Against Accountability.
They still believe in a world of a handful of over-powered and unaccountable potentates - some publicly known – some not – where the “right words” amongst a couple of chaps, in the right circles – in Jersey, in London - could smooth over any problems – get the “machine” going – and massage any scandals from public view.
After all – with no separation of powers in Jersey – no effective checks and balances – and the same narrow grouping of mutually promoting and protecting friends on the dinner-party-circuit – all meaningful power was in the same little club. That’s how “The Jersey Way” has functioned for 800 years; ‘why should it not carry on like that?’
In truth, such an extraordinarily narrow, unaccountable and unhealthy concentration of power was long-obsolete in respectable democratic nations by the time the canker was really taking hold of the Jersey establishment in the 1970s - when the place first started to be awash with money from off-shore finance and the unrestrained decadence of absolute power really began to run wild. The Jersey authorities and the bosses who control them were already living in a feudal fantasy whilst the failures, corruptions and cover-ups - and the cover-ups of the cover-ups - grew and accumulated throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Even before the internet really arrived – in truth, so corrupt, so hubristic, so rotten, was public administration in Jersey, the fake surface of “respectability” was already fracturing, and the scandals were inevitably going to emerge.
But here cometh the 21st century.
An epochal change unparalleled in all of human history. For the first time ever, the power to control what the public do or don’t get to know – to control what the public can or can’t say – is out of the hands of entrenched elites. The power of ordinary citizens to find and publish evidence that rulers and governments don’t like has arrived with the advent of the internet, and the result has been seismic – bringing down regimes around the world.
The doomed last stand being made by the Jersey oligarchy against citizens media – against real journalism – against the internet – against evidenced facts and the exposure of corruption - is their war against reality.
Wars against reality only end one way.
The Jersey oligarchs and their protectors in London think that they can do what no corrupt regime around the world had been able to do – and keep embarrassing exposures about them off the world wide web.
My blog may have been taken-down by Google Blogger. But it - and all of the documented evidence it contains – will be up and available again somewhere on the world wide web in the coming days. And I know from the many messages I have had that many people welcome that.
For some years now, really for the first time in the entire history of this small island community, the ordinary people have been able to see the reality of our leaders – the stagnation and failures – the frequent lawlessness of our governance.
Not only have we seen it – increasingly, we understand it.
We understand the wholly corrupted nature of power in this community. People who are victims of the corruption – of the failures – of the crimes - of the cover-ups – have been able to have evidence exposed and have their testimony published.
That has only been able to happen because of Jersey’s bloggers – because of blogs like mine.Unfortunately for Jersey’s failed & unaccountable government, the genie is out of the bottle – and it can never be got back in.
We as a community have seen the facts – enough evidence, of enough scandalous corruptions and cover-ups – to see the true nature of our public authorities. We’ve seen it now – and we’re never going to forget it.
My blog – and what the previously powerless people of Jersey have been able to publish on it – the evidence we’ve been able to accumulate – the facts we’ve been able to expose – is an historic publication for the island. It marks an exposure of, and challenge to, traditional power in Jersey of a kind that’s never been able to happen previously. Not in over 800 years.
And I’m proud that my blog has attracted so many oppressive attacks & lunatic abuses. I’m proud that the blog is targeted by these suppressions – proud that it elicits so much fear and hatred from the powerful.
There are many people in Jersey – ordinary, vulnerable people – who have been the victims of corruption, oppression, violence, child-abuse, battery, rape, attempted murder – people who have been utterly failed, totally betrayed by Jersey’s public authorities - people who have been trampled and further abused by Jersey’s Crown prosecution and judicial apparatus.
For so many of those people – so many of my former constituents who approached me with histories of the most scandalous failures of the system – abuses – shocking violence - simply overwhelming horror-stories – and by no means all concerning child-abuse – for many of those people, my blog was the first – and in many cases the only – public outlet for what they had suffered.
Nowhere – ever – in any of Jersey’s traditional mainstream media – were the disastrous failures of the States – and the often horrifying criminal cover-ups by the Jersey system challenged and documented – as they are on my blog.
Documents – facts – evidence; corruption exposed – failures challenged – fake consensuses overturned – crimes cited – names named.
Just as real journalism in free Western countries is supposed to be.
My blog became – and is - a source of hope - of validation - of support, for many powerless people in Jersey. And I am very proud of that fact.
I’m proud that – with the support of others – I was able to do what Jersey’s establishment media failed to do for generations upon generations, and still fails to do.
No matter that the establishment who run Jersey with the support of London, have tried everything to smear, discredit and stop the blog – and have persecuted me personally, tried all they could to discredit me, and tried to break me with all kinds of absurd and biased oppressions, even imprisoning me; no matter that they have tried everything they possibly could to make the blog seem some kind of bad and shameful thing – no matter that these people continue to try and make me think of my work on the blog as “bad” and “wrong” – I know, we know – that publishing the evidence – publishing witness testimony concerning serious wrongdoing – is a good and creditable thing.
What I - and Jersey bloggers like Rico Sorda and Voice for Children do is good for powerless people – good for this community.
I’ve had many conversations with people who have suffered at the hands of the corruption, injustice, neglect and abuse that characterises power in Jersey. People should have been protected from such things. And when protection failed, the culpable should have been held to account - the wrongdoers should have been punished; justice should have been served. In so many cases in Jersey, that didn’t happen. The overwhelming motivation of Jersey’s stagnant public authorities has been the protection of those authorities - and the protection of the powerful.
My blog publishes the facts – the witness testimony – the documents – the evidence. I’m proud of that fact.
Many people have contacted me, upset that the powerful in Jersey seem to be concealing the truth again. I want people - whose stories are on my blog, and whose experiences inform so much of the blog – to know that their testimony – their brave whistle-blowing – their truth – will be restored, soon.
The internet gives us that power.
The power to share. To see. And to understand.
And to never forget.
I’m proud that my blog has given that power to so many previously voiceless people in Jersey.
Stuart Syvret
For some background information: CTV covering up the abuse investigation
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