Housing Series 2 – Finding Room: Reducing pressure by housing our essential workforce First published in the Jersey Evening Post 2026-01-29 Why workforce housing now matters Across the Island, people whose work keeps daily life functioning – teachers, nurses, carers, social workers, emergency responders – are finding it harder to secure stable, affordable accommodation. Housing costs are no longer simply…
First published in the Jersey Evening Post 2026-01-22 Risk, generational fairness, and the future of a small island When housing stops being a bridge Across many jurisdictions, housing has become the line along which generational confidence either holds or frays. Not through a single decision, or the intentions of any one group, but through the accumulation of choices made under…
Jersey needs a political culture that can differentiate between frustration and corrosive fatalism First published in the Jersey Evening Post 2026-01-14 There is sometimes a particular tone in Jersey’s public debate that becomes more noticeable during discussions about civil servants and public service. It appears in online comment threads, letters to the JEP and, no doubt, discussions at kitchen tables.…
The Empire on a Plate: How school dinners were influenced by Britains dominance on the global stage First published in the Jersey Evening Post 2026-01-08 There are moments when memory arrives not in fully formed stories but in tastes and textures – or, more precisely, in the strange, wobbling consistency of foods that have almost vanished from British dinner tables.…
Housing too dear, politics too brittle, finances stretched, yet a community still rich in competence and care First published in the Jersey Evening Post 2026-01-02 In the late 1990s, Jersey still believed in its own good fortune. Finance was booming, young families could still buy a home, and you could get a meal for a tenner during Tennerfest. It was…
Reducing headcount can be right — but only if it’s done with process, purpose, and humanity. First published in the Jersey Evening Post 2025-1218 Cutting Agency Staff Isn’t as Simple as It Sounds Every Government Plan debate brings familiar refrains about “cutting headcount” and “getting rid of agency staff.” This year is no exception. Facing a tight fiscal outlook, Ministers…
Why Growing Our Own Clinicians Is Jersey’s Best Retention Policy First published in the Jersey Evening Post 2025-12-12 For years, Jersey’s health service has been locked in the same cycle: too few permanent staff, too many agency contracts, and a growing sense of frustration that we are paying more but getting less. We talk about recruitment drives and overseas campaigns,…
Funding Health must deliver results – not just sustain the status quo First published in the Jersey Evening Post 2025-12-04 Deputy Tom Binet is right to argue for more health funding in the 2026 Budget. Islanders see the pressures every day – longer waiting lists, rising costs, and staff stretched thin. But every new pound must buy visible results, not…
We honour our shared history when we tell the whole story First published in the Jersey Evening Post 2025-11-27 Ben Shenton’s recent JEP column on trust in the public sector drew on the world of Jersey’s docks to make a wider moral point. It is a story worth hearing – but also worth examining carefully, because the history it invokes…
After Blue Islands: Why the Channel Islands Need an Integrated Air Network First published in the Jersey Evening Post 2025-11-22 Introduction The collapse of Blue Islands came as a shock to many islanders, but it should not have come as a surprise. For years we have depended on an aviation model that looks stable from a distance yet is structurally…