When, back in early 2009, Treasury and Resources was looking to borrow £175m. to finance the island’s capital expenditure programme, it also wanted to divert whatever surplus was made by the island’s harbours and airport into its own hands and increase that ‘profit’ by a further £1.8m.

Neither the Policy Council nor the States objected at the time to the raid on the Ports Holding Accounts although it was plainly muddle-headed.

Now, however, some two years later, the Policy Council accepts that it got it wrong and is supporting Public Service’s request that it be absolved of the most damaging of the requirements to inflate the amount of cash that it generates.

The damage, of course, has already been done. As a consequence, islanders are now faced with a raft of price rises on top of those already introduced by a government that might be reducing the rate at which its expenditure goes up but has done next to nothing to tackle its underlying cost base.

Faced with a requirement to find an extra £1.8m., PSD’s knee-jerk reaction is to pass it on to islanders and port users. No effort is made to fund even some of that from a total authorised budget last year of £15.6m.

Yet while islanders and taxpayers struggle, the department maintains pay practices that would make the private sector weep.

Its painters and decorators, for instance, get paid extra to use a ladder. It’s called a height allowance, so if someone has to stand on a box to reach a rail, more of our money goes to them.

The jackpot is when staff are asked to paint a beacon at sea and use a ladder as well. Double whammy. Yes, taxpayers are being taken for mugs but because everyone is part of the system nothing is done to change it, even though the Housing minister has campaigned for an end to the nonsense.

Islanders should at least be thankful that the crane drivers’ boiler stoking allowance has gone – bought out, naturally – because not even Unite the union could justify its retention.

So when your deputy says they have done everything humanly possible to reduce costs, you know how to respond…