King approves appointment of new HM Comptroller in Guernsey
The King has approved the appointment of Crown Advocate Hilary Pullum as His Majesty's Comptroller in Guernsey.In her new role Ms Pullman will provide legal services and advice for the Crown, the States of Guernsey, the States of Alderney and the Chief Please of Sark. Ms Pullum succeeds Robert Tittering KC who has retired after almost nine years in the role. She said: ''Having served the Bailiwick as one of the lawyers within the Chambers of the Law Officers of the Crown since 2007, it is a privilege to be appointed as His Majesty's Comptroller and I will look forward to continuing to serve the Bailiwick in this post."
Ms Pullum graduated with a law degree from the University of Wales in 1999, before qualifying as a solicitor in 2002.She then specialised as an aerospace lawyer in London, providing regulatory advice and undertaking multi-jurisdictional litigation and arbitration. The Lieutenant-Governor, Lt Gen Richard Cripwell, said he was "delighted" the role was to be filled by a "candidate with the expertise and experience of Crown Advocate Pullum"."The role of His Majesty's Comptroller is central to the operation of the Royal Court and therefore to the Bailiwick itself," he said."I wish her every success."Crown Advocate Pullum will be sworn in as His Majesty's Comptroller on Tuesday 26 August, when she will also become a King's Counsel (KC).
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Guernsey States urged to act on concerns over housing plans
A parish has called on the States to act over concerns about the impact of plans to build more than 1,000 new homes over the next six new homes would be built in St Sampson's in Guernsey under the Island Development Plan's (IDA) spatial strategy, alongside plans for 89 new homes in St Sampson's Parish Douzaine said that while concessions had been made in relation to the Vazon plans, the Development and Planning Authority (DPA) had failed to act on concerns about the impact on infrastructure in their parish, including a rise in traffic volumes of as much as 50%.The DPA has been approached for comment. Karl Guille, from St Sampson's Parish Douzaine, said they had "been on the back foot" since the IDA was introduced in 2011, putting "the majority of new housing in our parish"."We are concerned that our infrastructure simply can't cope with the level of development that is being proposed," he said it was "somewhat ironic" that the Development and Planning Authority chose to recognise road safety, traffic management and other concerns raised around the planned development of 89 new homes in Vazon "when it continues to promote over 1,000 new houses in the north of the island".Guille said several road junctions were already operating over capacity and traffic volumes there were more than twice the levels seen in the west and south of the a statement issued in response to the plans, the Douzaine said it was disappointed there had not been a review to the spatial strategy to allow the "burden of development to be shared more widely".The 1,000 new homes represented 64% of the island's allocation, they added. 'Concerns largely ignored' The parish's junior constable Joe Abbotts said it was a shame concerns continually highlighted by the parish and traffic consultants in 2010 and in 2012 "have largely been ignored". "Central to those concerns is the cumulative impact such developments will have on existing roads infrastructure resulting in numerous junctions operating above capacity with significant queuing," he have also been expressed about the increased flood risk if large numbers of housing were to be built on low lying land such as in the Braye du Valle and about the impact on existing public utility infrastructure. St Sampson's Douzaine said while it appreciated that demand for housing, and especially affordable housing, was becoming increasingly urgent, the new housing would cause a "significant increase" in demand on "already constrained roads and public utility infrastructure".Parishioners of St Sampson were also "rightly concerned about the potential depreciation in the value of their homes and the deterioration in the quality of life that could arise living in such highly developed areas", the spokesperson spatial strategy prioritises housing development in and around the edges of the urban centres of St Peter Port and St Sampson and Vale. 'Extremely disappointed' A spokesperson for St Sampson's Douzaine said they were "extremely disappointed the States had not taken the opportunity to review the strategy to allow the burden of development to be shared more widely".They said some of the latest proposed amendments to the draft plan were sensible in seeking to concentrate future developments on brownfield or redundant glasshouse sites and creating some limited additional housing sites in the west and south of the these amendments "do not go anywhere near far enough in the opinion of St Sampson's Douzaine to allay existing concerns over the anticipated impact that such high levels of continued development will have on the north of the Island", they added.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Telegraph
Britain Under the Nazis: The Forgotten Occupation, review: asks the question, ‘What would you have done?'
The title to Channel 4's wartime documentary is Britain Under the Nazis: The Forgotten Occupation but it could just have well have been, Britain Under the Nazis: What Would You Have Done? When the Nazis occupied the Channel Islands during the Second World War, the 94,000 islanders who remained were left with some stark options: resist, collaborate or plough some middle furrow. In the round, these two, excellent hour-long films showed how the ramifications of those choices echo to this day. The format was an amalgam relatively new to documentary – actors voicing first-person testimony interspersed with archive footage, with expert historians also on hand to make sense of both. A similar narrative technique worked startlingly well for last year's D-Day: The Unheard Tapes – which went even further, using actors to lip-sync to audio recordings of eyewitnesses. What Britain Under the Nazis did so well was to show in the process why so many of these stories are unheard: there is deep, abiding shame and corrosive recriminations for what happened in Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney when the Germans came in 1940. The programme confronted the source of that shame head-on, with an astutely curated cast of islanders, all of whom wrote fulsomely and eloquently. Frank Falla was the journalist on the Guernsey Star who documented his attempts to keep the truth alive in the face of overwhelming Nazi propaganda – he was one of five who set up the GUNS (Guernsey Underground News Service) in a bid to keep disseminating the BBC News to the Islanders to counter rife German propaganda. He ended up being deported to a German prison camp. Claude Cahun was the resistance fighter who secretly published anti-Nazi propaganda flyers (she called them her Paper Bullets) that presented the German campaign as a losing battle. She again showed how the right words in the right places can be weapons in themselves. What the two films did well was show how a bad situation got steadily worse as the war went on, like a spreading cancer rather than an instantly fatal wound. Instead of just presenting a litany of horrors – and there were plenty of those, from Churchill's (much disputed) 'Let 'em starve' abandonment of the islanders through to Hitler's deportation of non-natives to camps – Britain Under the Nazis charted a steady crescendo of both staggering bravery and casual iniquity. It was not faultless – short attention spans, snippet-viewing and ad breaks mean that factual programming on commercial channels is now full of repetition, and at times there was a sense that (for obvious reasons) there just isn't that much archive footage of the Channel Islands during the war to show. But then that was part of the point – this is an episode in our history that has been brushed under the carpet, or seasoned with rumour and scandal, or mostly just ignored. Documentaries like this bring difficult facts and harsh questions to light: questions such as, 'If that had been me, what would I have done?'
The Sun
2 days ago
- The Sun
Britain's ‘Nazi Islands' haunted by scandal of ‘Jerrybags' who bedded Hitler's henchmen & saw ‘traitor' babies shunned
Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player... THEY were witnesses to Nazi rule on British soil - and they had to choose whether to collaborate, resist, or walk the line between them. In June 1940 Nazi Germany took control of the Channel Islands in an occupation that would last 1,774 days. 20 20 20 As the Swaztika hung over the islands, strict rules were brought in for Jewish residents, with many deported to concentration camps in Europe to their deaths. Other islanders had their homes commandeered to house German officers, and informers and young women who chose to strike up relationships with the occupying soldiers were ostracised by their friends and neighbours. Now a new Channel 4 documentary has used diaries and memoirs from the wartime occupation to bring to life the stories of those who lived under Nazi rule - including some heroes of the resistance. Historian Dr Louise Willmot says: 'Some people did collaborate, and some people did resist. I'm very glad I never had to make that choice. 'There was also Hitler's own obsession with the Channel Islands, for him it was a propaganda prize.' On 15 June 1940, Churchill ordered the withdrawal of all military troops from the Channel Islands, leaving 94,000 islanders behind. Residents were given the choice to evacuate - but 69,000 chose to stay in their homes on the islands, undefended by the British military. Hitler's propaganda began straight away. Winifred Harvey, a 51-year-old middle class Guernsey housewife wrote in her diaries: 'The story goes that, at a concert in Jersey, the Kommandant addressed the crowd and asked who could speak German. "Three or four people put up their hands. Then he asked those who could not speak German to put up their hands. "Hundreds did - and immediately a photograph was taken and was published in a German paper as the Jersey people 'heiling' Hitler.' This is one of the safest Channel Islands 20 20 Historian Dr Willmot explains: 'Hitler insisted that the Channel Islands be turned into an impregnable fortress and not taken back. "He wanted to turn St Peter Port into some kind of U-boat base, the rest of the islands he wanted to use as a holiday resort. It is Hitler's obsession that it will become permanently part of German territory." But he wasn't counting on the bravery of some of the islanders - including local journalist Frank Falla, who launched an underground newspaper to debunk the German propaganda, and artist and anti-fascist Claude Cahun, who risked her life to try to encourage mutiny amongst the German troops. Claude lived with her 'step-sister' Suzanne Malherbe, who changed her name to Marcel Moore. But the pair were in fact lovers. Claude had a Jewish father and in 1937 the had pair escaped tensions in pre-war Paris and bought a house in Jersey. When the Germans arrived, they believed it was their duty to make a stand. They scribbled anti-Nazi slogans on cigarette packets, strewn where Germans would find them. Then in 1942 they began distributing leaflets, typed in German, under the pseudonym 'The Nameless Soldier' – seemingly a rebel Nazi stirring dissent. The leaflets were rolled up like 'paper bullets' and left inside shops and cafes, pushed through the windows of army vehicles, slipped into the pockets of soldiers' uniforms and stuffed into postboxes. These paper bullets were small, but the impact was significant. In Claude's diaries she wrote: 'I write the news bulletins in English, manifestos and slogans in French. I want to give the Germans the illusion that there are several typewriters. 20 20 20 "I make every effort to vary the strikes and format to make it look like several typists. My imaginary creation becomes an organised group and not just a solitary writer." As Cahun and Moore grew bolder, their messages instructed troops not to fight, and called Hitler a vampire, with slogans like: "Idiot that you may die, so the Fuhrer may live a little longer!" Claude wrote: 'I have to do whatever I can - by speaking or writing. When I try to induce German soldiers to lay down their arms, I'm true to my principles. "I am against war and against repression by our enemies. Perhaps Jersey is almost the only place where that luxury can be indulged.' They smuggled leaflets into labour camps to boost morale and helped escaped slave workers. Historian Dr Louise Willmot says they knew they were risking their lives to do so: "By choosing to do this work, they were saying, 'I am prepared to die in order to do this work, which is so important.' 'And it worked for a long time. The Germans did think that there must be a number of people involved and some of them must be German soldiers. "They were able to do it for almost three years before they were caught.' 'Jerrybags' scandal 20 20 20 20 It is staggering how cheek to jowl the islanders and the Germans lived - on average, there was one German soldier for every three islanders. And the occupation continued, not everyone on the islands was hostile to the enemy. Local Methodist Minister Douglas Ord wrote in his diaries: 'I saw a young Luftwaffe man walking out with a local girl, their arms intertwined behind their backs, her head on his shoulder. "Uniform fascinates a type of female, no matter what's inside it. I can't think that any woman who goes with the occupying forces has much self-respect." Journalist Frank Falla wrote: 'Because I work at night… I see the girls being driven home by their German boyfriends. Britain does not deserve these traitors even if she has given birth to them.' Even German officer Hans Max von Aufsess wrote: 'There is a good understanding between the German soldiers and English girls. "As long as it occurs in sufficient secrecy, the girls give in to temptation. English women are straightforward, uncomplicated and easy when it comes to love.' As long as it occurs in sufficient secrecy, the girls give in to temptation. English women are straightforward, uncomplicated and easy when it comes to love German officer Hans Max von Aufsess Douglas Ord later added to his journal: 'An unpleasant report is going round that a wretched woman has been holding cocktail parties for German officers and local girls. "There's another ugly rumour that before Christmas some 500 local girls will have had children to Germans.' Dr Louise Willmott explains: 'It did happen. You can argue that it's a natural thing in an occupation that lasts for five years, in which enmities break down and relationships are made." She continues: 'During the war, there was condemnation of the so-called 'Jerrybags', the women who had relationships with German soldiers. But really, they're a small minority.' The issue of young women residents left with babies after having relationships with German soldiers was brought to life in the film The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, starring Lily James. Guernsey resident Dolly Edwards fell for German signaller Willi Joanknecht and theirs was the UK's first Anglo-German wedding after the war, in 1947 — but they were banned from returning to the island. Their marriage lasted more than 50 years, and they had five children. 'Traitor babies' 20 20 20 20 20 Hitler wanted to build an Atlantic Wall - a huge fortification down the French coast of almost 1700 miles long - so they also had to bring in 16,000 labourers to the Channel Islands. Many of these were prisoners of war, starving and emaciated, causing great conflict amongst the islanders, who felt desperately sorry for them, but were also rationed and fighting for survival themselves. Next Hitler ordered the deportation of anyone not born on the islands, then radios were banned to stop Islanders from listening to BBC news. But on 23 June 1943 the Islanders were given an opportunity to show their own resistance to the Germans. More than 400 sailors were killed when HMS Charybdis was sunk by German E-boats off the Channel Islands. The islanders were to give them a burial - and more than 5,000 people turned out to pay their respects, draping the coffins in union flags. Frank Falla wrote: 'The people of the island decide that this is their chance to show their loyalty to Britain. 5,000 of us make our way to the funeral. The Germans are completely taken by surprise. 'They're almost lost in this great mass of passive demonstrators. There can be no doubt where our true sympathies lie.' The people of the island decide that this is their chance to show their loyalty to Britain. 5,000 of us make our way to the funeral. The Germans are completely taken by surprise... There can be no doubt where our true sympathies lie Frank Falla But soon Frank's underground news service was uncovered by the Germans, and he and four others were convicted of spreading BBC news and deported to a prison in Germany. And in July 1944, Claude and Marcel's house was raided, where officers found a suitcase full of leaflets, a banned radio, camera, a typewriter and a revolver. The couple were sent to prison and sentenced to death for 'inciting the troops through propaganda'. But the threat of execution was lifted when Bailif Coutanche - the head of Jersey's government - appealed on the grounds it would traumatise the islanders. The war was declared over on May 8, 1945 - and Cahun and Moore were released the same day. In July, Frank Fall returned to Guernsey determined to get justice for victims of the islands' Nazi occupation - a fight that took him 20 years. University of Cambridge historian Professor Gilly Carr says: 'After the war, people who committed acts of resistance were ignored. "They were not recognised as having been the brave people who did the right thing. Instead, the bailiffs of the Channel Islands were given knighthoods. "Never being able to identify precisely the collaborators meant that for decades afterwards, the whole thing became a bigger taboo. 'My mother, who was from Guernsey, was told, for example, that she wasn't to talk to another girl in her class because her father was reputed to have been a German soldier. "These sorts of things go on for generations. In fact, discussion of these matters is still taboo in the Channel Islands today.' Britain Under the Nazis: The Forgotten Occupation airs on May 29 at 8pm on Channel 4 and is available to watch on Channel 4OD. 20 20 20
