SO, where were the other 50 or so of that lot in the Big House when Alan Breckon ploughed a lonely furrow with the St Helier street cleaners very early on Saturday morning?

He managed to get out of a nice warm bed to meet those at the sharp end of the vomit, blood and urine cleansing brigade at just after five that morning but – surprise, surprise – he was the only politician who bothered to turn up.

Where were the Council of Ministers and where indeed were those elected by the very people who are forced to live with the filthy mess that is the centre of St Helier the morning after the night before; that parish’s Deputies?

I’d hazard a guess that if this early morning walkabout had been held within a month or so of an upcoming election, then there would have been more gravy train aspirants than those showing them around could have coped with and they’d have had to call for a couple of van loads of boys and girls in blue for crowd control.

I’d have thought it was as plain as a pikestaff that if social problems have to be addressed by our politicians, then the first thing taxpayers would expect of those politicians would be to determine the extent of the problem.

Since I wrote about this disgusting issue last week I have spoken to a mate whose task was once to help clean our filthy streets. As he said, States Members are now well aware of the need for something to be done but surely for that ‘something’ to emerge, then they should see the problem first hand for themselves.

Some hopes, pal. At 5.30 am on a Saturday morning most of them will be lying abed dreaming of where they can spend the sort of cash that some of them couldn’t possibly hope to earn in the real world.

It would have been nice of the 51 who didn’t turn up to let us – their employers – know what sort of pressing engagements kept them away. I doubt that the responses will exercise the digits of my second hand, never mind the electronic abacus. They should be warned. Many of us have long memories and many of them are approaching the second half of their terms of office. It should all make for some interesting election meetings.

I frequently sing the praises of former civil servant John Arrowsmith and have more than once suggested to that lot in the Big House that they make use of the lashings of common sense the bloke seems to be blessed with.

If young Philip Ozouf is sincere in his claim that he is going to cut States waste rather than raise taxes – and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, until his next budget, that is – then he could do worse than give Mr Arrowsmith a roving brief to go where he likes in the public sector, ask what he likes of whomsoever he wishes, and reports back in six months, which should just about take us up to budget day.

The self-styled chairman, secretary, treasurer and only member of the Less Government for Jersey Society – if he put membership on the market he’d get killed in the rush – is now quite rightly having a pop at claims that Jersey lags behind the big country to the north when it comes to primary health care – our GPs, for those not in the civil-service-speak loop.

His recent letter on the subject gave a less than surprising account of the sort of nonsense we actually pay people to write – stuff like ‘there is a presumption that primary care in Jersey is generally good but currently we are without the specific means of demonstrating this’.

That to Mr Arrowsmith (and me) means nothing less than give us another couple of handfuls of pinstripes with fancy titles and salaries to match and in a couple of years we’ll tell you what you already know – that by and large our GPs and the service they give us are miles ahead of their confreres in the NHS.

But of course, those same pinstripes will question the validity of that assertion, largely because if they don’t, then they’re out of a job. All they’ve got to do to prove it is station a few sixth-formers outside a few of the doctors’ surgeries – try the large ones and the smaller ones – to ask some of the emerging patients what they think of the quack they’ve just seen.

A few of them might moan about the bill they’ve just paid – people wouldn’t be people if they didn’t do that – but I’ll happily donate a bottle of halfway decent calvados to the next Health and Social Services’ administrative staff party if the general view isn’t one of approval in respect to both efficiency and treatment.

As John Arrowsmith quite rightly concludes, the 14 pages of ‘turgid drivel’ which is this most recent report has been grasped as a ‘monumental excuse for empire building’.

His comments really do beg the question as to what level of scrutiny operated in respect of this report – scrutiny from the formal procedure involving that panacea of our ‘new’ ministerial system and the sort of old-fashioned scrutiny as practised by the likes of Norman Le Brocq and others of his ilk.

In the light of John Arrowsmith’s comments, one wonders how many of the 52 on the gravy train actually managed to get through the 14 pages of turgid drivel.

And finally, with nominations possibly reaching double figures at tomorrow’s nomination meeting for the single vacancy for Senator, is it not time for us to consider reruns, with those polling fewer than a given percentage of the vote dropping out and no one elected until he or she has the support of more than 50 per cent of those who vote? Well, it’s just a thought.