They are back - the silly season is here again - but mirror, mirror on the wall - who is the silliest of them all?
Of course I mean that Scrutiny returned to the Jersey political scene today.after a lay-off for months and months.
Two Panels were convened today but they seemed to share the same single dominating thought - the Jersey population is aging and we don't know how to support it....
The Mumbles were there too in abundance....
Deputy Renouf Chair of H & SS Scrutiny Panel the newly elected softly spoken lawyer from St Ouen started the ball rolling (it was a very soft ball) and politely suggested that it might be useful for everybody to introduce themselves.
So the 13 ( 5 being females) sat around the top table did just that...Senator Green the New Minister for Health had 6 supporters to help him (just as Deputy Pryke usually did in her day) who all had mumble as a first or second name and there were several more on Renouf's Panel too although I recognised Deputy Southern...all in all there were 20 people in the room according to my head count (including 7 in the public seats and Deputy Renouf gently pointed out that some of these were from the accredited press but since none were allowed to say anything I was not able to determine how many were just blogging plebs like me)....
So, there we we were, 1/5,000th of the entire Jersey population and that was about the maximum that could be safely accommodated in Le Capelain Room to hear what the future held for us regarding "our Health"....
As is usual with first meetings with a New Minister being "scrutinized" by a quartet of "New" scrutineers we did not learn anything startling or even very fresh.
It seems that this Ministry is now undertaking precisely the same never-ending investigations that Deputy Pryke's team were for the previous 3 years and even if they had anything to report Senator Green and his expensive team were not going to tell the Panel because it all has to be submitted to and agreed by the States Assembly first...except that reading between the lines and with one hand over my eye the prospects of building a new hospital seemed to be remote in the near or distant future...
So it was just a "getting to know you" sort of meeting and really just the usual total waste of everybody's time....but they are still looking to make savings of 5% on Health expenditure just like the previous Ministry in compliance with the ancient Ozouf legacy of "austerity" and "User Pays" through "Privatisation" etc ....
....although in this context the pursuit is described as "efficiency" and a "better service for the public"
but if you really want to know how 13 people managed to talk for 90 minutes without saying anything useful there is always the official transcript to listen to....
....and across the corridor in the Blampied Room it was followed immediately by another "getting to know you" Scrutiny session with the Corporate Services Panel "led" by the super-soft Deputy Le Fondre and his Panel of 4 (plus 2 assumed Scrutiny staff) but since mumbling was the order of the day here too I am not sure who they were and CM Senator Gorst led his team of 6 (including 1 female) that included Senator Routier and other mumbling supporters...
...the official discussion was about Phase One of MTFP whatever that might be - but soon centred on the failing tax take and the "risk of a structural deficit" caused by - wait for it - the ever increasing Health budget due to the aging population....
So they waffled along for about 45 minutes of jolly friendly banter until it was decided that the public ( 3 in number) must leave....did they really get down to some serious investigation and scrutiny then I wondered...I also wondered why the two meetings were not joined together and reduced to a single session of I hour so that those involved might get down to some seriously useful work elsewhere....
Perhaps all will be revealed later in 2015 or 6 or....
