Shouldn't States Members show a little less interest in themselves and more in us?

Sounds big, right? Something epic, no doubt – something meaty, something that affects all of us in a profound and immediate way.

Well, no.

When people roll out the big oratorical guns about strikes-at-the-very-heart-ofs and erosions-of-centuries-ofs and all that, you rather hope really that they’re talking about something a bit bigger than cutting two of 53 States seats – and possibly cutting another two in three years time, perhaps. Maybe. If the seemingly-inevitable electoral commission says to do it, and the next half-dozen reform debates don’t change it all round again.

And yet, the big guns have been wheeled out. Admittedly, the talk following the debate hasn’t been a patch on the craziness in the middle of it – where Senator Freddie Cohen was beseeching colleagues to ‘cherish democracy’ and banging on about centuries of the Island-wide mandate, and Deputy Trevor Pitman started accusing other politicians of trying to hang on to power and erode democracy and it all being stacked in favour of the country parishes… and… and… and Deputy Daniel ‘Come on lads, let’s not fight, it’s a lovely day out there’ Wimberley was the sole voice of reason. There. I’ve said it.

Anyways, perhaps what was most striking about the debate – and let’s not forget, it was simply the confirmation of changes agreed in October – wasn’t so much the striking language or the desperate tone, but the sense that the first priority was not getting it all sorted, but in securing a way to return to it as soon as possible.

For most of us, the States reform debate is an irrelevancy, a distraction, a political cul de sac into which sane people and up-to-now-interesting-conversations go and from which they never, ever return.

For States Members, settling into a nice, long reform debate is like slipping into a hot bath: relaxing, self-indulgent, and about as far away from actual work as it’s possible to get. And something you should probably do more than once a year.

Last week’s debate had barely begun by the time that Deputy Shona Pitman had tabled a proposition calling for a referendum on the Clothier proposals – or, more specifically, the ones that related to removing the Bailiff, the Senators and the Constables from the States and running the show with between 42 and 44 Deputies. Not the ones, as Senator Philip Ozouf pointed out, that relate to ministers being sacked by the Chief Minister, or to collective responsibility applying to cabinet decisions.

On top of that there was the suggestion of an electoral commission – an idea that seemed incredibly exciting to everyone, if only because it effectively resets the clock on the whole reform farrago and makes it look like this isn’t a debate that’s been limping, crawling and gasping along since the year 2000.

But this final year of the ‘Class of 2008’ seems to be the year in which States Members stop dillying with the economy and dallying with policy, and get down full-time to the real solid business of talking total nonsense about themselves, how they talk, and how they operate. Like there’s anything else they’d rather do.

Next week’s sitting includes the debate on the aforementioned Clothier referendum, another on how many signatures a States Member needs to take a proposal to the States, and a third on the mechanism for appointing assistant ministers. The sitting after that, they talk about time limits on speeches and assistant ministers again.

The very fact that they can expend so much energy on these internal trivialities, that they can make such a big deal out of something so tangential to the lives of the Islanders who a) aren’t in the States, and b) don’t want to be in the States, is in itself, quite a big deal.

And with eight months to go before the election, wouldn’t you expect elected politicians to show a little less interest in themselves and their jobs, and a little more interest in you and yours?