No more excuses

If only our elected representatives would draw some inspiration from the famous founder of modern nursing.

The chief minister’s lengthy mid-term missive, published yesterday, certainly wasn’t short of excuses, attributing P&R’s paucity of achievements so far to the pandemic, Brexit, Ukraine war, a lack of action by previous Assemblies and the system of government.

Similarly, the decline in partnership working within Health & Social Care, detailed in today's story, was attributed to the fact that HSC is ‘still battling the disruptive effects of the pandemic’.

This is hot on the heels of the recent Scrutiny hearing which revealed how HSC is struggling with the spiralling costs of agency nurses, long waiting lists for critical procedures and a shortage of key worker accommodation.

Headway boss Philippa Stahelin has been scathing in her criticism, accusing HSC of ‘mediocrity’ and claiming that its now fractured services were ‘more time-consuming, less expert, there are more people involved, more pointless steps – it’s not nearly as good for clients’.

There is no doubt that our government has faced a string of tough challenges in recent years. The problem is that islanders are being asked to stump up more and more money through taxes, while the quality of the public services they are funding continues to decline.

They don’t want excuses – they want solutions. But judging by last month's tax debate, achieving that might well be a challenge too far.