HUMANITY learned many lessons from the 1970s, mostly about haircuts and trousers, but also one genuinely fundamental truth about politics that spans decades, ideology and oceans – that whoever you are, wherever you are, and whatever your intentions, politicians and secret recordings just do not work well together.

It’s Richard Nixon’s Law of Audio Engineering – that proximity to secret recording devices has the same effect on elected officials that concentrated artillery fire has on TV restaurant critics: immensely hazardous to them, immensely amusing to the rest of us.

You don’t have to be a geek with a fascination for late 20th century US politics to know this, so it’s both a shame and a surprise that word hadn’t got around to Senator Ben Shenton.

The news this week that he secretly recorded – inadvertently, he claims – a phone conversation with Environment Minister Freddie Cohen about the long-running Reg’s Skips planning debacle, and then turned over the recording to a committee of inquiry two years later just before they were due to hear from the minister, is a cracking little political potboiler.

Beyond the basic subterfuge and the brushing up against not one but two bits of legislation (Regulation of Investigatory Powers and Data Protection), there’s swearing, less-than-complimentary references to a former minister and his affinity for free lunches (like you even have to ask who . . .), and an admission that the Planning Department had made ‘an absolute cock-up’ of an application.

There’s also the problem that since yesterday’s story was published one or two politicians will be scratching their heads and thinking (as I have): ‘Just what horrendously incriminating or defamatory things has Ben Shenton got a record of me saying?’

While the recording isn’t great for Senator Cohen, who is on record saying that his department screwed something up royally, and that he’d approve a Planning application which he later turned down, it will probably be a lot worse for Senator Shenton.

One of the curiosities created by the lack of a political party system in Jersey is that States Members have two separate sets of constituents to keep happy – one outside the Chamber and one inside.

The prime function of their job is to keep the first happy, by staying attuned to the public’s opinions and needs and working to make sure that they live in a community that reflects those opinions and needs.

But the only way that they can be effective in that work is by keeping the second constituency happy – if a States Member is not trusted, respected or taken seriously by his or her colleagues, then they can’t get anything done because they will not be able to get any backing or support.

It’s all very well to say that you’re OK with that, but if you’re in politics to help people (stop sniggering at the back), then you need that support, or otherwise you’re essentially hot air and nothing more.

That’s something that someone with the natural flair for politics that Senator Shenton has shouldn’t really need to be told.

And he probably shouldn’t need to be told that however badly this is going to play with the first constituency outside the walls of the States Chamber, it’s going to play much worse with the second constituency inside them.

Not telling Senator Cohen that the conversation was being recorded was dishonest, keeping that record for two years was devious at best, doing all this to a colleague who thought he was talking to a friend is just rubbish and breezily passing it all off as his public duty is ridiculous.

And Senator Shenton probably doesn’t need to be told that either.

This week the proposition by Senator Alan Breckon to force Home Affairs Minister Ian Le Marquand to bring detailed proposals to the States for an independent police authority is almost certain to be approved.

Senator Le Marquand says he’ll back it, and that work has in fact already begun. And that’s great. But in this case, the devil really is in the detail.

Here’s the problem – to do their review and scrutiny work in the UK, police authorities have two main powers: firstly, to appoint and remove chief officers from police forces, and secondly to raise money through the council tax. In Jersey, the States Assembly hold both of those powers.

Given the furore over the suspension of the current Chief Officer of the States of Jersey Police (16 months and counting) there doesn’t seem to be much chance of the States ceding that power to an independent board.

And if you thought that you didn’t like GST, just wait until someone tries to talk you into a ‘police tax’.

It’s fair to say that the question of accountability and oversight of the police is a necessarily complicated area, into which the minister, the senior officers, the Home Affairs department, the States Employment Board and the States Assembly all have a bit of input.

Adding another player to that mix will not, of itself, help matters at all.