ELECTION time is when the pub not far from Chez Clement really comes into its own. That’s not to say that the corner regularly occupied by the Last of the Summer Wine crowd – all of a certain age and most of us fortunately still with all the marbles, although perhaps in some cases not always in the correct order – is silent between elections (far from it, on occasions) but the place has taken on a certain vibrancy in the last week or so.

I’ve watched and participated in the corner’s development in what might be termed its members’ election coverage over very many years and it’s interesting to see how voting intentions seem to be formulated, then changed and often changed again before the post election inquest, when everyone (allegedly) does the hands up bit and discloses who they voted for.

Bear in mind the fact that most of the half dozen or so of us have voted in a dozen to 15 Island-wide elections for Senator – one of the group has voted in every one since the first in 1948 – and each of us has read what amount to tens, perhaps hundreds or more, of thousands of words over those years, so there’s a bit of political experience (of the viewing, rather than participant, sort) lodged au Greffe in that corner.

It’s also interesting to see how the discussions kick off and it doesn’t always follow that what’s headline news in the view of the media in general means necessarily that this crowd of semi-senile old fools – as one of our number describes us when getting his round in – are going to spend half the evening talking about it.

A case in support of this view came up the other evening when virtually the whole discussion was on what I and several of my mates thought was an interesting letter from Marianne Sunier – a letter which, while it perhaps centred in emphasis on one particular candidate (and there’s nothing wrong with that), also put forward some pretty persuasive arguments about the quality of the current crop of that lot in the Big House.

After stating – quite correctly in many people’s view – that States Members in general are not held in respect or trusted; something Ms Sunier also accurately describes as a dreadful state of affairs, she goes on: ‘This Island should be able to expect such minimum standards of government as intelligent, timely and cost effective decision making derived from factual analysis and mastering of political briefs from its political representatives, whether Senator, Constable or Deputy.

‘The fact that it can’t shows that we have too many of the wrong people in place and we have to do something to attract the type of people who can provide what the Island requires and attack the rot from within.’

I reckon that just about hits the nail on the head although Herself thinks that the rot set in as soon as they all went on the payroll – a view which, I’m bound to say, has some merit when considering certain individuals but which cuts right across the most laudable objective which launched that payroll; namely that no person shall, by reason of financial hardship, be barred from entering the States. You can’t have it both ways and while I am appalled at what some people are getting paid for little more than making mischief, I am also grateful for those who have perhaps sacrificed a career in order to serve me and my neighbours in the government of this Island.

Additionally, I also share Marianne Sunier’s dream that, as she put it, ‘who knows, perhaps we may even get to a position in the future where becoming a politician in Jersey is seen as a position to aspire to and be treated with respect. Now wouldn’t that be worth striving for?’

Wouldn’t it indeed. We’ve been there before and there’s no reason why we can’t go there again.

IF the latest cop out is anything to go by then surely someone might agree that the much heralded scrutiny function – another way of saying ‘let’s keep backbenchers occupied’ – is about as dead in the water as ministerial government appears to be.

As the report said, after a dozen public hearings, hundreds of pages of documents and thousands of words of transcripts – not to mention a demeaning picture of the ‘it’s not my fault, it’s his’ culture among both elected representatives and civil servants – the body set up to examine cock-ups like the Lime Grove fiasco has effectively said that the job’s too big for them and so pushed it into someone else’s in-tray.

What a waste of time and space some of that lot are. If they felt the job was too big then why on earth didn’t they say so before we – the long suffering, tax-paying public – shelled out all the money that those hearings, reports, documents and transcripts undoubtedly cost?

According to what I looked up, Sarah Ferguson and Jimmy Perchard sit on this scrutiny panel, along with John Le Fondre and Debbie de Sousa – neither of whom, by their public utterances at least, have featured prominently on the Clement household’s radar.

That’s more than can be said for Jimmy Perchard and Sarah Ferguson who, while they perhaps don’t quite meet the criteria for a ‘rent-a-quote’ tag, have not been backward in coming forward in expressing views on a whole range of issues.

Perhaps the description of all talk and no action is a little harsh but for two reasonably experienced politicians to bottle out halfway through such an important task and hand it over to a civil servant who’s on holiday for the next month doesn’t look that great on either a cv or an end of term report. Was the job too big or were they too small?

And finally,

Just one comment on skateboarding idiots. As the old man used to say when he saw a speeding motorcyclist – cemetery lies ahead.