GO about your business, citizens, I’ve got this one. I know it’s dangerous, but there comes a time when a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.

Most of you won’t yet have sat through, or listened to, a States sitting. Trust me — you’re not ready for this week’s effort. You won’t stand a chance.

By the time this newspaper hits the streets, the States will have started a sitting that could run to five days. And Members will be seizing one of their last chances to remind the Island what a tre-mendous job they’ve been doing for the last three/six years, while they debate (deep breath): GST exemptions, the role of the Bailiff, the break-up of Planning, anti-money laundering laws, new rules for fishing nets, funding for the flu pandemic and the historical child abuse inquiry, the dumping of toxic ash at the Waterfront and the closure of the compost plant.

Hot air there will be, ladies and gentlemen. There will be exaggeration.
In fact, to misquote H L Mencken, there will be speeches that are ‘. . . so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into them. They will drag themselves out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawl insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. There will be rumble and bumble. There will be flap and doodle. There will be balder and dash’.

So don’t, whatever you do, venture down to the Chamber. Don’t turn on the radio. It’ll be hell. Leave it to the professionals. We know the risks. We do these things so that you don’t have to.

I’M guessing that the news that your States department may have been helping cab drivers break the Competition Law by distributing their list of fixed fares for them isn’t exactly the story you’d want to read in the run-up to an election.

And at first, Transport Minister Guy de Faye seemed to deal reasonably well with the news from the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority’s report on cab fares with a decidedly Clintonesque: ‘It depends what you mean by competition.’

Sadly, he kept going, and said he didn’t have an issue with it. Cab drivers, he reasoned, are not in competition with each other — they’re in competition with taxi dri-vers (the ones on the ranks), whose fares he sets himself. If you can figure that out, let me know. But did he stop there?

Check out this little beauty of a quote at a Chamber of Commerce debate to a question about the ministerial U-turn on GST exemptions: ‘It absolutely astonishes me that six months down the road, at the first whiff of gunsmoke and the first sign of panic, I suddenly find that I’m a member of the Italian army.

‘I am disgraced and appalled.
‘It is a disgraceful U-turn by the Council of Ministers. We are supposed to be standing up for States policy and showing leadership.’

Apart from blowing the Italian vote in his St Helier No 3 district — which he later described as a ‘hobbit hole’ — it also produced a bit of a problem for his boss, Chief Minister Frank Walker, who was sitting about three rows back in the crowd. Frank, you understand, maintains that it wasn’t a U-turn at all, but the act of a responsible government reacting to changing circumstances.

And despite a genuine and heartfelt tribute from the Transport Minister to his boss half an hour later, praising his record as Chief Minister, the fact that one of his own ministers reckons it’s a U-turn kind of cuts away at his argument.

Squeaky bum time is alive and well — and your States Members are eagerly beavering away, raising their profiles and reminding you that they’re out there, while the clock ticks down to polling day. Here are a few examples of stories/offers that have come in at the JEP newsdesk from States Members over the last week:

• Deputy John Le Fondré asking whether he could give the press a tour around the old JCG site.
• Economic Development Minister Philip Ozouf announcing, apropos of nothing at all, that he ‘welcomed’ the result of the JCRA investigation into cab fares.
• Assistant Housing Minister Jackie Hilton calling a public meeting for her St Helier No 3 residents to discuss plans for housing development at La Pouquelaye.
• Deputy Shona Pitman tabling a late amendment to exempt school uniforms from GST (too late to be debated this week).

Shocking? Brace yourselves . . .
The most spectacular ‘opportunity’ of the week was a breathless PR spokesman wondering if we’d be interested in reporting that Senator Ozouf and Education Minister Mike Vibert were going to go around the schools giving out free equipment to pupils.

Would we like to publish photos of two election candidates handing out presents to children about six weeks from election day? I kid you not. For the record, and for the avoidance of any doubt, the news editor politely declined.