Environmental campaigner to stand for Reform

Thursday 10 March 2022

A former science teacher and long-term environmental campaigner has announced his intention to stand for election in the parish he was born in.

Hopeful St. Brelade representative Nigel Jones will be standing for Reform Jersey.

Mr Jones says he was born on Quennevais Road, with his grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins living within walking distance. After university, he spent 15 years working in jobs ranging from delivery driving to hospitality, sales, teaching in a primary school and working in an electronics factory.

Having returned to Jersey in 1987, he began teaching science at De La Salle, his old school, until 2000, before taking a career break and studying for a computing masters, which led him into writing software for local banks and businesses.  

In 2010, he then founded Jersey in Transition, a local group campaigning on issues ranging form green transport to biodiversity.

Mr Jones said he wished to stand for Reform Jersey because he felt the party's policies for a Green New Deal are "a perfect fit for the future of Jersey."

"We cannot continue to squeeze more productivity, more tax and longer hours out Middle Jersey while so many people increasingly suffer from shortage and hardship. Reform Jersey plans to diversify the local economy and reform our tax system so that those who can afford it pay their fair share," he explained.

Mr Jones said his varied career had helped him "understand more of how the world works".

"I love meeting people and trying to help them think through complex problems," he continued.

"We as an island, and as a global community, face some of the trickiest and, at the same time, the most important problems we have ever faced. If I can help piece together parts of a fair and a just – as well as an effective and timely – solution to just some of them in the next four years, I feel I have to try."

Jersey's election will be taking place in June.