out colleagues in Guernsey. Well, they’ve got a halfway house – in fact their Ministers are much more Committee Presidents than they are Ministers in the sense that we structured in Jersey – and they would give anything – not just the Ministers but the backbenchers in Guernsey as well – would give anything to have the Jersey system. Because the remodelled, reformed, modernised Committee system in Guernsey patently is not working and that’s not me talking - these are Guernsey politicians who are telling us this at virtually every opportunity and they are deeply envious of the structure we’ve introduced in Jersey”.

Hamish Marett-Crosby

Indeed and I’ve talked to a well-known columnist in Guernsey who writes for the Guernsey Press and says the same. Yet it has been said that Guernsey went a different way. They reformed their States at the same time.”