A Week in Politics

And when the Education Minister sees three of his ministerial chums line up with Senator Ben Shenton against him, while Deputies Geoff Southern and Trevor Pitman start backing him up, well, frankly, it might be time to call in the UN election observers and start all over again.

But that’s where we’ve found ourselves this week, in the midst of some very strange alliances.

The first story is the most fun – of the 15 amendments to the £784m Business Plan due for debate this week, the one that States Members will really not be looking forward to is Deputy Shona Pitman’s proposal to end free lunches for States Members.

You might remember this – it all began with Deputy Montfort Tadier’s attempt to get free television licences for the over-75s. Several Members spoke against it, saying they’d love to vote for it, they really would, but it wasn’t means-tested, so they couldn’t.

Fair enough, said the Deputy. So we’ll be getting rid of your non-means-tested free lunches then will we? And so it comes back for the Business Plan debate.

This is going to be hard for Members to justify. What straws will they clutch at to save their free lunches? It’s almost enough to make you look forward to it …

But here’s the thing – literally hours after Deputy Shona Pitman lodged the amendment (which would save something like £11,300) to stop free lunches on States days and at panel meetings, Conservative Party leader David Cameron announced a similar move in the UK.

Included in the Conservative Party’s manifesto for the next election will be a pledge to save £5.5m by ending subsidies for food and drink at the House of Commons.

Is there some pact here between the JDA and the Tories that we should know about? Some kind of coalition? We need answers.

Anyway, onwards. When you hear a debate on an issue, most of the time you can see both sides of it (unless you’re a States Member of course, in which case anyone who disagrees with you is stupid, wrong, and involved in some kind of conspiracy).

But there aren’t many debates where you know, right from the start, that only one side of the argument stacks up.

So here it is: Senator Shenton is right about publishing exam results broken down by schools, and Deputy Reed is wrong to block it. Dead easy.

Apart from the self-congratulatory messages drifting out of the Education department on exam results day, there is nothing to measure school results.

When they do announce their results, they combine fee-paying and States schools – producing an average that tells taxpayers who fund the £99m Education department, well, almost nothing really.

You’d have to be a bit educationally subnormal yourself to expect fee-paying schools and States schools to get the same results, that’s not the point. But no department should be free from accountability – and more to the point, no department should be trying so hard to be free from accountability.

Here’s the curious bit: during the Senatorial hustings, the JEP asked Senatorial candidates whether they backed the publication of school results.

Senators Philip Ozouf, Alan Maclean and Ian Le Marquand did, while Senator Paul Routier and Deputies Geoff Southern and Trevor Pitman did not.

So the Treasury Minister, Economic Development Minister and Home Affairs Minister will, presumably, side with Senator Shenton if this ever comes to the House, while Deputy Reed can rely on the support of the JDA. Confused? You should be.

A 120-page report by the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research titled A Review of Social Housing in Jersey doesn’t sound exciting does it?

Now take a leaked copy of the same report and all of a sudden it seems a lot sexier.

The report is pretty damning – it calls for the break-up of the Housing Department, a reversal of years of underfunding on maintenance, and says ministerial aspirations about more Islanders owning their own homes is effectively just wishful thinking.

But a separate question emerges. The report was completed on 30 June. It was meant to be released in mid-July, according to both Housing Minister Terry Le Main and Assistant Housing Minister Sean Power.

It’s now 21 September, and it still hasn’t been formally published. What were ministers waiting for? A good day to bury bad news?