It is 2008 all over again

Three meetings are on my radar for this month.  Each reminds me in some way of 2008. 

A number of groups have been invited to workshop sessions on Shaping our Future.  There is a report on this somewhere on the States web site and yes it is our old friend 2035 again.  I took part in the Imagine Jersey event  in 2008.  It was a travesty of consultation, a one dimensional view of the future looking solely at financial  impacts of a growing elderly population and social security and pensions.  It was a railroad to the pre-selected acceptable outcomes.  One of the points I made repeatedly in the subsequent elections was that we needed to do this exercise properly, looking at  how the world would change by 2035 and well beyond just the money.

So here we are over 7 years on and we have only just got to realising we need plans for all the other aspects of life in the future.   I know some of the people attending  these sessions.  If it is as badly handled as 2008 there will be uproar.

You my be aware I sometimes contribute to Rural magazine on local organic production and my stockless smallholding .  This talk is right up my street. Robin Page is an entertaining speaker though his politics and mine are poles apart.  He has stood for the UK and European parliaments a few times as a Conservative and in 2010 as a UKIP candidate.   I have put a link below to his experiences with the police, around 2008 eventually winning a four figure sum compensation payout .

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-560699/I-fought-law-I-won--How-Robin-Page-challenged-police.html

Lastly we have the AGM of the Jersey Climate Action Network.  This is the eighth one, so the origins are  in 2008.  You can read a bit of its nascence here  http://st-ouennais.livejournal.com/2090.html. 

http://www.gov.je/sitecollectiondocuments/government%20and%20administration/id%20imaginejerseyfinal%20report%2020100323.pdf