IN the matter of political representation, I couldn’t be luckier. While some people have just two representatives to call on – a Constable and a Deputy – I have five.

At a stretch, you could even call it 17 by adding the 12 Senators into the mix.
But the residents of St Helier No 3 have an abundance of Deputies – four of them, more than any other district. (And if you go back a bit, former representatives of my district include Chief Minister Terry Le Sueur, Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf, Senator Stuart Syvret and former Chief Minister Frank Walker – just imagine the kick-off if those four came knocking on your door asking for your vote at the same time.)

All this could be about to change, because the reform proposals put forward by Privileges and Procedures would sweep away the 12 Senatorial positions, cut the cord between Deputies and parishes, and abolish four seats entirely.
But don’t be alarmed by any of this, because the chances are that nothing is going to happen.

My mind goes instantly to static and white noise when I try to remember how many reform debates I’ve sat through. Let’s just say it’s a lot, literally whole days of my life listening to States Members witter on and on and on about how incredibly sensible, caring and democratically minded they all are.

And yet, the one amendment, the one proposal that would simultaneously focus Members’ minds on the job in hand and prevent a further waste of time has never been tabled.

Here it is: if they don’t sort it out this time, they can’t debate it for another ten years.

I’m absolutely serious. The problem with the reform debate isn’t that it’s boring (although it is); it isn’t that improvements aren’t obvious (they are); it’s States Members.

Almost every Member would agree that the reforms proposed by Privileges would produce a better system than we have now. Even the Senators accept that their six-year term is too long. Pretty much everyone knows that whatever the rights and wrongs of the Constables sitting in the States, they’re not going anywhere. And everyone understands that the current distribution of Deputy seats makes no sense. Unless you live in St Lawrence.

But for some reason, the reform debate short-circuits some vital part of States Members’ thinking apparatus. What happens every single time is that three or four reform models emerge, none of them gets a majority, and we end up with no progress.

Members watch their preferred model being defeated, then get the hump and vote down any other possible improvement in a fit of pique.

This time around, that didn’t look like happening. So far, only one amendment has been lodged, with Deputy Bob Hill proposing that the Constables be removed from the House, to be replaced by more Deputies.

Apparently confused at the prospect of a relatively straight run-in to the debate, Privileges immediately pushed it back from 13 July to 8 September – plenty of time for more madcap schemes to pop up over the summer as the twin creative forces of heatstroke and alcohol abuse inspire more amendments over the summer.

Well, so be it. The Privileges Committees proposals may not be perfect, but they are an improvement – a reasonable set of compromises that would produce a general election and lead to a more equitable distribution of seats to population.

But if Members adopt the same sulky attitude to reform and refuse to back any improvement that they haven’t personally come up with, nothing will happen. As long as States Members think they’ve got the rest of time to procrastinate about this, nothing will happen. Until the Council of Ministers show a bit of leadership and properly get behind the issue of reform, nothing will happen.

A ten-year bar on similar debates might focus Members’ minds. I might even try one of my five representatives to see if they will give it
a go …

Here’s a thing – I thought the Operation Blast story had it all. Secret police dossiers, legal threats, rows between former Chief Minister Frank Walker and suspended police chief Graham Power, vaguely hinted-at dark secrets about States Members’ personal histories …

But from the comments page on the JEP website, the letters page, and chatting to people round and about, no-one seems bothered at all, outside the 53 States Members and the media, that is.

Beyond them? A yawning lack of interest. You’re a strange bunch, aren’t you?