YOUNG Philip Ozouf – that boy looks younger each time I see a picture of him – is quite rightly telling his fellow politicians, the hired help that they all employ and everyone who is required by way of taxes to pay for their upkeep (as well as the upkeep of some of us) that unless the belts are really tightened, we’ve all in for the high jump.

I haven’t got a problem with any of that, and if it means me shelling out a few quid more in either income tax or GST, then although I won’t much like it because it’ll mean cutting down on fishing gear (doing the same with calvados really would be a last resort), I’ll go along with it because if he and others are to be believed, this place is in a bit of a mess and needs every last farthing whoever’s running the Treasury these days can lay his grubby little mitts on.

However, as with all things where I’m required to part with cash, there is a proviso. In return, I want the belt-tightening to apply also to those Senator Ozouf and his fellow ministers control – in short, the public sector – and not with the sort of sham accountancy that, as I pointed out a while ago, counts the transfer of one bit of spending (almost a million quid) from one source funded by taxpayers to another source funded by taxpayers as a saving that we should all applaud.

I would also like to see an ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ type of philosophy applied to all but the most essential public spending, particularly when it comes to things like Herself describes as ‘doing up’ – a phrase she uses when telling me that the front room needs decorating and we need a new three-piece suite.

In common with most people who spend their own money on ‘doing up’, we only even contemplate doing such things when we’ve got the cash to do it, unlike government departments, with the customary tame acquiescence of their political bosses, who seem to operate on a sort of ‘Well, we’ve got some cash in the budget we haven’t yet spent so who wants what for their office’ or ‘It’s two years since it was done last so let’s do it again’ policy, regardless of whether ‘it’ actually needs anything doing to it.

The reason I mention all this is because despite the fact that we as a community appear to be on the bones of our backsides financially, some States departments still seem hell-bent on spending money where I for one don’t think it’s necessary.

A case in point is the Elizabeth Terminal – the place at which most of our visitors who opt for sea transport to and from here arrive and depart. I was down there meeting a mate and his wife from Normandy. They are regular visitors and as such perhaps notice the things that local people sometimes miss.

I must admit that I hadn’t really looked around the place after I’d parked the passion wagon, but my mate and his wife both noticed that it had been given what the trendies would call a makeover (no doubt yet another expression imported from our American cousins, although after the shabby way in which they have attacked BP I’m not too sure I even want them to be related).

However, my French mate was absolutely right – the place really has been done up, with new seats and the like.

I have no problem with doing things up when it’s necessary, and I fully understand that this is one of the gateways to the Island and so should look reasonably presentable, but from memory I don’t think that there was much wrong with what’s been replaced.

Moreover, I’m sure that in the present financial circumstances – not quite dire straits, but not too many decimal points from it, if the politicians are to be believed – the work could not have been postponed for a year or two.

No doubt some pinstripe who clearly has time on his or her hands will waste some of it (and with it, some of my money) penning a response to my comments which will tell me and anyone who reads this newspaper of a dozen or so very good reasons why this work had to be done and could not be delayed.

It would be a more productive use of their time and my money if they didn’t bother but concentrated instead on trying to identify some real savings. Virtually every person I speak to employed at the coal face in government departments tells me that they would have no trouble making savings, and not all of them centre on the stupidly simplistic ‘get rid of the management’ ideas.

Perhaps the people running these departments should listen to staff rather than talking to them.

IT came as no surprise at all to learn that the United Kingdom is now touting itself as a low-tax state for corporate business when compared with other nations in the OECD. That’s the bunch who, no doubt with full backing of those a hundred or so miles to the north of us, pounce every now and again telling us that we’ve got to do this, that or the other, or sometimes all three.

Without putting too fine a point on it, I look forward to the day when we tell them all to get lost and do what the hell they like about it.

AND finally … Suspicious so and so that bolshie little crapauds like me often are, I wouldn’t mind casting an eye over the full terms of the sale of three supermarkets to Waitrose. I just wonder if there’s a written nod and wink in there along the lines of ‘There’s enough here for all of us so don’t let’s cut each others’ throats.
It’s only a thought.