THE draft Budget, made public last week, includes proposals that would not be countenanced in happier times. Cuts totalling £65 million, plus increases in GST and social security contributions, measures which are clearly going to hurt more than one sector of Island society, are, by any standards, stringent measures.

But, as the draft Budget’s prime mover, Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf, stresses, desperate times call for desperate measures. And, though life goes on more or less as normal for many Islanders, these are without doubt desperate times.

Why? Because if nothing is done to address forecast deficits which are not distant prospects but upon us already, the Island will run into the red, find it ever more difficult to finance public services and see a rapid decline in the quality of life.

However, even if the economic facts speak for themselves and it is evident that resolute action is called for, Senator Ozouf’s Budget document must not be treated as if it were the immutable law delivered on stone tablets from on high.

There is a great deal of detail in the proposals now on the table and all of it must be carefully scrutinised by States Members before they consider it on the floor of the House.

Members of the public will also scrutinise what is proposed, to estimate how they are likely to be affected if the proposals are passed.

Those in any of the firing lines identified in the savings plan will rapidly understand a fact of life that is not always acknowledged in Jersey – that wrangling in the States Chamber is not some abstruse activity irrelevant to ordinary people, but a process that determines how much money is in people’s pockets, how many are going to find themselves made redundant, and which public services are going to be cut or retained.

As far as proposed new taxation is concerned, there will be inevitable and justified discontent in more than one part of the community. Increasing GST, for example, might be an easy, expedient and cost-effective measure, but there are real concerns that, without adequate compensatory mechanisms, it will hit the poor excessively hard.

In any event, what are the least well-off, likely to be hit by higher GST, or middle Jersey, likely to be hit by higher social security contributions, to think of the burdens they may have to bear against the background of the mismanagement that has allowed some privileged 1(i)k residents to pay derisory sums in tax?