THIS may shock you. I had to think long and hard about even writing this down, let alone submitting it for publication.

Accordingly, the Jersey Evening Post must insist that you only read the following column while comfortably seated, out of the reach of any breakable objects.

Those of a nervous disposition should not read it at all, and pregnant women and small children should certainly stop at this point.

Do not read the following information aloud to anyone driving a motor vehicle, handling hot or sharp items, or operating heavy machinery. Brace yourself. Are you ready?

It appears, and I have this on no lesser authority than an Advocate of the Royal Court, that sometimes, on occasion, the States of Jersey have debated something without … and here I must pause to absolutely insist that you are sitting down … without actually knowing what they are talking about.

Speaking in mitigation for the sentencing of Deputies Geoff Southern and Shona Pitman for illegally helping voters apply for postal voting forms, defence Advocate Christopher Scholefield said that it appeared that States Members had gotten themselves into a bit of a muddle when debating the law that the pair had broken.

‘Understanding how this law came into existence is material to the concerns. There was a sequence of misunderstandings by Members about this,’ he said. ‘We are not saying “we are not guilty” but we are saying that it is a material mitigating factor that this debate took place in such an unorthodox way.’

Although the amendment to the law was about applying for postal votes, Members, he said, had applied themselves to the slightly different question of interference with postal ballots.
Well, goodness gracious, heavens above, jeepers, blimey and gadzooks.

States Members not knowing what they were talking about or doing? Whatever next?

I’ve had a few strange moments in court. My favourite was back in 2001, when a gentleman was being sentenced to a period in prison for being drunk and incapable, the day after Jeffrey Archer was sent to prison for perjury.

‘Well, sir, if it’s good enough for Lord Archer, I suppose it’s good enough for me,’ was the defendant’s response to his sentence – which raised a good laugh from the whole court, Magistrate included. Last week, I had another.

‘This is the beginning of the end for the establishment.’ I don’t know which of the seven or eight States Members sitting behind the press bench in the back of the Old Library for the sentencing of the ‘JDA two’ came out with that little pearl, but it stayed with me.
First off, I’ve never understood the term ‘establishment’.

I’ve only ever known one person who admitted to being in it, and he lost his seat fairly shortly after confessing.

My problem with it isn’t that I don’t understand what it means – basically it means anyone in the Frank Walker/Terry Le Sueur/Philip Ozouf mould – I just suspect that it’s a handy alternative to actually thinking things through.

Hacked off about GST? Blame the establishment. Can’t afford a house? It’s the establishment’s fault. Incinerator gone wrong? That damned establishment again.

It goes further – any wild conspiracy theory you care to put together can be validated online and blamed on ‘the establishment’ without more than a minute’s thought, consideration or reflection.

No evidence? The establishment must have covered it up! Proof! All this is getting off track – the point is this: how weird, strange and puzzled must your reasoning be to imagine that a combined £12,000 fine for two Deputies who broke the Public Elections (Jersey) Law could be ‘the beginning of the end of the establishment’?

How consumed with oddness would you have to be to make that connection? And what does it say about someone that they could be so obsessed as to see the spectral tendrils of an imaginary group of people everywhere they go?

I find myself more troubled by that than by the convictions of the two Deputies. They committed a crime, got caught, admitted it, and got sentenced. Simple. Not big, not clever, but simple.

But the establishment line bothers me more – it points to the screaming and wailing lack of maturity that pervades, let me make it clear, the whole of the States Assembly. And that’s not something that’s going to be resolved in just a Thursday afternoon in the Royal Court.

The £44m economic stimulus package sailed cleanly through the States this week with barely a whimper of resistance.

And that’s good. It’s a solid response to a problem that almost everyone can get right behind.

I’ve got just one caveat – the idea that some of the money will be used to cover the £120m maintenance backlog.

Successive States departments have been artificially increasing their budgets for years and years by putting off allocated maintenance spending on buildings, sea defences, roads and sewers – and using the cash for new services. They’ve all been at it.

And as a consequence, public spending has expanded to cover the new services, and the hangover effect of the deferred maintenance has grown steadily.

The work has to be done, the money has to be found – but is it wrong and unnatural to expect those responsible for the financial chicanery to be held to account first?