Money for nothing and your bus for free

You see, the bus service is actually a metaphor of how disjointed our government has become and how incapable it is of rational thinking.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m far from anti-bus. Give or take, since November 2016 I’ve put £105 their way, via my puffinpass. In return you, dear taxpayer, have saved me at a conservative estimate £945 on taxi fares.

I am grateful to you for that, if slightly uncomfortable. But then, if you’re silly enough to tip £4m. a year or so into subsidising a service with no clear idea of why or what the strategic benefits are – other than to compete with the cabbies – it would be churlish to turn down your generosity.

Certainly the legion of grey-haired prosperous passengers I see on my trips out appear to agree. Indeed, some are positively, er, overcome with gratitude on the return leg, especially if it’s the late bus.

Pat Mellor may have been (like Mrs May) a very difficult woman, but she knew the value of a taxpayer’s shilling. Which is why her then States Traffic Committee concept of a spangly bus service was geared at reducing congestion in St Peter Port. Use it, commuters, or pay to park. Simples. And it would have worked.

As we all know, however, the laws of economics don’t apply to States members and that variety of land called ‘parking space’ has no value, even though people pay £30,000 more for a property with one or a wad of cash each week to rent one.

But then, money itself has no value to deputies. We already know they can be a bit inventive with our cash. For instance, Aurigny cost a shade over £5m. when the States bought it in 2003. Guernsey’s national carrier then went on to make massive losses so we ladled money into it. This, through the arcane art of accountancy, is known as recapitalisation. A bit like alchemists turning lead into gold, the debt magically became ‘an investment’ and we had £25.212m. of it in there by April 2016.

Because Aurigny’s such a good bet, it cheerfully carried on haemorrhaging your money on a service many of you think is over-priced and under-par, to the point where its accumulated losses stand at £31.3m. – or about £800 per taxpayer.

As the States’ latest accounts note, ‘This exceeds the gross cost of the investment held by the States (£30.272m.), by £1.094m.’ In other words, the debt that States members once viewed as a good thing has become so huge it is now officially a bad thing and can no longer be ignored. It will be written off or, equally magically, made to disappear.

Yes, that means you are seriously out of pocket but on the plus side you can still fly to Gatwick clutching a carrier bag as ‘carry-on luggage’ for the family fortnight away. Good value and great service, eh?

Anyway, States members look at the loot you give them as two separate species: ‘revenue’, to be used every day on things like paying nurses and buying more paper clips, and ‘capital’, for stuff like harbour workboats, a new bus fleet or – god willing – an airport runway that’s fit for purpose.

‘Revenue’ has meaning to deputies because it’s doled out to committees in measured, annual amounts. Like pocket money. And they are supposed to be spending less year on year, so there’s real pressure to hit targets plus horrid headlines when they don’t.

‘Capital’ money, however, comes without cost. This is odd. The only difference between the two types is that one arrives in a single dollop, the other doesn’t. Although whatever type it is, it comes out of your back pocket, courtesy of States Income Tax.

If you or I need a bung of boodle, to buy a car, build a sun room or whatever, and we don’t have the necessary readies, no one gives it to us for nothing. Interest is charged, and I’m not going near depreciation; that really is a step too far.

But for States members, ‘capital’ is free. And even better, if savings are made from spending this sort of money, they can be set against revenue savings targets. I hope you’re following, because it means in the right conditions the more they spend, the better they look.

To take an example at random, if a committee found it was coughing up increasing amounts on, say, bus maintenance, it would make perfect sense to its members to spend millions on a new fleet. Even if, in this fictitious scenario, those replacements were soon-to-be-redundant polluting diesels with no end-of-life value, because ‘revenue’ savings would have been made in the interim, which means brownie points.

So in this zany but hypothetical world, leasing electric buses – until, say, the e-bus landscape becomes clearer and to avoid buying diesels soon facing obsolescence – would be a daily cost increase, not a capital cost saving.

I’m glad we’ve cleared that up, because it makes as much sense as pouring money into a bus service with no real idea of why we’re doing it or what the indicators of success are.

A PAL bought an electric car the other year. A fault developed, so he took it back to the garage and asked for it to be fixed under warranty.

‘Have to take it to Jersey, guv,’ came the response. Eh? Who’s paying? ‘You are, Sir. And that includes the cost of the ferry, I’m afraid.’

Space is pressing, so suffice to say there’s a problem with the availability of trained e-mechanics, and the few that are here tend to get poached by other garages.

But hold on, said my friend, a smart cookie – this is warranty stuff. You know, a written guarantee and all that…

It has been escalated to the manufacturer and things have hit the fan somewhat. To the point where there’s talk about second-class warranties for buyers in remote places like islands with sketchy access to suitable engineers.

Not quite an e-warning about e-vehicles. But I’ll keep you posted.