It’s that time of year again. As the clocks go back, chief minister candidates come forward with the promise not only to take us through the certain bleak winter ahead, there’s also confident assurances of unity, inclusion and joined up government.
Let’s hope so, because let’s face it; our States have been about as joined up as TTS main drains to St John and the outlying country parishes! Talking of drains, the JDA (who!?) seem to have finally disappeared up its own drainpipe. What will Geoff, Shona and clever Trevor do now? Will they still all sit together in the front row of the States known as ‘wrecker-row’? Perhaps Mike Higgins could join them? Then at least there’d be enough of them around to tell Shona which way to vote!
Jersey voters can be thankful that Ted, Stuart, Bob Hill and Paul le Claire fell far short of their electorates’ expectations. Marching orders for Bob and Paul and au revoir to Ted and Stu. Parishioners in St Martin are particularly pleased with their call-to-action to get rid of Bob Hill. A whacking 61% of electors beat a path to St Martin’s Public Hall to kick slimy Bob back to Trinity where he spends much of the time in his local shop bad-mouthing the good people of St Martin for not re-electing him back to his £750 per week pointless existence in the States.
Ted, who’s now well into his seventies, may well find himself in an old peoples home before the next elections. Can you imagine what Ted would be like in a home for the elderly? It would only be a matter of days before Ted would be demanding more rights for OAP residents. He’d be demanding fluffier slippers, longer visiting hours and free milk for pensioners. And of course if Ted didn’t get his way, he’d start a petition! Shoppers will soon be able to look forward to Ted, his pen and his clipboard all loitering with intent outside Voisins demanding your signature!
Paul le Claire is a man who now needs a plan. I wonder what he’ll do? We watch with interest to see if Paul can increase his wealth outside of the States. We’ll also watch to see if he can decrease his spectacular waistline, now reaching gargantuan proportions and looking more like the nose cone of a low-flying Jumbo rather than a high-flying States deputy.
A lean agreement is better than a fat judgement, which leads me on to Stuart Syvret, what will become of this fallen hero? I hope the governor at La Moye prison has been suitably briefed. Never before in the history of incarceration will anyone need to be prepared for such a cantankerous, belligerent unreasonable character should Stuart Syvret fall foul of our courts.
Stuart will once again be back in court this week wasting Magistrate Bridget Shaw’s time (did he really call her incompetent?!) and our tax payers money. What is wrong with this man? He had no driving licence, no insurance and broke the island’s data protection laws. He was also found in contempt of court because he absconded from the island further delaying his trial. He’s been processed through the courts, found guilty, appealed, lost the appeal and been given 80 hours community service.
Below is a small excerpt from 12th October when Stuart Syvret last appeared in court.
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: This matter is listed before the Court today because the Defendant has been ordered to serve 80 hours’ community service. That 80 hours’ community service was imposed for an offence of contempt of Court. The contempt of Court was his absconding from Jersey for some six months and thus not being available for his trial. In England, the matter would have been dealt with under the Bail Act in all likelihood, but in Jersey by our law it is dealt with as a contempt of Court and it is dealt with frequently as a contempt of Court in this Court.
He was convicted and sentenced by you for contempt of Court on the 17th of November 2010. A transcript of what transpired is in the bundle before you and will be easily in your recollection in any event, Madam, but he was sentenced to eight weeks’ imprisonment for that contempt of Court. The reason that he was sentenced to eight months’(sic) imprisonment----
MAGISTRATE: Eight weeks.
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: Eight weeks, I do apologise, eight weeks’ imprisonment that day was because he refused the offer of community service as an alternative. You specifically gave him the opportunity of undertaking community service and he declined it and you therefore sentenced him to eight weeks’ imprisonment, which was inevitable. He thereafter, as soon as he could, applied for bail from the Royal Court and he was granted bail by the Royal Court pending his appeal in regard to a series of convictions and sentences which had been passed, but it is only the contempt for absconding which concerns you today.
His appeal against conviction was rejected by the Royal Court on the 11th of August of this year and, as to sentence, the learned Commissioner and Jurats offered him the opportunity of doing community service and he accepted that opportunity. Commissioner Pitchers told him on that occasion that he had no doubt that he could do community service and asked him whether he was willing to do it as an alternative to prison. The Defendant said that he was.
The Commissioner then substituted 80 hours’ community service for the contempt and told the Defendant that, if he failed to comply, he could be resentenced and made it clear “This is the sentence that the Magistrate wanted to pass the first time round”, so he was left in no doubt as to what the consequences might be should he fail to co-operate and carry out his community service.
It is alleged that he has failed to comply with the requirements of the Community Service Order. He has refused to attend a single appointment for work. He attended one meeting at the Community Service, at the Probation and was largely offensive and insulting at that meeting. You have before you a report prepared by Mr Le Marrec, who sits behind me, dated the 12th of October 2011 and who is available to give evidence or answer questions, as is the normal course in this Court. I hope I can encapsulate the Probation Service’s position, but they can speak for themselves if and when you have questions for them, Madam, but that they consider that the Defendant has been dismissive of them and has effectively been contemptuous of them in the casual use of the word.
You will see that in paragraph 4 of the report “You don’t really expect me to take this seriously” is what he says to Community Service, and this days after he has been sentenced to community service as an alternative to custody. (Pause)
MAGISTRATE: Carry on.
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: As I say, the Probation Officers can speak for themselves, but arrangements had been made for him to attend Community Service on a Wednesday morning, on a day when lighter work and more vulnerable prisoners – sorry, not prisoners, more vulnerable convicted persons – are carrying out their order.
They tend to carry out tasks at the zoo, at Durrell, sweeping up leaves and the like. What I submit to you – and you should ask the Probation Officers some questions – but what the report which the Probation Service has prepared for you reveals is just exactly the same type of conduct as you have faced for 18 months and which the Royal Court faced, with him playing a medical card when he thinks its suits him, being dismissive of people when it suits him and not engaging and then making allegations against people when it suits him.
So that when he comes across people who don’t see the world as he does, or who want him to do something he doesn’t want to, he seems incapable of engaging with them and, rather than engaging in reason and reaching compromise with them, he accuses them, makes wild allegations with virtually no evidence or no evidence at all to back it up. What you see in the report, I repeat, is what you’ve seen throughout these proceedings and he is “swinging the lead. “
Commissioner Pitchers was in no doubt in the middle of August that he was capable of doing community service. He is Exhibit A as to why he is capable of doing community service. He is a man who will argue with you until he is blue in the face. He will talk across you. He will insult you and he is more than capable of engaging with things when he wants to. It is just when he doesn’t want to, when it doesn’t suit him that he decides that oh he’s too ill, “I’ve got a doctor’s report saying that I’m unfit for work” and he resorts to insults and excuses as to why he can’t comply with something he has been ordered to do; this in circumstances where a retired High Court Judge says that he is certain that he can carry out community service.
Again, you doubtless will ask some questions of the Officers, but 95% of people who are ordered to do community service in Jersey carry it out, and in the Wednesday working group at the moment there are several people who have doctors’ certificates saying they are unfit for work, who carry out community service. It is about seven hours on a Wednesday. It can be as low as four and a half hours and any sensible engagement with Probation leads to persons being able to carry out community service.
Madam, you have power to deal with the alleged breach under Article 20(3) of the Magistrates’ Courts Law. I don’t intend to take you to it unless you wish me to.
MAGISTRATE: Article 23?
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: I have got 20(3).
MAGISTRATE: Yes, sorry 20.
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: It is behind divider 8----
MAGISTRATE: Yes.
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: -----of the bundle I have put before you.
MAGISTRATE: Yes.
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: Do you wish me to read it?
MAGISTRATE: Yes, the Royal Court has effectively varied a decision of the Magistrates’ Court. Is that what you’re saying?
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: Yes, that is right.
MAGISTRATE: Yes.
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: The Defendant claims to have material which affects the safety of his conviction on one of the data protection offences. Any such material is entirely irrelevant to this Community Service Order, which he has been ordered to complete for contempt of Court, not for the data protection offence, about which he says there is evidence which may affect the safety of that conviction. It is plain that he has been told that in terms by Commissioner Pitchers, and there is an email behind divider 6.
MAGISTRATE: Hmm hmm.
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: Mr Syvret wrote to the Bailiff’s Judicial Secretary saying he needed an immediate injunction, or something of that type, to suspend the orders which had been made against him, and Commissioner Pitchers replied through the Bailiff’s Judicial Secretary, saying that he had read the documents submitted by Syvret, “he wishes to seek a stay of the orders made on appeal, applications properly made to me, he argues a new witness is relevant in the defence of public interest under Article 55 of the law” – that is the offence I was referring to.
MAGISTRATE: Hmm hmm.
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: “Accordingly whatever the outcome of this application for convictions and sentences to do with the data protection offences, the two motoring offences and the contempt of Court offence will be unaffected. The fines and the community service for those offences will remain.” So he knows, because Commissioner Pitchers has told him, that any material which might be relevant (and there will be a dispute as to that doubtless) to the data protection offence is not relevant to this.
Madam, if the breach of Community Service Order is proved or admitted by the Defendant, then you have various options. One option is to allow the order to run with a final warning to the Defendant that, if he does not complete community service, then you will have no option but to send him to prison. That is entirely your decision and the Crown in this Court has no role in submitting as to what it believes you should do, but, should the Defendant refuse to undertake community service, then the likelihood is that the Court will be left with no option but to send him to prison to serve the eight weeks’ imprisonment. The Prosecution indicates that it has no desire that the Defendant be sent to prison. It is in highly unusual circumstances, that people get themselves into a position where a Court has to send them to prison where they have been sentenced to community service. If he is sentenced to imprisonment, it will be entirely a consequence of his own acts and he would effectively have chosen to be imprisoned. It is all his doing. It is all his choice. Madam, I have told you that there is a report from the Probation Services dated the 12th of October 2011. Mr Le Marrec is here behind me, as is his boss, if you will excuse the colloquialness, and they are here to answer any questions you might have.
MAGISTRATE: Has that report from Mr Le Marrec been supplied to Mr Syvret?
CROWN ADVOCATE BAKER: Yes.
The verbatim transcript (above) of recorded proceedings in the Magistrate’s court from the 12th October says it all. Stuart Syvret will make his next appearance in the Magistrate’s Court this Wednesday (2nd November) at 2:30.
Why not go along? It’ll be a unique opportunity to see Neil and Rico and Jill. If you’re really lucky you might see Ian or Nick or Mike or indeed any one of a number of Social-Security-grabbing individuals which we tax payers have to work hard to fund because they’re apparently too ill to work, but not too ill to write extensive blogs, attend court or help run a number of election campaigns for their representatives in the States.
They’ll all be there to see the king of them all, Stuart Syvret. A man, who claimed earlier this year that he was mentally ill, yet was able to run an impressive (all be it futile) election campaign. I wonder how much more time and money this so called man-of-the-people will cost we tax payers?
If you do happen to bump into Stuart before Wednesday afternoon… ask him why. Why? why? why? can he not just accept that he broke our laws. Ask him why he thinks he’s above the law. Ask him if he’s really intending to take this all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.
As French philosopher Voltaire once asked: "What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them…"
Who does that remind you of dear reader?
