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It was the year of the London Olympics, and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee... But what was going on in the island? It starts with a different kind of 'Christmas' story based in the Royal Court.
Today in part three of our review of the decade, we're rolling back the years to 2012...
One of the big stories of the year was the fraud trial of magistrate-designate Ian Christmas. Together with three others he was accused of 27 charges of swindling islanders out of more than £1.3m in a US-based property scam.
The trial lasted two months with all four being found guilty. Christmas was given a 15-month prison sentence. His co-accusseds, John Lewis, James Cameron, and Russell Foot, were each given four-and-a-half years. During the trial it was revealed that despite being suspended Christmas had continued to receive his £120,000 a year salary.
Pictured: The fraud trial of magistrate-designate Ian Christmas was one of the big stories of 2012.
Also in the courts two politicians, husband and wife, Deputies Trevor and Shona Pitman. They’d taken action against the Jersey Evening Post for a cartoon it ran in the run up to Christmas 2008 which they claimed defamed them by making them appear as money grabbers who’d only entered the States because they could boost their earnings.
The court disagreed, and also turned down an application to appeal. Faced with legal fees totalling £250,000, they were later forced to sell their St. John home, and file for bankruptcy. This meant in 2014 they had to resign their seats. They were taken by Nick Le Cornu and Sam Mézec.
In March it was announced victims of historic abuse could get up to £60,000 compensation. By September more than 100 people had put in claims.
On 15 July, for the first time, the Olympic torch came to the island as part of its 8,000 mile 70-day journey ahead of the games’ opening on 27 July.
It was welcomed at the airport by the Bailiff, Sir Michael Birt, after which a team of 19 runners carried it to town where long distance swimmer, Sally Minty-Gravett, lit the cauldron. Thousands of spectators lined the route and packed Liberation Square.
Pictured: The Olympic Torch came to the island for the first time in 2012.
Still with the Olympics, and there was gold for Sark rider Carl Hester. He was a member of Great Britain’s four-strong squad that took top spot in the team dressage. To honour his achievement Sark’s only post box was painted gold.
Two others that struck ‘gold’ were Reg Mead and Richard Miles. After thirty years of fruitless searching the metal detectorists unearthed the world’s largest ever Celtic coin hoard in a field in Grouville. It wasn’t clear at the time just how valuable and important the discover was. Unpicking the jumbled mass would take the rest of the decade.
There was also a financial windfall for the island’s elderly. Wealthy businessman and philanthropist David Kirch, who, to mark his 70th birthday six years ago, started a tradition of handing out free £100 Christmas food vouchers to elderly islanders, suddenly announced he had altered his will and would be leaving his £100m fortune to the island’s needy.
In 2013, he contacted the Sunday Times telling them what he had done and asked them to take him off their Rich List. They did. But they also crowned him the most generous man in Britain, topping their giving list. That summer he was knighted by the Queen.
Amongst those honoured in 2012, was the Bailiff, who became Sir Michael Birt.
Pictured: Sir Michael Birt's official portrait.
There were four days of celebration in June to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, with a series of events being held on the Waterfront and in the parishes.
The following month the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall made a flying visit to the island. A national tabloid dubbed the visitor ‘His Royal Highness, The Prince of Walls’ after photographers ‘snapped’ him hanging off Grainville School’s recently opened climbing wall.
And there was a surprise ‘eviction’ for 20-year-old former Les Quennevais and Hautlieu pupil Lauren Carré. She’d been highly tipped to win tv reality show’s Big Brother, but in July she became the programme’s seventh casualty losing out in a public vote to transsexual Luke Anderson.
She later told the national press she ‘was nervous about getting booed' as she was kicked off. But, she needn’t to have worried, she was given a rousing departure.
Video: The Prince of Wales trying out Grainville School’s recently opened climbing wall.
Amongst those islanders we said adieu to in 2012 were 97-year-old Alphonse Le Gastelois, the self-proclaimed ‘King of the Ecrehous’ who went into self-imposed exile and set up home on this far flung often harsh outpost of St Martin in 1961, because he felt persecuted having been wrongly accused of a series of sex attacks in the island in the 1960s that the ‘Beast of Jersey’, Edward Paisnel, was later convicted of.
Le Gastelois lived on the reef for 14 years, but failed in his attempt to petition the Queen – ‘The Duke of Normandy’ – to give him ownership. He settled back in Jersey in 1975 after having been brought back to face arson charges of which he was later acquitted. A campaign to get the States to pay him compensation was unsuccessful.
The island also said ‘goodbye’ to Rene Liron. For more than a quarter of a century the 86-year-old headed up the island’s branch of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, retiring in 1990. Widely respected by both the membership and those with whom he had to negotiate with, his years of service earned him an MBE on his retirement.
Another island character who passed away was 94-year-old Florence Bechelet. As a Battle of Flowers stalwart, she built more than 70 floats, the first – a watering can – when she was 16 in 1934. She also established a Battle of Flowers museum in St Ouen to exhibit her work.
Pictured: Les Masurier’s sold the old Odeon cinema to Freedom Church for £1m. (Google Maps)
During 2012 plans were unveiled for a number of ambitious building projects some of which happened, others which were to rumble on for the rest of the decade. Les Masurier’s sold the old Odeon cinema to Freedom Church for £1m.
But the company scrapped plans for a huge £75m retail rejuvenation scheme of a vast swathe of Bath Street stretching from the old cinema almost up to the junction with Robin Place, after a disagreement with Planning.
Islanders got their first look at plans for a proposed new police station which would see the force move from Rouge Bouillon to a site overlooking the roundabout at the eastern end of the tunnel.
And by 46 votes to one the States agreed to build a new hospital. Health Minister Deputy Anne Pryke told members it was likely to cost up to £430m, but that no site had yet been allocated.
Pictured: Plans to build 28 homes on the site of the former Pontin’s Holiday Camp at Plemont were approved and later scrapped.
Still with development, and although plans to build 28 homes in the green zone on the site of the abandoned and derelict former Pontin’s Holiday Camp at Plemont were given the go-ahead, the project was put on hold as the National Trust for Jersey and some States members struggled to secure a deal that would protect the headland for posterity.
In December a proposition lodged by the Chief Minister, Senator Ian Gorst, to get the States to buy the land, failed by a single vote. Despite the disappointment the campaigners vowed to fight on.
But, Dyson the dog – a 17-month-old Alsatian-husky cross – that in May a court had ordered destroyed after he bit a six-year-old girl who later needed 40 stitches in her face, was saved. After an unprecedented campaign on Facebook, and a Royal Court appeal, the decision was overturned, but with strict restrictions. In future Dyson would have to be muzzled and kept on a lead in public and undergo two years’ training.
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