We’re only nibbling at the edges of genuine reform

At a distance, since the only members of God’s creatures allowed on the site are those wearing High Viz jackets, it hardly looks much different though any new shoots and over-wintering wildlife would certainly have received a loud eviction note. Just within sight, you may like to visit Green Island car park and marvel at its billiard table smoothness after resurfacing, while Rue a Don continues to test the springs of the stoutest 4x4s.

It would be harsh to add this to the – I’m sure, apocryphal – rash of seemingly pointless activities that occur this time of year –particularly in the public sector just at the end of the financial year to ensure annual budget are all used up and protected for the next.

However, forget budgets for the moment. There may be a more fundamental reason for these unexpected activities. It could also lie behind why after the reported encouraging breakthrough that both TTS and Environment Ministers had agreed to dispose of the mountain of asbestos containers from La Collette off island, we now hear that perhaps it will all be dumped in an adjacent pit after all. It falls into the realms of what’s called ‘displacement activity’.

If a task is too difficult or you don’t want to do it, you can put all your energy into a parallel one. It’s a well trodden path in public life, though, to be fair, it provides a convenient escape route for individuals too. If you can’t solve a problem, commission a report, an inquiry or survey which will, inevitably cost more than might be yielded from the practice or activity being scrutinised and gain valuable time.

Furthermore, it provides work for others and the satisfaction that you’ve actually seen to be doing something. So, all boxes are duly ticked. After all, if you don’t like the results, you can redact the evidence! Seemples.

We are facing a classic example just at the moment with the messy process of Constitutional reform. Here again, it’s an issue regarded as far too difficult and sensitive to see off, so we end up nibbling at the edges with the prospect of ending up no further advanced than when the exercise began.

The Commission has, in effect, side-stepped the mandate of providing recommendations to the States to reorganise itself and heaped responsibility to the electorate in a verbose, inelegantly constructed referendum. . Of course, that sounds fine and democratic, but – with due respect – it means that momentous decisions will be based on non-professional considerations, patronage, precedent and a generous dose of ‘a plague on their House’ generated by years of believing it should all be done better.

The island has been asked to ‘send a clear message’ to politicians about how it should be run. But how can voters extract that clarity from such a messy set of options? It’s a clever political tactic, because the most likely outcome of confusion is to induce fear of the unknown. And whatever the result, it will all be our own fault, because we’ll have voted for it.

Sometimes deflection is deliberate, sometimes accidental. In the deliberate camp is the practice of going after the ‘easy target’ rather than the difficult or challenging – prosecuting a pensioner for littering when a stray thread falls from their pocket for instance, while convicted foreign thugs avoid extradition with trumped up human rights claims.

Only last week, HMRC was found to be actively pursuing individuals and small tax evaders while giants like Google, Starbucks and Amazon get away with massive UK tax avoidance. In the other corner – the land of accidental displaced enthusiasm , there are equally large elephant traps.

Plans by UK govt zealots to reduce council spending – a creditable goal, by cutting benefits of tenants in social housing if their dwellings contain more bedrooms than bodies to fill, has led to particular hardship . In one case an elderly couple were left in dire straits because the husband’s disability prevents them sharing a single bedroom – not a good result.

While here, ignoring vital details about provenance, background checks and intellectual property rights in hasty pursuit of celluloid illusion, looks to have backfired spectacularly. Despite confident assurance that ‘all checks had been carried out’, the promise of a passing glimpse of a Mont Orgueil Castle turret may very well have led to the wrong questions being asked.

We’re all well used to hearing politicians and spokespeople refusing to answer direct questions, preferring to plough on regardless with their own agenda, leading to the sort of vacuois shouting matches which pepper the parliamentary arena or the Today Programme. Well they should be adept at it since politicians, executives and their organisations hand over huge sums of cash to professionals – often ex-journalists –to learn how to do it. Fortunately, our local personaliies aren’t as well schooled – yet.

Nevertheless, the next time you hear about initiatives being launched – delegations being sent here and everywhere to raise our profile etc, ask not what they are doing or our country, consider what they might not be doing as a result.

Now here’s a thought. If the chaps digging the Channel Tunnel had followed the line of least resistance, we may have found them snaking around the Channel in our direction – how different life might have been!