FROM the outside, to all intents and purposes, the acts of a) reviewing the effects of 10% cuts to the public sector because you want to make them, and b) reviewing the effects of 10% cuts because you don’t want to make them, appear to be exactly the same.

There’s no difference. So while it may look from the outside as though the ten members of the Council of Ministers are all working away towards the same end, there’s more than a little bit going on in the background.

The news that ministers have been told to forecast 2% cuts for 2011, 3% for 2012 and 5% for 2013 is a weird story. It’s weird because this is a story about States Members actually doing something about cutting spending.

It’s weird because it’s exactly what at least one minister (Home Affairs Minister Ian Le Marquand) said a month ago that he wouldn’t do. And it’s weird because absolutely no one who is involved in the process thinks that it’s going to happen.

And yet, even more weirdly, it’s progress. Not because it brings cuts closer, but because it pushes closer to the heart of what the structural deficit debate is about.

Conveniently, we all know what £50m in extra taxes looks like, because we only just started paying it less than two years ago in the form of GST. And that’s the scale of the problem – anyone banging the drum for taxes had better have something a lot more substantial on hand than some amateurish flannel about ‘taxing the rich’.

The unions are way out ahead on this, as you might expect, but Unite official Nick Corbel and Firefighters Association president Craig Channing have been the only ones to start making this argument so far, which strikes me as a bit odd.

But no one – not you, not me, not the unions, not the ministers – no-one has the slightest clue what £50m in cuts to States spending would look like. Because nothing like that has ever happened here before.

Mr Corbel appeared to get a little carried away when he said that it would leave Jersey with ‘a third world health service’. One minister has told me that he is adamant that he can and will make the cuts.

Another has made it clear that he won’t. The truth is that no one really knows what it’s going to mean, or how it’s going to end up.

But the reviews move the debate out of the nebulous, where everyone’s for really nice things like fair taxation, value for money and efficient government, and into the practical, where it’s all about deciding who’s losing their job, who’s getting hit by extra taxes and what the States are going to stop doing for Islanders.

There is no way every department is going to take a 10% hit at the end of all of this – especially considering the pressure that already exists on Health, Education, Social Security and Home Affairs – which account for more than threequarters of spending.

And there’s no way that we’ll get  through it without some spectacular shroud-waving from departments desperate to keep hold of your money. But these reviews get us a lot closer to the real questions.

THAT’S all a bit heavy, so let me share some light relief. I had a somewhat strange conversation on Wednesday with a guy from brain injury charity Headway’s London office, who was offering, I kid you not, an ‘exclusive interview’  in the run-up this week’s cycle helmet debate, along with a none-too-subtle line about how it might ‘balance out’ our coverage leading up to the States sitting.

But who was the mystery interview with? Some big celebrity? An expert of some description? No, just Deputy Andrew Green, who happens to be the UK chairman of Headway. And who represents the St Helier No 3 district, where I happen to live.

He’s a nice guy and he has made a cracking start to the first 15 months of
his States career, but giving ‘exclusive interviews’ to his own constituents? I
think not.

All of this brings us to rather a neat little twist in the cycle helmet saga. Deputy Daniel Wimberley tabled a last-minute amendment last week which would set in place a review of the effects of a compulsory cycle helmet law on injuries, the number of cyclists, air quality, parking spaces, policing and anything else that might be relevant.

Deputy Green dismissed the idea as ‘a wrecking amendment’ which is more than a little harsh.
This week’s debate looks likely to be little more than Deputy Green quoting reports backing his position that cyclists need to wear helmets, and Deputy Wimberley
quoting reports backing his position that they don’t.

And there is every chance that they could be doing that until the end of this week.
If there is any way that they can settle this without making me listen to all that, I’m
all for it.