GIVEN my fairly frequent references to him in the past, it’s probably not surprising that I agree with former pinstripe John Arrowsmith when he asks of Planning Minister Freddie Cohen why it is necessary to spend yet more money in order to identify where savings can be made.

Mr Arrowsmith was referring of course to the latest example – we had one just a few weeks ago at Health and Social Services – of ministers effectively saying that the people they employ here are good at finding ways of spending cash but not that hot when it comes to saving it.

For that reason the vogue now is to call in so-called experts from a hundred or so miles north of here so that – no doubt at considerable expense to us taxpayers, for we never seem to call in experts with moderate fee demands – they can spend a few weeks or months shacked up at the Grand or the L’Horizon while they find the cost savings that appear glaringly obvious to people like John Arrowsmith but apparently non-existent to anyone currently employed by that lot in the Big House.

Mr Arrowsmith recalled in his recent letter the days when he was a pinstripe during which he always understood – quoting Senator Cohen – that the role of a manager was to challenge whether each service was necessary and whether it was being carried out in the most efficient way. As he said, he and his then colleagues tried to do this and managed to achieve what they sought with some success and ‘without outside interference, sorry, assistance’.

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