News that Guernsey’s head of tourism is to quit the island and head for the New Forest while retaining his post here has triggered an understandable reaction among islanders: please come to Guernsey, the place I’m not prepared to live.

The reality, of course, is somewhat different.

Faced with the prospect of the director of marketing and tourism having to leave the island for family reasons, Commerce and Employment decided to see whether it was possible to retain his services in some way, given the excellent job he does for the island.

The outcome of that is all one way – in favour of the island. No extra cost to the employer, a contract that can be terminated if things go wrong and the ongoing services of a man C&E wishes to hold on to.

What the latest developments indicate are that the island’s head of tourism is so committed to the job here that he is willing to sacrifice a huge amount of his money commuting and invest a lot of his own time in doing so.

The consequences of that are an enormous determination to ensure the new arrangements work and, again, the island will be the beneficiary of that.

Where criticism might be brought to bear, however, is in the way this change has been handled.

On any measure, an island tourism chief apparently trying to market his product from a distance is guaranteed to attract comment. So any such status shift would have to be handled carefully.

Alas, in this case, it was not.

Government does not have a good track record of looking after its own PR and, while this might be a small example – rather like the Castle Emplacement toilet fiasco – it does frequently send out a message of general ineptitude.

The Policy Council invests a great deal of time and money in maintaining the right external image but very little on the internals, of persuading islanders that it has its finger on the pulse.

At a time of economic pressure and greater public scrutiny it does not need a succession of own goals.

If nothing else, the States needs to persuade islanders that it knows what it is doing.