CHOOSING which of 60 proposals should not get States support is rather like asking which leg one might like amputated.

Of course, the answer is neither. Islanders want both their history preserved and their health services enhanced.

With cash limited to just £2.4m., less than a fifth of the projects detailed in the second States Strategic Plan have won any backing, leaving many worthy causes cast aside for another year.

Those responsible for the choices – and it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it – argue rightly that, looked at in the short term, there are Cinderella causes that are just too easy to ignore.

The arts and sciences, for example, have a hard task standing up to health and social services when it comes to saying no.

Better bowel cancer screening will save lives. Improving the storage of museum objects will not.

Families who lose a loved one to cancer cannot be expected to agree that a pile of dusty relics has anywhere near the value of their husband, wife, son or daughter. The past is behind us and people are the island’s future, they will say.

Yet without support, the arts and sciences will wither and the islands as a whole will be the poorer for generations to come.

It is an impossible choice.

And, of course, a very unfair one when one considers the wastage wrought by the States during the good years.

When cash was available, the island sadly neglected to spend it on what matters: schools, health, infrastructure, culture. Instead, millions went to waste on extravagant vanity projects, poor cost controls and plain daft purchases.

The civil service became bloated and pampered while States members ignored the inevitability that the good times would come to an end.

So, while many islanders might disagree fundamentally with the SSP team’s recommendations, at least there has been some thought behind it. And deputies can no longer pretend they did not know the consequences of wasting taxpayers’ cash on fripperies.

It is no exaggeration to say that lives are at stake.