OF all the miserable excuses for the expensive failings of the sort our highly paid public sector managers have been accused of in the last few years, that trotted out by Prime Minister Terry Le Sueur when commenting on the shambles that is the Health department really does take the biscuit.

Referring to just one of heaven knows how many cock-ups that have cost us taxpayers dearly – the million-quid bill for a three-year suspension of a senior consultant – his excuse (I refuse point-blank to call it a reason because it really is an excuse) that the suspension ‘has to be put in the context of a highly unusual and emotional case’ really does scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Indeed, it’s a minor miracle in itself that there remains enough metal at the bottom to scrape, given the lame and at times almost laughable explanations (on the occasions that we’ve been given explanations, that is) that we’ve been given. We’ve had people on annual salaries that just a few years ago would have merited front-page news in terms of a win on the football pools ‘forgetting’ to make provision for payments being made in euros rather than pounds.

Then we get our equivalent of Sir Humphrey (a Mr Ogley, as I recall) binning the handwritten record of the suspension of the highest-ranking police officer in the Island because he thought that the record he’d presumably dictated to his secretary would suffice.

Perhaps someone would tell us what would happen to a young police officer if he similarly ‘binned’ the notes he’d made when arresting a suspect and relied on his subsequently written report. No, don’t bother. I’ll answer instead. From the conversations I’ve had with people who would know about these things that young police officer would almost certainly have been left fighting for his career, yet in the case of Sir Humphrey, well, who knows, because we certainly haven’t been told, and as far as I am aware he is still occupying his office in Cyril Le Marquand House and drawing his big, fat brown envelope every Friday lunchtime.

That astonishing admission by Terry Le Sueur followed hard on the heels of the ‘revelation’ that ministerial government isn’t working – something that most people have known for quite some time; most people, that is, apart from the Council of Ministers and their pinstripes.
I’ll cite an example – not one that if addressed will save us millions but one which, because it involves people in a currently extremely sensitive area of the public sector, perhaps goes some way to explain attitudes in that particular area.

I was chatting to a teacher the other day and he told me that when there was an Education Committee running the show, each of the seven members would be allocated a number of schools – secondary and primary – and they would provide a link between what was happening at the coal face, so to speak, and the bosses’ offices at the headquarters of Empire Builders Ltd, otherwise known as Highlands.

Much of the interchange between teachers and their school’s appointed committee member was informal, but there was a link and people spoke to each other. Additionally, the member would attend school functions – open days and fund-raising activities and the like – and while it wasn’t perfect it was most certainly better than nothing.

It goes without saying that with the best will in the world one minister and an assistant minister (there may be two at Education but I’m too idle to look it up) cannot possibly build up relationships with schools in the same way in which seven people used to – it is just physically impossible, no matter how hard they try and how much time they devote to their jobs.

I have no wish to enter into the debate about whether teachers should take industrial action or not and that certainly isn’t the purpose of my comments. But, and it’s a pretty big but, I feel that there is a distinct possibility that the breakdown in the relationship between teachers and their employers has not been helped by the imposition of ministerial government.

I don’t like law-breaking, no matter what shape it takes, and I rarely have any sympathy with those who choose to ignore their legal responsibilities, be they adhering to speed limits or being in breach of licensing regulations.

However, I find it difficult indeed not to sympathise with the Royal Yacht Hotel, which was fined almost £15,000 recently for breaches of the licensing and entertainment regulations. To start off with, the offences were committed more than a year ago – at Easter 2009 – yet it has taken that quite extraordinary length of time for the matter to come before the Royal Court.

More important, however, is the fact that the hotel sought legal advice and, according to the report of the Royal Court hearing, clearly believed that what it was doing was lawful.
In the circumstances, I have to wonder what real purpose the prosecution served – other than to give more work to the police, the courts and the legal profession.

And finally . . . Many years ago that lot in the Big House were persuaded to shell out a nice few quid of our money – I keep reminding myself that the States don’t have any money of their own, they use ours – to stop the premises on the coast near Geoffrey’s Leap from falling into the sea. I drove past there the other day and from the state of the place I wonder why they bothered.