Much talk but little sign of action

This term, like those before it, is littered with them.

And many will be handed over to the next States with work done by long-suffering staff but nothing actually having happened in reality – the call to put spades in the ground, so to speak, strangled by process, delays and indecision.

Take the seafront.

For more than a decade there has been talk of underground car parks, more pedestrianisation, the need for a holistic look at it from the Bridge to La Vallette.

Today we are still being asked for ideas – the only spades in the ground have been by volunteers revitalising the bathing pools.

Transport was a clear priority as the start of this term. We enter the death throes of it still debating whether to have a longer runway and with a sudden rush to give Aurigny some idea of its purpose.

Renewable energy is a long talked about opportunity for the island that has been on the to-do list for some 15 years now.

It ties in neatly with the need for an energy policy, which still sits on a desk in Frossard House being worked and reworked.

Joint working with Jersey – now here’s one that is recycled every six months with the odd tweak.

When you really dig into it, for all the memorandum of understandings and oversight groups, there have been no massive inroads that will save the public money or offer better services, and what has been achieved, such as sending orthopaedic patients there, has been forced by necessity.

Politicians live in a world of ideas, of meetings, of talking, of research, and often seem to like nothing more than going back over old ground for yet more talking and debating.

There are only months left of this term and a blizzard of reports due – but mostly those will just set in track more work, more investigations.

L’Ancresse wall is this situation embodied, slowly crumbling while more paperwork is filled in and coming back to the States for yet another debate on its future.