Return to my Societe Pages index
Together with my friend Ken Webb, the editor, I was assistant editor of this magazine for several years from 1984 onwards. Ken developed the magazine from the photocopied and stapled pages he inherited into a neat little piece of journalism, with a glossy cover, bound and stapled into a small booklet, and produced monthly by means of a photcopier and an Amstrad PCW512 - remember them!
Because contributions were exceedingly thin on the ground from the membership, Ken wrote additional material under his own name and the pseudonymn Charles Cabeldu, and I contributed extra essays and reviews under my own name and also the unlikely names of Matthew Shepard, Gideon Fell, Una Nancy Owen and Magnus Riddolf!
There was a mixture of book reviews, local articles, general essays, comic pieces and mind-bending puzzles.
The following are a selection of articles relating to local issues of the early 1980s, which may give an interesting historical sideways glance at Jersey in that decade, and give a little of the flavour of the magazine.
Visit to Victor Hugo's House by Colin Le Conte
The Ravages of Inflation by Charles Cabeldu
(during the 1980s, the States of Jersey raised the value of the States' Loan and in each case, base property prices rose to the new level)
On Local Democracy by Una Nancy Owen
On Majority Rule by Una Nancy Owen
(during the 1980s, a number of measures, such as the flooding of Queen's Valley, were passed by a single vote, often with members absent from the House)
The Issue: Queen's Valley by Andrew Christensen
(A point of view, interesting now all the dust - or water- has settled)
Obituary: MADAME FANTINE DE LA VALLEE
(an allegorical satire on the flooding of Queen's Valley, written around the time that Victor Hugo's Les Miserables was making an impact at the West End of London)
The Ten Commandments of Membership
Mensa Meal at the Bistro Soleil - Report by Henry G. Littleales, Col. Ret.
"Objective Knowledge" by Karl Popper
"Ever Since Darwin" by Stephen Jay Gould
"Arguments for Democracy" by Tony Benn
" Facing up to Nuclear Power" edited by John Francis and Paul Abrechtd
"The After Death Experience " by Ian Wilson
"Ideology and Insanity" by Thomas Szasz
"Through the Narrow Gate" by Karen Armstrong
Intelligence Tests: A Personal Appraisal
"Small is Beautiful" by E.F. Schumacher
"Plato; The Last Days of Socrates" (Penguin Classics - tr. Hugh Tredennick)
In defence of Father Christmas
Dogma Enthroned!: An Examination of Marriage
Meditation on a Postcard: Rural Splendour and the Developers
The Destruction of Learning (and the benefits of historical research)
Puzzles by Tony Bellows: