It's a poor idea to spend a lot of money on poverty

Of course, all that was made possible by Herself, who typed out an idiot’s guide to how to switch the computer on and gain access to all the bits and pieces hidden in the thing’s entrails.

As an aside, I should mention that I’ve not been in best books for the last week or so – I dare say I would have been banished to The Shed had the temperature even touched double figures – because I referred to her as The Other Half.

An ear-bashing wasn’t the half of it. As she succinctly put it, even having shed the few pounds she gained from eating Christmas cake – made by her, not bought, I hasten to point out – she is not and never will be half of anything, and certainly not half of me.

As a result, I now have an idiot’s guide to assembling and using the attachments for the vacuum cleaner, one for which buttons to press and clocks to whirl on the washing machine and a map showing me the location of the washing line. All that because of three little words. Heaven only knows what the sanctions would have been had I written a sentence. But I digress.

To return to the point I was making, while some of these comments are hastily written, with scant regard for spelling, grammar and punctuation, that doesn’t mean they are any less valid than those made by people with more time or who are more articulate.

Take those about the major review of poverty and benefits promised by a Scrutiny sub-panel. We are told that this will include a detailed statistical study by a researcher from Oxford University and a study of income tax thresholds, social security contributions, pensions and rent-setting policy.

I happen to agree with some of the views expressed, and one really summed up what this simple country boy thinks. The bloke wrote: ‘It is not a question of who can afford to live in Jersey (he said ‘in’ Jersey, so I presume he’s local); rather, can we afford unnecessary research carried out using taxpayers’ hard-earned cash?’

Others pointed to the apparent idiocy of importing a researcher from Oxford University – he or she won’t come cheap, and things being what they are, will probably be offered a cosy civil service job at the end of it – when that lot in the Big House already have an all-singing, all-dancing statistical unit of their own.

Mind you, with the conspiracy theorists we have, both in the Big House and outside it, they’ll probably say they want this particular research done ‘independently’.

They need reminding of something I read recently – lives is an anagram of Elvis. As to the rest of it all, I would have thought that things like income tax thresholds, social security contributions, pensions and the Housing department’s rent-setting policy are all matters which are so easily available that all it needs to obtain them are a few phone calls or ten minutes pressing the letters on the sort of computer keyboard I’m using now.

Perhaps that’s too cheap, too easy (or difficult, depending on what you think of the quality of some of our elected representatives) or not totally ‘independent’.

The trouble is that all this nonsense is no longer funny. It’s just damned expensive, particularly when added to the sort of salaries we are paying that lot in the Big House.

THE other matter I looked at for comment was the small issue of shelling out millions to buy the derelict holiday camp site at Plémont so that, many of us who need increasingly deep pockets to pay for these five-star ideas on two-star incomes believe, a bunch of tree huggers (many of whom don’t live anywhere near the place, I strongly suspect) can take their dogs for a walk and, as a result, keep their own gardens clear of canine excreta.

At the time I looked at the comments there were about 40 or so, and roughly two out of three supported the decision taken by our elected representatives.

As to the 140 or so who turned out at St Ouen’s Parish Hall, I wonder how many of them would have stuck their hands in the air in favour of a tax increase to pay for the compulsory purchase that is inevitable with unwilling sellers, as I believe the landowners are.

As my old granny would have said, it’s the easiest thing in the world to be high-minded with other people’s money.

Those who go round bleating that the States should pay for this and buy that need reminding that the States don’t have any money of their own, so what they do is use ours. And when they run out of what they’ve already taken off us, they bang on the door and tell us – not ask, tell – to cough up. I don’t mind paying my whack, but not when it comes to financing schemes that place us even further in the financial mire.

If there’s any truth in the saying that with nonsense like this a crapaud is nothing more than a Scot stripped of his generosity, then I’m proud to be a crapaud.

AND finally … I see that Sir Philip Bailhache has taken time off from slinging a line into Queen’s Valley reservoir in search of trout to suggest that the inhabitants of the Big House prepare for independence from Britain.

Fat chance of that happening when all they seem to do is debate matters centred on themselves.