STAND well back. Watch carefully. Do not take your eyes off the bundle of cash on the table. Don’t even blink.

With the power of my mind, and about 500 well-chosen words, I’m going to make £230,000 disappear, and put it back into your pocket. It’s not just anyone who can do this trick, ladies and gentlemen. It takes practice, split-second timing and more than a hint of luck.

The £230,000 is, more or less, what we paid for the Clothier Report in 2000 – and according to Deputy Bob Hill, it’s what we should be paying for a review of the role of the unelected Members. It’s one of those incredibly rare occasions when a States Member is right in principle, wrong in practice – more often it’s the other way around.

I can do the whole thing in 500 words without spending a quid.
Here it is: the Bailiff’s got to go. Not because he’s a strange Machiavellian figure pulling strings for ministers – but because his dual role as Chief Judge and Speaker of the States Chamber makes us look like a bunch of bumpkins clinging to a rock.

The Dean’s got to go. Nice guy, albeit with a few funny ideas about what my rates bills should be used for, and a lot more fun than the last one. But come on fellas. It’s 2009.

The AG’s got to go. Actually this is a bit more difficult. He can stay and continue to give his expert legal advice to the Chamber, but if and only if they invite the Medical Officer of Health, the Environment Department director and the Treasurer of the States in too. Why should the legal expert be treated differently to everyone else?

What makes the law more important than public health, the environment and the economy? William Bailhache is on a knife-edge – it may be slightly unfair to him, but the fact that he’s the Bailiff’s brother, coupled with the old ‘bumpkin theory’ probably means that he’s got to go too.

So what do we do? Stick an elected States Member in there? No. No way. You’re not listening.
If it’s a Member from a small constituency, then the people living in it are effectively deprived of part of their representation.

On top of which, there’s the small problem of keeping an even hand over debates and points of order which is going to be pretty difficult for a States Member with personal and political allegiances as well as a manifesto.

The reason it works everywhere else is the political party system – but that’s another thing for another day. The answer: the Greffier of the States. Knows the rules inside out, is in the Chamber anyway, presides over debates quite a lot, has no political axe to grind, universally respected. Michael de la Haye’s the man. Plus, he’s tall. And that’s an important but often-overlooked quality for people going after highly-paid jobs, if you ask me.

Whoa? What’s this? Where’s that £230,000 gone? It’s magic I tell ya…

Tough, principled, maverick – it’s not often you get to compare the former England cricket captain Kevin Pietersen and Deputy Sean Power, so I’m not going to let the opportunity slip by.

Pietersen lost his job last week for either a) mouthing off against his superiors and the coach of the England side, or b) taking a stand on a principle. It depends on which side of the story you like most.
Deputy Power might be about to do the same.

On Friday, the newly-appointed Assistant Housing Minister said that he wouldn’t back his boss’s proposal to drop the housing qualification period to ten years, and that the department wasn’t in favour either.
His logic was pretty similar to something I tried to write last week: that if the motivation was to give the property market a shot in the arm, then it was a pretty stupid idea.

Word has it that the boy Power, like Pietersen, ran into trouble with his bosses over his remarks.
The way this works out will tell us everything that we need to know about the new Council of Ministers.
If Deputy Power gets sacked for this, then forget every word you heard about consensus, a broad church, government that listens etc.

Oh, and it finally happened. The only good thing about the story about the Town Hall report on the Income Support system, as far as I can see, was that no-one involved pressed the big red rhetoric button.
It wasn’t needed. The story was big enough, and serious enough, without chucking allegations, insults and threats about.

The three politicians involved – St Helier Constable Simon Crowcroft, who commissioned the report, Social Security Minister Ian Gorst, who has to deal with it, and Housing Scrutiny chairman Alan Breckon, who will be watching very closely – just spoke about the issues, about the solutions, and didn’t get rowdy about it.

Cue former Social Security Minister Paul Routier, whose spectacularly ill-judged letter to the JEP on Saturday essentially boiled down to: ‘The staff who carried out the report didn’t like Income Support from the start. The visits were still the job of the parishes. Claimants were found dead in their homes under the old welfare system too and if the parish had evidence of overpayment, they should have reported it straight to the department.’ Classy.

There’s nothing like taking responsibility for your actions is there? Why is it that with so many Members, the first instinct on being criticised is to shoot the messenger?