Control spending or tax more companies before GST

All of them, along with the paid parking that some deputies still hanker for, will clobber the lower paid in our society and be the final nail in the coffin for many of the remaining Town traders.

Before you introduce any of these measures, get your own house in order.

Some of you were elected on a promise to bring States spending under control. Have you done this? No. And what is more, you have made no attempt to do so.

Let me give you just a few ideas that spring to mind. If they were not so serious, they would be quite laughable, but they would never make it on to Yes Minister or Yes, Prime Minister because there the situations were at least credible, unlike the States of Guernsey, which are totally incredible.

1. You can throw away £2.6m. and apart from one man who resigned, no other heads have rolled. Why not? It is highly unlikely that one man was solely responsible. Businesses would have known and acted within an hour. Why the delay? Why the cover-up?

2. Not so long ago, the States called for voluntary severance. Sixty-eight people took up the offer, 17 of whom were teachers. What is Education doing? They are recruiting 40 teachers. What child not yet old enough to count does their accounts and reckons this to be a saving? Seventeen is a quarter of those who took the redundancy so using the same ratio, 68 leaving means 160 extra staff will be recruited. Wow. Again, what a terrific saving. But, to cap it all, after three years, those who quit can apply to get their job back after that three-year vacation paid by the taxpayer. Does anybody really believe they will have to repay their severance pay? Of course not. The civil service do not penalise their own.

3. Just take a look at HSSD for a good example of inefficiency. Nobody in that department has a clue how much taxpayers' money they spend or where it goes. What five-year-old does their accounts?

4. It would appear that one in nine staff have States purchase cards to buy what they want, when they want, no questions asked, no accountability. That is quite simply unbelievable.

5. Income Tax at the moment appears to be an absolute shambles, creating a laugh a minute, unless you are one of the hapless people being penalised for their inefficiency. Let me add another pointer to this inefficiency. Early December, I received a letter from them dated 2 December 2013. I received another letter dated 6 January 2014, another dated 3 February and just last week received a fourth letter dated 3 March. Apart from the date, all four letters are identical. 'As from the date of this letter, your Income Tax reference number has been changed to *****.'

All four have the printed signature R. R. Gray, Director. I wonder if this is because Income Tax, like all other States departments, has too many chiefs with very little to do and not enough Indians to actually do the work? In which case, I suppose each grade of supervisor and each grade of manager will spend a month checking my details and will then write to tell me the same thing, just in case I forget. If so, I wonder how many more letters I will receive in order to get a complete set?

6. What about that 'do nothing, don't ever rock the boat, we want a quiet, hassle-free existence' little empire known as the competition regulator (Cicra)? Are they not supposed to protect customers from excesses by the utility companies? That being so, back in November, they uttered something about giving Sure until the end of November to sort out their billing policy and also muttered something about their concern for the environment. Since then, just a deafening silence. Nothing more. So the boys at Sure were allowed to get away with it.

They have got away with demanding £2 per month while giving nothing whatsoever in return. A bill is part of the service one should get when getting a telephone. It is not an add-on extra for which an extra charge can be made. Of course, the regulator could still tell them to stop sending out their ransom demands and to repay every penny of ransom money so far collected, but will he? I doubt it, that would create hassle. Not so long ago they commented that Guernsey Electricity is charging customers 26% more than their Jersey counterparts. What have they done about it? Nothing. That would create hassle. Mind you, a few weeks ago they did come up with the mind blowing, earth shattering information that grocery prices in Guernsey are higher than in the UK. I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' money it has cost to come up with this absolutely astonishing revelation. Whoever would have known?

Just imagine an entrepreneur starting up his/her business and using the States of Guernsey as a role model. They would never get their business off the ground.

Just imagine an established business having a hard time in the present economic times. They decide to use the States of Guernsey as a role model. They would go bust in weeks.

The States of Guernsey is an absolute monster, completely out of control. What Guernsey needs is someone like Margaret Thatcher to call a meeting of all the department heads and bang them all together to see if it was possible to knock some common sense into them. Common sense is a commodity totally lacking in the States, and particularly in the civil service.

I could go on, but that's enough. It is only the tip of the iceberg. You can all think of other equally ridiculous actions. Oh, and I haven't even mentioned gold-plated pensions.

A. B. JEFFERYS.

Editor's footnote:

The Channel Islands Competition and Regulatory Authorities declined to provide a comment.