Thursday 9 April 2009

Jersey’s shared world-wide problems – continued.

If your brain hurts from trying to understand PACE and whether Syvret was legally turned over or not by the villainous remnants of the Jersey Police ( that is those that are not suspended or recently retired) – then why not have a look into some of the world-wide links on this site?

For instance, consider how according to Gibraltar News by Vox that the Moroccan workers are still being treated as 2nd class citizens and how, once again the scandal has been woken up because the UK Guardian newspaper ran a recent exposé article. And remember too that about 20 years ago the UK based Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants visited Gibraltar, with the support of the T & G Union and published a damning report on the Moroccans plight then. Evidently, things have not improved but remember also that the JCWI visited Jersey as well soon afterwards and published another damning report on the exploited 10,000 workers in Jersey without housing qualifications or jobs security. Have things improved? Have another look at the interviews with Freddie Cohen on voiceforjersey and consider whether portakabins are the acceptable side of our Tax Haven economy in 2009? Even Minister Freddie expressed his disgust!

OR have a look at the Netherlands Antilles chapter on Caribbean Net News and note that these islands may soon be breaking away from Holland and their oh so familiar sounding dependency relationship. These islands - notably Curacao, St Maarten, Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius were historically smuggling and piracy centres in the 18th century and many Channel Islands merchants traded with them then in all sorts of illegal and quasi-illegal activities. Now of course they are tax havens and still have enough involvement in Drug Smuggling to warrant a substantial USA military presence and of course, there are many links with the oh so respectable Jersey finance business aka Tax Haven.
The OECD has awarded the Antilles only a “grey” award on the latest league table of respectability so we can suppose that no more business will be transacted from Jersey (!) but on May 15th the islanders will decide whether to declare independence or not. We really should watch with interest because the Channel Islands may well be heading for a similar constitutional confrontation soon.

AND have a look at Trinidad & Tobago too on the Caribbean Net News site because it is just the latest among many territories in the region trying to deal with huge financial debts incurred through failed private business activities. Billions have gone missing, assets are illusionary and many thousands of ordinary people will be reduced to poverty for many years to come……

It can all happen here in the Channel Islands.

Submitted by Thomas Wellard.

2 comments:

Gibraltar Blogger said...

Vox is not exactly a 'neutral' newspaper in Gibraltar. It is a small minority sensationalist publication - giving coverage to anything that can be made to look shocking.

The Guardian letter is actually factually wrong from start to finish!

However almost everyone in Gibraltar would agree that the Moroccan nationals who live in Gibraltar face a number of hurdles - mainly because they are not EU citizens and therefore need a visa if they want to transit through neighbouring Spain to go to Morocco, etc - and Spain refused to issue them without people going to the UK.

However none of the issues faced by the morocan workers comes from them being moroccan. It comes from them being either non British nationals - hardly any countries in the world allow non-nationals to vote in national elections, or not being EU citizens - free movement across EU, right to reside etc.

They are non-EU migrant workers.

However, essentially everyone in Gibraltar agrees they face practical hurdles which we wish it was possible to address in a fair and legal way.

Anonymous said...

This is an excellent post as it raises several important things that generally not discussed here in Jersey. There is a lot to be learned from observing the pressures and challenges of other small states.