Top officials in disarray as questions raised over Parker's quallies

States communications director Stephen Hardwick's struggle to decide whether Charlie Parker was or wasn't granted quallies by the previous government continues.

Following the allegations by the local rag on Friday that SOJ Chief Executive Charlie Parker was granted "entitled" (full) housing status by the previous Gorst administration, and handling the scandal with all the tact of your average Great Plains buffalo, Hardwick immediately denied that the paper had any case to answer. According to him, no States employee had been granted quallies, full stop. Today, wheeling round on his previous argument, Hardwick said he had "made a mistake". The rag then asked him why, if he did actually know about this decision, why news of the decision was kept on the downlow until local hacks took to expose it. Hardwick's response? He didn't give one. Forgive me, Stevie, but maybe your "30 years’ experience in corporates, government, politics and consultancy" and "strong values to do the right thing well" don't actually count for diddly squat if you can't get the housing status of your own boss correct, when your whole job is streamlining communications between the States and the public.

Meanwhile, our esteemed elected (well, some of them anyway) representatives in the Assembly haven't proved much help either. While Chief Minister John le Fondré is, er, on holiday, his assistant, Chris Taylor, has admitted that he doesn't actually have any idea whether Parker was offered or demanded his quallies as a condition of employment - despite that, er, literally being his job. Saying that, the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel have at least stepped in to condemn the blatant corrupt nature of the deal the Gorst regime made with Charlie Parker - in their statement, they "recommend that tougher rules are put in place so that decisions of this nature are not made again", commenting that "while we appreciate the importance of this particular role, five years’ “satisfactory service” is a vague term that could ensure even the most mediocre performance gains a retirement with considerable tax advantages". Chaired as it is by senior backbencher and recently positioned critic of the new government, Senator Kristina Moore, it probably wouldn't be overly cynical to say that she's using this recent scandal as an opportunity to go into attack mode, but the fact that the scrutiny panel is even willing to condemn this in the terms they have is something to celebrate.

Perhaps the best attempt at deflection so far came from an unidentified spokesperson for the States who spoke to the rag - as he told it, "the decision was published on the government website, as are all ministerial decisions, and was therefore available for Islanders, States Members and others to view". Oh, so that's alright then! See, I don't know about you, but I have better things to do with my life than meticulously combing gov.je every day on the lookout for dodgy ministerial decisions - the fact that it was published on the infamously difficult to navigate, chaotically organised and stuffed full of legalese government website is no excuse whatsoever. The reason we're paying £100K annual salaries to overpriced English consultants like Stephen Hardwick is supposedly because they're going to revolutionise communication between the public and the government - hiding dirty backroom deals behind flimsy deflections asking you to sift through the gov.je crapfest doesn't exactly sound like a good start.

Eine insel, eine reigierung, eine zukunft!