WHY is it that almost every year we get an unseemly and certainly undignified row over Liberation Day which usually centres on money?

Put bluntly, the fact that many places are being forced to close all weekend – Liberation Day is on Saturday, not that anyone here should need reminding – while some have effectively done deals with their parochial authorities is little short of scandalous.

To prove the point, one need look no further than the idiotic situation in which one rule applies to a garden centre in the west of the Island while another applies to an all but identical business in an eastern parish.

Similarly, all shops in the centre of town can open on Sunday 10 May (no matter what the legislation appears to say), but places like Safeway and the Co-op’s Grand Marché can’t, according to someone called the town centre manager.

Quite where the centre of town might be might be is questionable, given that ‘town’ can be used to describe anything from King Street and Queen Street and their immediate neighbours to the whole of the parish of St Helier, which includes Havre des Pas as far as the Dicq, lower Trinity as far as Augrès, and Millbrook as far as Waterworks Valley, give or take an inch or two.

All the decisions to which I’ve referred are questionable, to say the least, and while I have for many years written about the need to keep Liberation Day different from any other day of the year, this idiotic nonsense makes a mockery of the law.

Just as important, it demonstrates – as if any further evidence is necessary – just how totally inept are that lot in the Big House. It’s been apparent since the year dot that Liberation Day this year falls on a Saturday, and since from a trading point of view that equated it with Sundays, it was always going to be that there would be two consecutive days where Sunday trading rules would apply.

So busy are our elected representatives doing everything but govern adequately (never mind with any indication that they can a) see further than 20 minutes ahead, or b) see further than their next pay day when some of them will pull down riches beyond the dreams of avarice in terms of what any employer would think they are worth), that yet again we’re left with a shambles because no one seems to have the authority to make a sensible decision.

To have two municipalities reach different decisions in respect of almost identical businesses under one single piece of legislation is worse than farcical, it’s shambolic, and just one step closer the day when the coffin that is our government will become too heavy to lift because it will contain more nails than timber.

I always thought that part of the celebration of Liberation Day was the concept that because of the bravery and sacrifice of millions across the globe, those who survived and their descendants would enjoy freedom and fairness; they gave their tomorrow so that we could have our today. I’m not too sure how free and fair this trading shambles is.

I wonder what sort of debate went on within the Cabinet – and how informed it was – when Terry Le Sueur and his merry little band discussed imposing a pay freeze on all public-sector employees.

It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit that the idea might even have come from that other merry little band, the spin doctors and nurses who, along with the human resources and counselling industries, if they do have a proper and useful function have managed to conceal from a great many, including this bolshie little crapaud.

After all, the Cabinet may well have been told, think how the public will react if you tell them that the civil servants won’t be getting a pay rise until next year. It’ll go down a bundle, particularly if you also recommend no pay rise for politicians either. It’s called leading by example.

I can just imagine them all sitting there, surrounded of course by pinstripes on six-figure salaries to whom whatever was going to be on the table this year wouldn’t have paid the golf club subscription anyway (local youngsters have to wait until they’re middle-aged if they want to join), and besides, in this day and age what’s important is the gold-plated, index-linked, final-salary pension along with the whacking great tax-free lump sum that is part of it.

On this issue I happen to agree with Geoff Southern. At a time when the powers that be are stimulating the economy by throwing £44 million at it, it seems foolish to withdraw more than a fifth of that spending power with a pay freeze.

Despite the assurances given by Prime Minister Le Sueur, it is ludicrous to expect that there is not to be a day of reckoning – catch-up time. It’s as certain as night follows day, and Deputy Southern was right to point it out.

That said, I doubt he’ll be listened to because right now imposing a pay freeze on pinstripes is a popular move among the public – a public who often forget that the vast majority of public-sector employees are not on fat cat salaries and a company credit card, although talk of the latter has gone strangely quiet these days.

I just hope that if there is a freeze, it will apply to every single States employee – including Postal and Telecoms executives and staff – and will also apply to total remuneration packages, and not simply wages and salaries.

And finally … I wish Ann Pryke well in her new role but I hope that she is able to put to one side her previous involvement in the nursing profession. History indicates that among the worst presidents were those who came in with baggage – agriculture and education being but two of the committees to which I refer.