FOR more years than I care to remember, but certainly much of the last 40 or so, our elected representatives have sought to justify importing countless senior public sector staff by invariably adding a rider that those brought in will ‘as a matter of course’ institute training procedures so that the need to repeat the exercise diminishes over the passage of time.

Effectively, the promise was that those imported would train up their successors and if I had half a case of Calvados for every time that promise has been made and then broken I doubt that I’d ever have to buy another bottle, even if I live long enough to get the telegram from King William the Fifth.

We’ve now been told that the States Police don’t have anyone suitably qualified to take over as Deputy Chief Officer, so we’ve appointed one originally from elsewhere, and nor are there senior officers suitably qualified to be promoted to superintendent, so a couple of those are on their way to Heathrow from Suffolk and the Metropolitan Police ready to parachute in.

They are going to join the shed load at Health and Social Services who, to a man and probably a woman also, must be telling friends and family in the United Kingdom that paradise really does indeed exist outside the shambles that Britain’s National Health Service appears to be in.

As I said earlier, this perpetual lie – that imports will identify and train their successors – has been going on for decades. Anyone remember the Salford connection up at the headquarters of Empire Builders Ltd at Highlands, when those who made appointments were persuaded that no one outside of that suburb of Manchester knew anything about education? At least, that’s what many local members of the teaching profession told me at the time when they saw promotion opportunities continually pass them by in favour of yet more imports.

Home Affairs Minister Ian Le Marquand has been praised for having the bottle to come out and say that no one presently in the States Police is suitable for three of the top jobs. He cited the Haut de la Garenne shambles and the Curtis Warren case and the need to avoid repeating the errors made with those two inquiries. It really does beg the question as to how many similar cases Jersey is likely to get. One blue moon is infrequent enough, but two? How gullible does the man think we are?

And besides, with all due respect to Senator Le Marquand, who is a lawyer who became an excellent magistrate, what on earth does he know about whether people currently holding the rank of Chief Inspector are suitably qualified or otherwise to be promoted to Superintendent? He is simply repeating what he’s been told, presumably by those using UK yardsticks to measure Jersey requirements – an exercise that has bedevilled not only the police force but many other public sector departments for decades.

My cousin who used to be in the States Police told me the other day that in the early 1960s there was a Chief Officer and two, yes just two, officers in ranks above that of station sergeant and the whole complement numbered exactly one hundred. Now there are 250 of them, as I understand it, not counting heaven knows how many civilian support staff, so if you use the factor of 2.5 there should now be five officers above the rank of station sergeant.

I doubt that we will be told but it would be interesting to see how the figures compare just as it would be interesting to know what the ratio is between constables and supervisory ranks. One thing is for sure, there are certainly more than five of senior officer rank.

Moving away from the specific to the general, perhaps those in the Big House charged with examining all vacant posts with a salary of £100,000 or more might also look at whether this continual process of recruiting from elsewhere for public sector jobs is actually essential, rather than being simply desirable.

I make no apology for this rant – not a Calvados fuelled one either because it must be at least an hour since I even had a sniff at the cork – because I firmly believe that there are many thousands of totally fed up Jersey residents who feel much the same as I do.

Sadly, those thousands do not appear to include many of our elected representatives. If it did then they’d have done something about by now. It’s been going on for long enough.

ISN’T it funny – it’s not really but I use the expression as a figure of speech – how as soon as inflation starts going up the powers that be in the Big House immediately home in on the downtrodden by urging businesses to show restraint on pay rises.

It seems to me to be an extension of the old bosses’ philosophy of squeezing those at the bottom until the few remaining pips come out but I notice, yet again, that no one seems to be urging the bosses to cut back on the bonuses they pay themselves as a result of squeezing those underneath.

Herself and I have been fortunate in many respects, primarily as a result of not having been blessed with a family. We own our house, although in common with most people we found paying for that difficult for some considerable time, and over the years we’ve managed to enjoy what we’ve got and put a few quid away to pay for things like the statutory inspections of Calvados trees in Normandy.

Others are not so fortunate. They see prices rising at the same time as wages decrease in real terms because many don’t get pay increases these days and some have even had salaries reduced. Restraint is fine but let’s have it across the board.
And finally,
If ever there was a force for good in recent times then surely it was Mike Wavell.