POLITICAL leaders from Lenin to Atlee, Blair to Obama have swept to power on the promise of change.

Some, like Nelson Mandela, have had change thrust upon them. Most are doomed to disappoint – the jury is still out on the 44th incumbent of the White House. Others, including many closer to home, don’t even try. Change, you see, offers a magic wand to dispel existing ills. But in reality, change demands careful management. The successful change artist is realistic and resolute.

It’s a depressing characteristic of ‘high level’ thinking in our beloved Island that as soon as something is established, it’s up for changing. Why are we so restless? It surely can’t just be that politicians have become so used to throwing money – our money – around that they are serially nervous when things become settled for any period of time.

What’s wrong with the ‘ain’t broke, don’t fix’ maxim? Hardly were the ramps installed and the fences erected at the harbour skatepark, when it’s on the agenda to be moved elsewhere. The same goes for the hide-and-seek trail of the Tourism Information Centre at the Weighbridge. On the horizon is the prospect of moving the St Helier ferry terminal, completed a mere 20 years ago at the cost of £15 million, to the other side of the harbour.

The Strategic Plan is the latest casualty of the re-thinkers. It’s already clocked up a veritable stop-go history of amendment, adaptation, expediency and appeasement. So why not start again? I’ll tell you why not: because we’ve already spent a king’s ransom on consultation, discussions, fees for work on every bit of evidence and calculation.

Like the aircraft vapour trails that pass so prominently above this island, the blue skies are well raked over. Strategy depends on good research, confidently adhered to. As anyone building a house will tell you, once you start tinkering with the script, you risk damaging the overall concept, weaken the structure and jack up the cost. Furthermore, you just keep putting off making decisions. Look how we procrastinated over the new incinerator.

OK, we ended up with a pretty asinine decision all round, but had we made it years ago before the pound fell out of the bottom of the Treasury’s euro bucket, the thing would have already been functioning at far less expense, Bellozanne wouldn’t have been left belching and crumbling before our eyes and the strategic planners could be thinking about where to site the La Collette replacement in 20 years’ time.

So, you put your right foot in, your left foot out etc, but ‘shaking it all about’ is anything but appropriate. Just when we’ve got used to GST, however unwelcome its imposition, up comes the prospect of another round of posturing and wrangling in the States Chamber over exemptions on food and fuel.

Previous attempts sank to the level of labyrinthine discussions about what constituted luxury or essential in the food line – even the distinction between biscuit and cake. It might pander to the whim of whichever political fairy godmother wishes to curry favour, and is bound to generate popular resonance. But if the proposition succeeds, who’ll pick up the tabs? Retailers will certainly be forced to go through all the paraphernalia of re-pricing goods on the shelves.

Social Services would be tasked with recalculating all those ‘generous’ pay-back measures adopted to recompense the elderly and other low-income claimants when the tax was imposed in the first place? I can’t help feeling that now that the GST formula has been installed, punching a hole in part of it would – on the fat balloon analogy – only mean the other side would puff out to take up the slack. So tuppence off a lettuce might mean sixpence more on – perish the thought – a bottle of medicine.

GST was brought in to fill a predicted hole in our budget caused by the need to keep our finance industry afloat, underwrite zero-ten and perpetuate the nonsense which allows tax revenue from UK enterprises trading in Jersey to be leeched away to HMG coffers. So much for the unhelpful jibes about local tax havens! (If there were any real justice, all the employees of the companies incurring UK tax here should qualify for free medical treatment when visiting the mainland.)

From the figures already released by the Treasury, GST has made a significant contribution to the rescue pot. That certainly doesn’t make it a friendly tax. No tax is. But it is relatively easy to apply across the board, and at 3% is way below the sort of direct tax levels borne by those societies burdened by double-digit VAT.

The rush to the anti-GST colours by prospective States-men and women overwhelmed the platforms of the election hustings last autumn. It always drew easy applause. I’d be the last to suggest any electioneering hypocrisy, but in truth, the candidates knew the measures were already in place and those who’d put their heads over the parapet to support the measure had been ‘named and shamed’. So it was a popular whipping boy. Little did the newcomers expect to have to put their own three per cent on the voting button so soon after joining the ‘club’.

In these turbulent times, ‘second-fix’ meddling with legislation to release cash – which will inevitably have to be raised somewhere else, seems at best capricious and at worst a costly exercise in job creation and political beauty contesting. Far better to focus on the bigger, more serious issues confronting our longer-term prosperity than wrestle with a containable old enemy. A ‘famous victory’ in the current theatre will yield little more than small change.