THERE are occasions, admittedly perhaps few and far between, when even someone like me feels the urge to spring to the defence of one of that lot in the Big House and an online comment on the article about pensioners feeling the pinch gave me the opportunity to do it again.

The issue was highlighted by Consumer Council chairman Alan Breckon, who said that too many ‘make do’ pensioners are suffering in silence as they struggle to afford basics such as food, electricity and heating oil.

Someone really clued up on Island politics – one of the plethora of experts who demonstrate their ignorance on a daily basis, it seems to me – who (in the online comment section of this newspaper at least) answers to the name of Tobias wrote, and I quote: ‘Right in time for elections. Good grey vote winner there, Alan.’

I’m certainly not questioning the right of ‘Tobias’ to comment on articles such as this but he or she made themselves look more than a little stupid when they failed to read another report elsewhere in that day’s newspaper – the one which made it crystal clear who the 13 candidates fighting for a Senator’s seat are, plus the fact that Senator Breckon is not one of them; his current term of office is nowhere near complete.

As another online commentator – who answers to the name of Ellie – observed, ‘some people just happen to care about others and I believe he (Senator Breckon) is one of them’.

Tobias’s comment actually highlights the thorough mess Island politics has got itself into. It’s not that long ago that a pertinent comment from a politician would have been taken in the spirit in which it was uttered – as ‘Ellie’ said, a demonstration of someone caring about others – but these days, principally because of the antics of a good number of our elected representatives, virtually everything they say is treated with a mixture of cynicism, disbelief and downright contempt.

It’s not people like ‘Tobias’ who are to blame for such a sorry state of affairs – although he displays his ignorance by not knowing that the person he chooses to criticise for electioneering is not even a candidate – because the blame lays fairly and squarely at the door of the Big House.

Part of me wants to quote Kipling – ‘we have learned no end of a lesson, it will do us no end of good’ – but I very much fear that it will take a long while before our elected representatives will regain the respect of those who put them on the gravy train.

It was interesting to read the account of planning applicant Richard Gales receiving a 25 per cent refund from his near £2,000 fee because Environment Minister Rob Duhamel thought there was merit in Mr Gales’ claim that unnecessary delays had been caused because of the length of time the planning process had taken and conflicting advice he had received.

I have no more information about the finer points of either the complaint or the decision to issue a partial refund than has any other reader of the article in question.

However, if there were delays then perhaps the details of just a couple of the planning applications which were listed in a recent Jersey Gazette notice might – and before the heavy hand of the planners up at South Hill comes down like the proverbial ton (or should I say tonne) of bricks and descends on Chez Clement from a great height, I only said might – go some way towards explaining that sorry state of affairs.

One was from a resident of St Brelade who wanted to repair a garden wall – that’s precisely what the application said – and the other was from a St Saviour resident who wants to replace a porch and again that’s just what the application said.

Now building a small village of homes on the site of a dilapidated holiday village – the site for which just happens to have an undisturbed view of what some claim to be the tomb of one Philippe Janvrin, the skipper of the Esther, who died of the plague aboard his vessel 290 years ago this year – is something which does merit a planning application, to say the least.

But repairing a garden wall or replacing a porch? Come on. I don’t much care how great or little a length of time such applications take to be processed, the fact of the matter is that they have to be processed and the applicants have to take time, effort and money to submit them.

That processing will certainly involve one, possibly more than one, pinstripe in a certain amount of work and, by definition, tax payers in a certain amount of expenditure to pay for that work.

And there I was thinking that young Freddie Cohen had said sometime in the dim and distant past that he was going to make life easier in respect of certain minor works. Well, you can’t get much more minor – that sounds like a contradiction in terms but The Reader will know what I’m trying to say – than repairing a garden wall or replacing a porch. Neither come anywhere near being earth shattering.

I must have dreamed Freddie’s ‘life easier’ bit, or had a couple or three too many slugs of Calvados when I read what I thought he’d said.

Going back to the original point – that of Deputy Duhamel effectively agreeing that the service given by his department wasn’t all it should be (if he didn’t think that then he wouldn’t have sent Mr Gales a cheque for almost five hundred quid) – I wonder if this flash of generosity with our money will spread to other departments where the service the public receive isn’t up to the mark?

And finally,

I liked the story about the Guernsey bloke who headed for Herm in his high speed marine hand cart and ended up fast asleep on a Normandy beach. Poor bloke must have been tired.