MILLIONS wasted on regulation means that commercialisation has become a dirty word in Guernsey, new Treasury Minister Gavin St Pier has said.

GUERNSEY’S new States will have to deal with a budget deficit of £24m. left by its predecessor, accounts released this morning reveal.

OUTGOING Treasury minister Charles Parkinson said yesterday that he saw no harm in publishing in the annual accounts the amount of money the States spent on pay settlements.

The latest twist in the saga of how to raise £1.8m. – raiding air passengers rather than boatowners – is an indication that government in the round really does not understand the concept of ‘joined up’ far less practise what it preached back in the 2004 reforms that were supposed to make the States run [...]

One of the things to come out of the Assembly last week was the sense that the spending juggernaut that is the States of Guernsey has finally been tamed.

THE legal aid budget will next year increase by £800,000.

A COUPLE of sentences in the 2011 Budget report, which was released last week, provide a clue for how the island’s public sector could look in the years ahead.

MOTORISTS and homeowners will be hit hardest by duty increases in 2011, Treasury and Resources revealed today.

THE States hired 89 additional ‘civil servants’ during 2009, it has been revealed.

TAXPAYERS’ money would have to be used if a Guernsey bank ‘collapsed tomorrow’, the Treasury minister has warned.