Interference, irony and anger

AT LAST. After eight months, the States members of 2020 had their first significant debate last week. In fact they had two.

Until now it’s been all about updates from committee presidents and Rule 11 questions. Even the budget debate back in December wasn’t really a debate because all but one of the principal committees awarded themselves whopping, inflation-busting increases in their budgets and they didn’t want to waste time arguing against that, did they.

I don’t count last week’s brief discussion of the States 2020 Accounts as a debate. These accounts tell the story of the previous year’s public finances – they are what they are and no amount of discussion will change them. What’s more, the underlying narrative of this States is that their predecessors were a pathetic gang of incompetents, so the fact that the States Accounts demonstrate that the public finances were in much better shape in 2020 than the doomsters had claimed was never going to encourage many members to dwell on such inconvenient good news.

Discussion of the accounts could have been even briefer if some new States members had understood the context in which they are meant to be considered by the Assembly – and that context does not include taking the opportunity to rewrite major policies on the hoof. The current States is beginning to characterise itself as the most meddlesome ever. I thought the 2016 States, of which I was a member, was bad enough for the number of members who couldn’t resist getting down on their knees to count how many pebbles there are on the beach, but they are being outdone by the new crop. Discussion of the States Dairy accounts was a case in point, where the Deputy Bailiff’s generosity allowed members to stray beyond the point.

Deputy Taylor, who last month spent much of the Assembly’s time obsessing about adding 4.5mph to the permissible speed of our electric bicycles, had now switched his enthusiasm towards telling everybody how to run the Dairy, including those trained and paid to do so. Apparently, the Dairy’s finances would be transformed if it changed the shape of its ice cream tubs from square to round. Simple as that. He couldn’t wait to don a white coat and one of those unflattering plastic hairnets and get up there at La Brigade and show them how to do everything. Deputy Vermeulen seemed keen to join him in this new Mr Whippy dairy rescue team.

You can tell a good debate is going on when you find your mind being changed this way and that by successive speakers.

That’s how it was when the Assembly got round to debating public freedom of access to government information. SMC president Deputy Burford made a measured, intelligent case for strengthening the current code by adding an independent appeal process to it. Her vice-president, Deputy Fairclough, presented an equally intelligent case for introducing a new law. This was the States at its best as a debating chamber. Deputy Brouard added an eccentric if unconvincing touch with his novel view that if the taxpayers who pay the States to gather information on their behalf have the temerity to request access to that same information via the media, then the States should charge for releasing it. Mmm!

In last month’s parliamentary sketch I offered some thoughts on the use of irony. I failed to mention that the most delicious irony is often of the unconscious variety, offered by those who are blissfully unaware that they are dispensing it. We had two such cases in this debate.

Who was that knight in shining armour who galloped in on a white charger, fighting for a new law to ensure greater government openness? Yes, you’ve guessed it, none other than Deputy Meerveld, the undisputed master of underhand guerrilla marketing in the previous States term. I know folks, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? I wonder if he managed to keep a straight face.

Not to be outdone, Deputy Le Tissier, the self-confessed exponent of the clandestine approach to communication, voted for a law to ensure that deputies do not hide things from public knowledge. He probably crossed his fingers behind his back while voting. Incidentally, I didn’t hear any of the ESC members speak in this debate – hardly surprising given that this control-freakish committee regards the dispensing of any information in any circumstances as nothing short of lese-majeste.

In the end it was all decided by money, or the lack of it. The States couldn’t afford to introduce a new law, so there wouldn’t be one. Fair enough, I thought.

When debating in the Assembly, there is a fine line between passion and anger, and Deputy Roffey flirted with it early in the debate on the future development of the commercial harbours.

Mind you, in his shoes as STSB president, I would have been peeved at the wrecking amendment thrown in by P&R at the last minute, without any prior mention of it to the STSB whose report, after two years’ work, was the subject of the debate. This classic case of poor government was bad political manners and flew in the face of all those hollow pleas for a collaborative approach to doing government business. But the tone had been set.

Deputy Inder responded by drawing heavily from the deep well of irritability that irrigates his politics. Bucket-loads of the stuff came up. I wonder, is there ever a time when he is not irritable? Is his self-appointed role as the Assembly’s ‘Mr Know-it-all’ weighing too heavily on his shoulders? Or might he be worried that he has a promising young challenger for that role in the person of Deputy Taylor?

Deputy Ferbrache joined the fray in combative mood. Let’s just say he kept hidden the best of his better nature and leave it at that. He found himself warning members of the dangers of mantras. Apparently, if you repeat them often enough, people come to believe them. He’s right – and he should know. His two mantras of ‘action not words’ and ‘action this day’ have been deployed so many times that I reckon he might believe them himself by now.

Anyway, it all got so bad that poor Deputy Falla had to bury his face in a pillow and pull the covers over his head to shut out the domestic squabble.

Fortunately, Deputy Parkinson intervened with a thoughtful speech before lunch. He challenged members to show both courage and vision when deciding the future of our harbours. Fat chance of that. But at least he had lightened the foul mood in the Assembly.

Over the lunch break, deputies Roffey and Helyar made up (well, sort of). Thereafter, amendments came and went as members spent the best part of one and a half days debating what is meant by kicking the can down the road’. I must have led a sheltered life, because I have to admit I have never seen anybody kick a can down the road. I have noticed the occasional can in the road, and seen people walk by them and decline to pick them up. And I once saw some boys kicking a can around like a football on some waste ground in Uganda. But, I never saw someone approach a can and announce, ‘I am going to kick this can down the road’, and then watched them do it. I don’t know about you, but I always assumed it was a metaphor for putting off a decision that needed to be made. Silly me. It turned out that the term has acquired such a pejorative meaning that politicians who blatantly kick a can down the road simply deny that they are doing it.

After giving listeners a rather boring lecture on how to build a stone wall and arch (I kid you not) Deputy Taylor explained to us dimwits that failing to make a decision is actually a positive thing in that it involves making a decision not to make a decision. Get it? The Assembly’s blob of dutiful nodding donkeys liked this redefinition so much that they burst into applause. And why wouldn’t they? In one semantic sleight of hand, it effectively got them off the kicking-the-can hook.

Before the end, Deputy Inder delivered a masterclass in unconscious irony. In a barb aimed at last term’s E&I and its plans for the disposal of inert waste, he gravely warned our naive deputies that estimates of the costs of States projects should not be trusted. Really?

I hope taxpayers have not forgotten that in April last year Deputy Inder, and five other current deputies, swore blind that it would cost only £200,000 to maintain the east end of the L’Ancresse anti-tank wall for another 10 years. Within months we discovered that it will actually cost at least £1m. and possibly up to £3m. Methinks those who can’t do basic sums should beware lecturing others on mathematics.

As a final act, the Assembly agreed to hand the whole thing over to some blokes that Deputy Helyar knows. We don’t know who they are, just that they know all about harbours, unlike any of our recent harbour masters who have advised STSB these past two years. This new team of all the talents will gather in the new year, presumably in the Beau Sejour cafe, where I’m told important government decisions are made these days. By the end of next year, they will produce a comprehensive report at no cost to the taxpayer.

In the meantime, no can is safe on our roads.