Getting noticed

Thanks to my friend Nick Palmer (http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com) for spotting that I was quoted in the Independent today on the subject of population, resources and services.  See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jersey-considers-population-cap-to-deal-with-increasing-migration-8444906.html

Over the last 6 months I have done a number of interviews with local media on population, pollution, Care leavers and child abuse, climate change and Plémont. What is interesting to me is the spread of those media. BBC Radio and ChannelTV both did a number of interviews, but remarkably the JEP did not cover a single one. I have no idea why, but it is nothing new.

 It transpired that my e-mail address had been blocked at the JEP sometime in the run up to the election in 2011 - perhaps they still regard me as persona non grata. I have a number of times queried content and the failure to update links on their web site (ThisIsJersey), most recently the failure to update the link on the transport site to the new bus service provider and timetable for a number of days after the service began.

 I have also queried the monopoly they have over the publication of the official Gazette, and the inconsistent updating of that public information on their web site. Up to 1960 the law actually required the gazette to be published in 4 Sunday papers - 2 in English 2 in French. The last local French newspaper closed in 1959, which forced a change in the law. If you think 4 sounds like a lot of newspapers for our little island, at one point in the earlier part of the nineteenth century there were 10 or more in town alone. Of course in 1960, we had no local radio or television and the web had not been conceived. It seems to me if we were serious about the Gazette as a public information service we would change the law to make better use of those media. At the very least we should have a properly updated and maintained online gazette as part of the States of Jersey web site.