WHAT Treasury and Resources learned last week is that it is pointless trying to corral islanders and their representatives into a course of action that is against their nature. Borrowing huge amounts of money at expensive rates simply went against the grain.

Whether that is illogical, whether it was the wrong decision is almost irrelevant: the point is that it was simply unacceptable.

So is Public Services’s proposal for an energy-from-waste plant costing mega-millions in the same category? We will not know until the debate has ended but the suspicion is that islanders would do pretty much anything to avoid having an incinerator at Longue Hougue and the States’ aversion to taking difficult or unpopular decisions is well known.

So when a businessman with the status of the head of the Stan Brouard Group starts calling for public expressions of interest in using Jersey’s spare capacity rather than Guernsey buying its own incinerator, it is clear that there is considerable unease about the PSD proposals.

Like borrowing, that might be irrational, it might be wrong in principle. But it reflects a deep-seated antipathy towards what is being put forward as a bespoke, modular solution to all Guernsey’s waste requirements.

What is unusual about this opposition to the PSD’s plans is that it comes from such a wide variety of sources – not just what might be termed the usual suspects – and from a range of individuals with expertise in their own fields.

If their insistence that the recommended way forward is wrong has one thing in common it is that Public Services has at best failed to make its case in a convincing and compelling manner.

True, PSD has only to persuade 24 members of the Assembly that it is right, but the level of hostility towards the incineration plant and its massive cost mean that many deputies will find it difficult to ignore public opinion whatever their own feelings on this are.

The department’s latest ‘using Jersey won’t work’ pronouncement is similarly unconvincing, no matter how accurate it might be.

Unless it can rapidly start winning hearts and minds, Public Services needs to have a plan B up its sleeve.