Contrition? Accountability? Not even a tiny shred of it.

Here it is: imagine that it didn’t happen here. Imagine instead a story about the UK’s top civil servant being paid half a million pounds to stop working. Imagine that this was all because he’d fallen out with George Osbourne – and this despite the fact that the Prime Minister was entirely comfortable with the job that the pinstripe been doing, and despite the fact that there had never been any concerns expressed about his work in all his regular job appraisals.

You could almost stop there, because in the same amount of time it takes to read those words and imagine how the UK press would handle the story, David Cameron would probably have picked up the phone, murmured something like ‘desperately sorry about this George old chap’ and suggested he might like to spend a bit more time with his family. But don’t stop there. Hang on.

Instead, imagine that the PM had stuck by his chancellor. And then imagine that it turned out that just a few months later that Osborne messed up a major capital project and then pinned it on a civil servant, before trying to force that civil servant out of his job without paying him off (unsuccessfully).

Imagine that he was also described as an unreliable witness in the report, and that exactly the same allegations of bullying, control freakery, and backroom dealing underpinned the whole thing – and then to cap it all off he accused the report’s author of being out to get him and warned him that he would defend himself (before denying any such accusations or warnings were made).

Now, and here’s the really tough bit that could well stretch your credulity beyond shattering point, imagine George Osborne keeping his job anyway.

That’s the key truth of all this – in most other places, these reports would be enough to finish a political career, or at least put a substantial dent in one. But here? Well, perhaps, and perhaps not.

On the face of it, Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf is just getting on with work. He’s mumbling the same old lines about how the reports are one-sided (they aren’t), how outrageous it is that correspondence has been leaked (I’m not breaking any confidences when I say that this is legitimately hilarious) and his whole defence is effectively ‘I’m so good at my job that everyone standing near me looks incompetent’.

What’s missing, in case you haven’t noticed, is a shred of contrition or accountability. This isn’t a man incapable of learning from his mistakes – this is a man who thinks himself incapable of making a mistake.

But be clear – the Senator is worried about this. That’s why he’s been, according to some politicians, on a charm offensive to soften up some of his colleagues, presumably thinking that a vote of no confidence is on its way.

It’s also why he found himself tweeting away from the Chelsea Flower Show in the days after the report came out – not precisely what you’d expect the Treasury Minister to be doing, nor precisely where you’d expect him to be.

And it’s also why he made the point of attacking the credibility of the Comptroller and Auditor General during the review over Bill Ogley’s ‘golden handshake’ – saying that it was all one-sided and he’d never had a chance to put his side of the story.

All of this puts Chief Minister Ian Gorst – who is not of the same ‘economic growth at any cost’ political clan as his Treasury Minister, and who put someone else up for the job in the first place – in a position where he has to make a difficult decision to condemn his chancellor and try to get rid of him, or condone his actions by keeping him in the job.

There are probably a few others in the States who could take on the role – Senators Ian Le Marquand (one vote away from the job last November) and Philip Bailhache come to mind, as do Deputies Eddie Noel (the assistant minister) and Tracey Vallois (the Public Accounts Committee chairman).

The very real problem for Senator Gorst is that the issue of his Treasury Minister’s behaviour is now too big to ignore – or, to put it properly, it’s now reached the point that to ignore it would be to condone it. The decision over what to do about all of this will not be an easy one.

You might not believe this – but I’m a bit like Chelsea

In a week off work I’ve: seen my team scrape an unlikely win in the Champions League Final, run my first half-marathon (finishing dead last in my category in a dazzlingly slow time of 2 hours and 36 minutes), gone to the Minquiers for the very first time and caught my first mackerel of the year.

It’s been a cracking week, basically. And that’s without, you know, not having to do any work.

But the best bit? The absolute highlight of my week? It was a one-liner from JEP colleague Sue Le Ruez, an experienced runner who beat me home by more than 50 minutes last Sunday morning.

At the finish of the race I was explaining that I hadn’t done all that well, and she was (very generously) saying that didn’t matter, and that the main thing was to have got there in the end. And then she said: ‘A bit like Chelsea last night.’

Fantastic. I’m a bit like Chelsea. I’m sure that some people wouldn’t see it as a compliment, but I honestly think that it’s the nicest thing that anyone’s ever said to me.