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Past meetings in St Ouen’s Parish Hall have been almost as spikey as last night’s chair Rev Ian Pallent’s hair.
However, those seeking moans, groans, cheers and heckles at the latest hustings for District 1’s seven candidates would have been sorely disappointed.
That said, what replaced any theatricals was a series of intelligent and well-presented questions, and a set of cogent responses from candidates - each met with respectful applause.
The warm reception matched the day, with the evening sun pouring through the windows of the packed hall.
Indeed, the majority of the candidates looked rather bronzed, having clearly been canvassing hard over the last few days of beautiful weather.
The glossy front doors and shiny conservatories of the north-west must reflect plenty of sunlight back at any visitor, or potentially, meet-and-greets have been held down the beach over an ice cream.
Questions covered a range of important topics, from homelessness and support for unpaid carers, to pensioner poverty, the difficulties faced by new arrivals to the island, hospitality and safe cycling routes between the three parishes.
Pictured: It was a busy parish hall in St. Ouen on Wednesday evening.
The seven candidates - independents Senator Lyndon Farnham, Senator Kristina Moore, Lucy Stephenson and Senator Ian Gorst; and party members Deputy Rowland Huelin (Alliance), David Benn (JLC) and Helen Evans (Reform) - are vying for four seats.
Senator Gorst was on home turf and had the swagger - as much as Senator Gorst can swagger - of a man among friends. He knew that most people in the room would be aware that he was married to “the girl A’Court” but he mentioned it anyway, and it was still appreciated.
Senator Farnham is also a St Ouennais but lost out in the ‘best-place-on-the-table’ stakes, tucked away in the left corner of the stage, like a naughty child. The Rector almost missed him out on the first round of questions.
Chief Minister-hopeful Senator Moore sat next to her fellow Better Way ‘we’re-not-a-party-but-we’ll-vote-together’ member Lucy Stephenson, whose very smart shiny hair matched her equally shiny shoes.
Helen Evans used her phone to read notes. A sensible approach but it did mean that before answering questions she would first tap her device and swipe up and down, left and right, as if she was quickly deleting a few messages or rejecting a couple of friend requests before addressing the audience.
All candidates followed the golden rule of hustings: make a note of the questioner’s name and mention it at least twice in your answer. Evidence of listening; evidence of caring. Yes, sometimes ‘Dale’ can become ‘Dave’ and ‘Fay’ becomes ‘Flo’ but it’s the thought that counts. And the effort is genuinely appreciated.
Also, most were talking with their hands as much as their mouths - we had arm circles, half-rotations, chopping one hand into the other palm, pointing and clasping of hands.
All it would have taken is for Rev Pallent to give a full blessing and Deputy Huelin to dance Gangnam Style and every possible hand movement would have been covered.
Annoyingly, someone’s mobile in the audience kept ‘pinging’ every so often, offering competition to the official timekeeping bell. Unless, of course, it was a clever tactic on behalf of the phone-owner to bring a boring answer to an early end. Thankfully, in the interests of fairness, it didn’t work.
A topic that Senator Farnham was clearly going to be more-than-well briefed on was one raised by David Pirouet, who asked a well-researched question about the hospital and its funding through a bond issue.
In response, Deputy Huelin, who sat on the ‘political oversight group’ running the project, fired off more interest rate percentages than a Red Bull-fuelled City trader, but his overall message was that we’re still in a good place, for now.
Senator Farnham obviously agreed, and offered to hand out a hospital fact-sheet to anyone interested at the end. The bond market is expected to fall later this year, he said.
Senator Gorst, like Senator Moore and others on the panel, said a short post-election review would be appropriate. A couple of times, he referred to the ‘Hospital on the Hill’, although one couldn’t be sure if he had Calvary or Amityville in mind.
David Benn shared his party’s view that Overdale wasn’t the best site for it, which had been reflected by the views of most voters he’d spoken to.
Helen Evans shared Reform’s view that it supported a new town hospital in principle but not at any cost.
With each candidate having just 90 seconds to answer two questions, responses were never going to include much detail but the seven tackled each point head on and didn’t stumble when, for instance, they were asked to choose their two most important priorities from the eight listed in the 2020 Jersey Homelessness Strategy.
Either the Wifi is good in the parish hall or the candidates had done their homework. Fair play, either way.
The 19:00 meeting finished promptly at 20:30, giving parishioners time to enjoy the last rays of western sun.
They left looking well-briefed. It looks set to be a fair fight next Wednesday in the north-west of the island.
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