A NOTE to prospective election candidates: throw away your speeches on GST exemptions. You probably won’t need them.

The exemptions, probably on food and fuel, are coming and the message slowly, gradually, and drip by drip, seems to be filter-ing through to the Council of Ministers.

The only decision they have to make is whether to bite the bullet, grip the handbrake and make the U-turn now, or strike up the band as the ship sinks beneath the waves.Just the facts, ma’am?

There is no way, no chance, and not the remotest possibility of the post-election States not tacking the exemptions onto GST, given that it will be the first question at every hustings event if it hasn’t already gone through.

Food prices rose 13% in the 12 months up until June. Fuel and light prices rose 26% in the same period. The 3% sales tax started in May, so those rises don’t really include it yet.

The bulk of those rises have happened since last November, when Senator Ben Shenton’s proposal was defeated by just 28 votes to 21. An amendment on food would cost around £4m, compared to the 2007 States surplus of £87m and the 2006 surplus of £43m.

Two ministers already back exemptions, a third has just joined the fold, three are considering standing for re-election and another is campaigning to become Chief Minister.

At the next States sitting in just over a month the States will debate two propositions to exempt food and fuel, and healthy food, lodged by Deputies Carolyn Labey and Shona Pitman respectively.

Put simply, the rise in food and fuel prices and the pending elections are more than enough to swing the eight votes needed to get the changes through by the time the next States sitting on 8 September come around, and the ministers well know it.

Environment Minister Freddie Cohen has come on board with a suggestion that the Medical Officer of Health pick a short list of healthy foods to be exempted.

And a careful reading of the comments of Treasury Minister Terry Le Sueur – a candidate for Chief Minister come December who last year staked his future on a flat rate 3% tax’ – about the planned ‘emergency meeting’ in a fortnight would suggest a shift in position.

When asked whether the options might include dropping GST on food, he didn’t mention the fact that he had previously been dead against it, or the fact that the States had rejected exemptions on three separate occasions over the last three years. He said: ‘I will not speculate on any options until they have been discussed in the meeting.’

Sometimes it’s not so much what you say, as what you don’t. No mention at all of previous decisions, no mention at all of the old position, and no mention of his October 2007 quote that if the fiscal strategy was ‘blown off course then I would consider my entire political future’.If you accept that there’s a 50/50 chance of the exemptions getting through in September, and an almost 100% chance of them getting through after December, surely the best thing for ministers to do is accept that they were wrong, and back the change.

The only question left is how they’ll justify it (the safe money’s on the old ‘Times have changed’ argument).We haven’t been short of mind-blowing quotes this year.

Although it’s hard to separate them into any kind of order, the most absurd and ill-thought from our end of the Channel Islands have got to be some combination of the following:Chief Minister Frank Walker to Senator Stuart Syvret: ‘You’re trying to shaft Jersey internationally.’Sir Philip Bailhache to the whole Island: ‘All child abuse, wherever it happens, is scandalous, but it is the unjustified and remorseless denigration of Jersey and her people that is the real scandal.’Martin Sayers to a group of paying customers trying to get into his nightclub: ‘Go and lose some weight before you can come in. Fat people are bad for business.’

But none of them comes even close to capturing the crown of Craziest Goddamn Quote of the Year By Someone Who Should Have Known Better.

That award (and in some ways it pains me to write these words) looks very much like it’s going to go to a Guernseyman. Not just any Guernseyman, but Guernsey’s Chief Minister Lyndon Trott, who seemed to forget who he was and came over a bit Tony Soprano on his way out of a meeting last week.

Bumping into a States colleague with whom he appears not to get on in a corridor after a meeting, he allegedly said the following (brace yourself): ‘I’ll punch your [expletive deleted] teeth out’, before departing and flinging off a ‘Show me some [expletive deleted] respect’ as a parting shot. Which isn’t exactly traditional parliamentary language, and isn’t precisely the way you’d hope the island’s most senior politician would talk to his colleagues.

All this proves one of the resounding truths about living in Jersey: ‘It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Guernsey.’ Come to think of it, isn’t that a better slogan than ‘Life Enriching’? Where’s my £250,000?