IT HAS been, for very different reasons, a difficult week for governments on both sides of the Channel.
While the parliamentary speaker and his colleagues sink ever lower into the muddy moat of the expenses scandal, the island’s Assembly has also faced a series of damaging revelations and allegations.
Principal among these is the missing £50m. in Treasury and Resources’ cash pool, which has left its minister facing awkward questions along the lines of: is your department wholly incompetent or just wholly untrustworthy?
Hot on its heels are allegations of wrongdoing at the Mont Cuet tip, which could bring a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘throwing away good money after bad’.
Then the man entrusted to redesign Guernsey’s government and make it fit for the modern era says that the compromise bodge-up adopted just five years ago is absolutely unfit for purpose.
Which is presumably why the island is still talking about what to do with its waste 15 years after it identified an urgent need to find a solution. The latest delays have seen the price for a plant go from some £80m. to £101m. in five years. And there’s no guarantee the Assembly will accept these plans any more than they did those of previous years.
And now we have the case of Guernsey Electricity’s dwindling savings, down from £16m. to nothing in the space of four years. Treasury, as the main shareholder, seems happy with that, the island’s regulator less so.
All of which brings to mind Tribal Helm’s conclusion – also that the island’s government is ‘not fit for purpose’ with no idea how to bring about joined-up thinking.
This, however, is where the UK and Guernsey diverge.
While parliament embarks on a period of upheaval, resignations and reform as MPs and peers are forced to take radical action to restore the public’s faith in their government, there are those Micawbers in our Assembly who insist that there is nothing in the system really in need of fixing.
They, sadly, are blind to the evidence.