THE appointment of the next States police chief and the amount paid to two temporary civil servants are subjects chosen by JEP columnist Helier Clement this week.

On the police appointment, he says:

‘As to the next police chief, I have always said – and nothing has ever made me deviate from the view – that the appointment should always be made from outside the States of Jersey Police Force, in precisely the same way as no officer can serve in only one UK force and reach the rank of Chief Constable.
The principal advantage of such a policy is that the appointee arrives with neither baggage nor friends, allegiances nor jealousies – in other words the clean sheet that should be demanded of such people.
‘Whether that lot in the Big House have the bottle to make such an appointment is almost beside the point. The real question is whether any decent senior police officer in any other force would want to come to a tinpot hole like this, given how David Warcup (and at least a couple of his predecessors over the years) have been treated. Somehow I doubt it.

And on the apointments of the two civil servants:

‘If the interim hospital manager and the temporary Treasurer of the States could get anything like this sort of money working elsewhere, then they certainly wouldn’t be here. I strongly suspect – and there’s no criticism of them intended – that the only reason both of them are here is because of the money.
‘And, for the avoidance of doubt, if young Ozouf or Nurse Pryke made me similar offers I’d bite their hands off. That’s unlikely, however, because I’m local.’

• Read the full column in Monday’s Jersey Evening Post