This discredited minister has no alternative but to resign

We’re going to help a fellow crapaud celebrate a particularly significant anniversary, as it happens, not that it’s anyone else’s business. I’m only admitting it by way of explaining that because we’re away I’ve had to put pen to paper (or two fingers to the keyboard, if you want it in modern parlance) somewhat earlier in the week than usual.

At the time of writing, Senator Jimmy Perchard has admitted that he swore at Senator Stuart Syvret during a States sitting, despite the fact that as soon as Senator Syvret made the allegation he refuted it.

It also transpires that Senator Perchard – after being told that this newspaper had a tape recording of his comments – admitted telling Senator Syvret to slit his wrists during a press conference late last year.

Senator Perchard disputes Senator Syvret’s version of what was said during the States sitting and insists that he was misquoted. That, to me, is as irrelevant as the many references that have been made to what Senator Syvret says about other people on his internet blog.

In all probability, Senator Perchard did not tell the entire truth when he told Deputy Bailiff Michael Birt that he refuted Senator Syvret’s allegations because to most people the significant thing is that he did not refute it by saying what he claimed had been said – he simply left most people with the impression that the allegation was a fabrication by stating quite unequivocally: ‘I absolutely refute that.’

Even leaving to one side the similarity between the phrases ‘go and top yourself’ and ‘slit your wrists’, it is also significant that Senator Perchard neither confirmed nor denied that the ‘go top yourself’ phrase was used in the States.

It could be argued that Senator Perchard, to quote Kipling, has ‘learned no end of a lesson, it will do him no end of good’ in seeking to mix it with as experienced a wordsmith as Senator Syvret and falling directly into what might well have been a carefully laid trap, albeit largely of his own making.

All that said, the fact that he may well have learned a lesson is neither here nor there, I’m afraid. Even if Senator Perchard did not lie to the Deputy Bailiff and the States by saying that he ‘absolutely’ refuted Senator Syvret’s allegation, he certainly misled them.

It was, as Winston Churchill may well have described it, a terminological inexactitude on a scale rarely seen, even in the shambles that our government appears to have become. As a consequence, it seems to me (not to mention the vast majority of people to whom I speak) that he has no alternative but to resign – not only his position as Health Minister, from which he should have been removed or at least suspended by Terry Le Sueur a week ago, but also his seat on the Senatorial benches.

Failure to do so simply means that in addition to his reputation being in tatters, in effect he becomes a minus quantity because few if any in the States will attach credibility to what he says and, as a direct result of that, the people who elected him will be disenfranchised. In my mind he has no alternative but to jump before he is pushed.

WHILE I’m on the subject of activities in the Big House and the conduct of our elected representatives, and having had a few days to mull over what I wrote last week – I mulled over a couple or three slugs of Calvados while doing so – I have to say that I was perhaps a little harsh on Deputy Trevor Pitman regarding his altercation with or about Housing president Senator Terry Le Main.

As I suggested last week, there are ways round all rules and regulations, and while I can’t agree with the sort of mudslinging and name-calling which seems to feature in reports of almost every sitting, a couple of people who actually heard what Trevor Pitman said told me that he wasn’t called to order by the Deputy Bailiff and, as a consequence, can’t have broken any rules.

I still say that the sort of exchanges – both in and out of general earshot – that we’ve heard and read about in recent times are not what government is about and not what the public have a right to expect from elected representatives (the question of how much they get in little brown envelopes every Friday doesn’t enter into this at all). But if Deputy Pitman is seriously miffed about my comment, then I really am sorry I upset him.

AND finally . . . Some time ago I wondered which imported pinstripe authorised those wholly inappropriate signs which, after you’ve driven up Queen’s Road and through Mont à l’Abbé, tell you that you are either approaching or have entered something called Sion Village.

It was further evidence, I suggested at the time, of the galloping anglicisation which is no doubt designed, in the words of old Jack Messervy, to condemn crapauds to the designation of an endangered species by the time we get to the centenary of the

Liberation.

This week there was yet more evidence with the proliferation of traffic signs more appropriate to Portsmouth than Plémont.

But what really made me weep into my Calvados was an advertisement for a property ‘in the heart of St Ouen’s Bay’ (which must be a bit damp when the tide’s up) and standing in approximately ONE ACRE. And the advertisement was placed by Maillard’s, of all people.