DARK SECRETS OF A TRILLION DOLLAR ISLAND: GARENNE - THE CREDIT DUE TWO BLOGGERS WHO JUST WOULD NOT QUIT

Blogger Neil McMurray - Trawling for justice

I thought that I was done with blogging - well, at least until next year, perhaps... 

Nevertheless, with the long-awaited release of Camilla Hall's (Rogan Productions) documentary 'Dark secrets of a trillion dollar island: Garenne' this coming Monday on BBC4's Storyville I simply felt that I had to briefly post something to say how pleased I am to see that the two brave and indefatigable Jersey bloggers, Neil McMurray and Rico Sorda were being afforded the true credit that they are both due for helping drag the Jersey Establishment kicking and screaming in to the 21st Century.

Oh the island is not there yet, believe me. Indeed, in their entrenched attitude of denial to admitting the need, never mind the benefit to all of social justice the Jersey 'Judiciary' and a number of aging political relics likewise the fact is that we are probably no further ahead here than the morning after the 28th September 1769! 

Blogger Rico Sorda

But the fact is Jersey would not have even progressed this far without the sterling efforts of McMurray and Sorda. The pair were, and shall ever remain as crucial to the hard-fought victories won as other, by nature far more high-profile, figures who also led the way: figures such as former Senator Stuart Syvret; former Police Chief Graham Power; and his Senior Investigating Officer Lenny Harper; US journalist Leah McGrath Goodman - who just wouldn't let the story die internationally with yesterday's news; and, of course, a tiny handful of other political figures on Jersey of which I was proud to be one.

Of course, the most important people of all in this sorry saga - the true heroes and heroines - are the victims who never gave up and showed their abusers and the senior Judicial and Political figures who fought to re-bury their suffering in the 'interest' of Jersey's repuation as a financial centre that they would not be silenced by strutting Sawdust Caesars in red cloaks and pinstripe suits.

Yet for all of this Neil and Rico are deserving of an extra special mention within despatches. The pair didn't have the public platform and responsibility some of us had, and felt obliged to try and honour. They were just two ordinary members of the public; family men, who disgusted at what they were learning worked and worked, dug and dug, because they believed in 'doing the right thing'.

Haut de la Garenne

Just what Neil McMurray and Rico Sorda contributed cannot be overstated - and to even try and list it all here would, quite frankly, not be possible in ten blog postings let alone one. 

Suffice to say then perhaps, that from my own perspective, the report I published from the Scrutiny (Select Committee) Panel which I Chaired - blowing out of the water much of the unparralled barrage of half-truths, propaganda and even downright falsehoods spun to discredit Harper and Power - and happily sold to the public as fact by the Jersey mainstream media, would never have happened without Neil and Rico having approached me as a politician with the evidence from their research. 

The pair deserve the very highest of accolades. 

THE JERSEY BAILIFF 2019 - 'THE JERSEY WAY' MADE FLESH: A TRUE VIDEO NASTY

• Attack on the Independent Care Inquiry
• Attack on brave Police S.I.O. who led abuse investigation
• Attack on former Politicians who did the right thing
• Excuses for a State in the 21st Century still having no separation of powers
• A complete denial of reality...

Bailiff Sir William Bailhache - A man who clearly doesn't understand irony?

PLUS CA CHANGE, PLUS C'EST LE MEME CHOSE

Any UK based readers who think that we have dire political/constitutional problems here with arrogant public school bully boy Boris Johnson shamelessly playing fast and loose with the law and his own High Office really ought to spare a few minutes to watch the following, truly shocking video at the end of this blog post.

This features the Bailiff of the British Crown Dependency of Jersey - a wholly unelected public school throwback to the 17th Century who even makes Jacob Rees-Mogg look caring and contemporary - allowed by the UK's studied collusion to sit as both Chief Judge of the Tax Haven's Judiciary and  President & Speaker of the legislature. 

Just as Bailiffs have done for over 800 long years!

Indeed, as viewers will hear with the raucous stamping of feet  - rather like that of recently shod sheep - greeting the Bailiff's inane, bitter and deeply offensive utterings of denial about the existence of the infamous 'Jersey Way' so inherently linked to his Office things really do seem stuck in a time warp in Jersey.

Certainly this indicates to me that it really must be sadly acknowledged that the aforesaid shocking 'Jersey Way' of burying things 'bad for the Island's image' rather than dealing with them a handful of politicians (I was very proud to be one of them) alongside bloggers and other anti-abuse campaigners fought so hard to change in support of brave Senior Police Officers Graham Power and Lenny Harper has now slipped back to pre-2008 levels.

For what else can one conclude when a member of the Jersey public feels the need to email me describing her disgust at the Chairman of the Privileges & Procedures Committee - in the lady's words 'sucking up to the Bailiff rather than holding him to account' for abusing a mechanism usually only used for advising States Members of house-keeping matters such as altered meeting dates etc and instead making it a platform for an embittered tirade on his last day in Office ?

A 'disaffected' Police Officer to Bailhache - A hero to victims of 'The Jersey Way'

What can you conclude when you hear this sorry excuse for a Crown Officer insult the former S.I.O. Lenny Harper who strove to uncover what Jersey's Bailiffs and senior politicians had turned a blind to for decades as apparently being just a 'disaffected' police officer?

Or when the tiny handul of current States Members who were disgusted and wanted to ask Bailhache questions were denied this?

A DANGEROUS RELIC OF FEUDALISM

After all, picking up a salary twice, let us not forget, that of Prime Minister Johnson's Bailiff Sir William Bailhache sits atop a jurisdiction not just still without any real Separation of Powers!  But...

• Still without any holding to account by UK Monarch and/or government. 
• Still without any acceptance of their own appalling failings. 
• Still without any aceptance of the need to change. 
• Still without any evident understanding of just how terribly all of this - and this latest display of arrogance in particular - simply must negatively impact upon the victims.

The role is of course defiantly claimed by local Establishment apologists desperate to retain the status quo to help maintain their own power as being wholly 'a-political'. To this all I would advise new readers/viewers is watch the video above for yourself and make up your own mind. As to what set Bailiff Bailhache off on his latest revisionary rant...

Hundreds of thousands of pages of documented evidence

The tinder for this was the second report and recommendations of the £24 million Independent Care Inquiry panel brought over to investigate many decades of appalling judicial, governmental and senior Civil Service failings and downright betrayal of countless children in the 'care' of the States over a period stretching right back to the immediate post-war years.

Hundreds of thousands of statements and other documents were amassed and assessed by the Independent Care Inquiry over a period of years. All of this within a Terms of Reference framework admittdely wholly lacking in the teeth to ultimately hold people in power legally to account. 

Nevertheless, everyone involved appears to at least accept the existence of what has become notoriously, globally known as 'The Jersey Way' as being central to this. Except the likes of those who really need to take it on board the most: Bailhache, his equally arrogant predecessors and the foot-stomping embarrassments we hear on the video. 

How damningly ironic a thought to end on then but to point out that the very Bailiff who refuses to acknowledge the existence of 'The Jersey Way' has just demeonstrated it in personification:

'The Jersey Way' made flesh...