Roger Mexico

cos the data guy was taking the piss. If anyone was "taking the piss" it was the Turners - that's clear from the judgment. They actually had registered the companies before (presumably for some time) and then decided that they didn't need to bother when the time came to renew (§27). They seem to have believed that the rather complicated way in which the radio station was run exempted them, even though on the surface it looked as if personal data used by the station (both things such as competition winners details and in news items) was being dealt with on the Island. Presumably one of the reasons for prosecution was that they didn't want other similar organisations (elaborate company structures involving various jurisdictions[1] being not unknown in the Isle of Man) trying to opt out similarly. For various reasons, including the rather weird hearsay rules[2], the Turners seem to have got away with it, but more by luck than anything else. The main criticism that Hughes made of the Information Commissioner was about not talking to them: But there's nothing to suggest that the Turners would have been helpful or indeed engaged at all, rather than complain about how they were being persecuted. A stronger criticism (see the rest of §116) is that the IC could have talked to Martin Oliphant-Smith about what the set-up was. [1] One of those prosecuted (Carrick Creative) was registered in the BVI and the Paradise Papers information from the ICIJ was used to find out the ownership (though this wasn't admissible). [2] Because no one seems to have realised before that Isle of Man never bothered to update this when England updated it rules to allow easier admission of computer evidence 15 years ago, you wonder how many court cases have been decided on technically inadmissible evidence since.

I meant to put the link up to yesterday's Sunday Politics programme and forgot. It's here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bmdvsb/sunday-politics-north-west-14102018 from 5:00. Its about five minutes long, so not in any great depth, but worth watching and should be available for a month or so.

Yes §121 and 122 struck me as well (though technically they were bombing her as the judgment was by Jayne Hughes, the Deputy High Bailiff). Especially, as §123 points out, as this was before a Summary Court and the cases are supposed to be straightforward and not involve contentious points of law. Neither of which was remotely true and the latter of which she had been told by both sides wasn't going to happen. The random paper mountain however seems to have been generated by the AG's Office rather than the Data Protection people. The latter seem to have had a different problem in that much of their evidence turned out to be invalid for the abstruse legal reason that it was 'hearsay' because it involved a computer, which somehow magically changes everything to gossip. England had changed the law on this in 2003, but the Island hadn't yet got round to dealing with these new-fangled computery things yet. The AG's office presumably being too busy photocopying mountains of paper. The case was actually brought because the Turners actually tried to deregister the companies rather than avoid registration in first place. Which explains why the prosecution was brought - after all the radio station was still burbling away. Hughes was keen to stress it was not malicious: It's not clear from the judgment whether the Turners got off on a technicality (or several) or not or whether their use of other, independent, registered companies, such as Octopus, exempted them. There also seem to be problems over the way that the Communications Commission puts conditions on licences. As so often on the Island, when someone actually bothers to look at what the law says, rather than what the powers that be say it says, things get confused.

There's an interesting comment in Kerry Sharpe's testimony (line 1463 on): If you read some of the report, it's clear that the 'ring' existed and may have also involved abusers from outside the UK as well. And indeed that the holidays were set up for the purpose of the abuse. But even if the great and good were merely ignorant, it's clear that most of them bought into the general cover-up - no doubt to 'protect the reputation of the Island' and all sort of other self-justifying nonsense to cover the cruelty of doing nothing. And that has continued to this day - remember that CoMin tried to amend the Tynwald motion to prevent this enquiry taking place (see section 36 of the Report onwards) and only LegCo voting against meant that this failed (was that one reason why the members were discouraged from standing again?).

Is Buster a little bit right on this one? (Stopped clocks and all that). If the private wing requires a higher staff/patient ratio, then closing it and using the same staff on other wings would mean more patients treated or savings because you wouldn't need to pay agency staff.

Of course the real reason why this has come up is that the Report of the Social Affairs Policy Review Committee on Historical Child Abuse was tabled before the October Tynwald and so has been available to read. It's in two parts: http://www.tynwald.org.im/business/opqp/sittings/20182021/2018-PP-0132(1).pdf http://www.tynwald.org.im/business/opqp/sittings/20182021/2018-PP-0132(2).pdf Though the main report is in part one from page 1 (add 10 to get pdf page) to page 85 . Section III 'Life at Knottfield' (p 14 on) is particularly devastating in the way it recounts how these children were treated between 1968 and 1983. There was a brief respite when a couple called the Gardners ran it in 1972-3, but they seem to have been deliberately got rid of. Before then there was quite astonishing physical and mental cruelty used - even by the standards of the time. After that, under the Marshalls, sexual abuse was added in as well. All this happened while the great and the good of the Island sat as Trustees, overseeing the place and all complaints were ignored (except to get rid of the Gardners). The only thing that seems to have stopped the abuse was that social workers started refusing to send children there. Marshall was eventually convicted in 1992 but there was no appetite either to chase after other abusers or to carry out further prosecution of Marshall as other cases came to light. This has gone on as recently as this year with the AG's Office refusing to bring charges after police investigation.

They might count as a weapon, but not as a regulated weapon, which seems to be limited to those I quoted (see notes on the application form).

According to the Isle of Man Constabulary's website: So a shotgun or air pistol seems most likely

Well according to IOM Newspapers: So it's clearly not just the chemicals, but there appear to be a gun or something similar as well. And for bail to be refused probably suggests that it is being treated as something fairly serious.

Despite what his lawyer said[1], there was another alcohol-related conviction before the one in September 2017. It was prosecuted afterwards, presumably because he was offered help with his alcohol problem, didn't take it up and then offended again. But it still seems odd that there was nothing offered to help this time, but maybe the charges used meant that that couldn't be an option. That might explain Jayne Hughes' expressing "surprise that the defendant had not been charged with a different offence". Not for the first time. [1] The newspaper report says "his client only had one relevant previous conviction, for being found drunk in a public place in August 2017", but the first offence happened in May 2017 and the second was prosecuted in July. So either that was yet another one and the newspaper only likes to report penis-related incidents, or lawyers and/or press are being fairly careless with the timelines. Given that they also say he was 31 last year and is 34 now, some sloppiness seems possible.

From the Charters era...or more recent? Appointed May 2016 according to his Linkin and already been promoted. Previously working both for and with the private sector, though he doesn't seem to stayed anywhere very long. It's a similar profile we've seen before from the 'dynamic' types that they think will sort things out. Of course there may be a reason why they need to move on. There's nothing in that cv before 2009, which is slightly odd as he must be about 58 (started uni in 1978). Being appointed in 2016 meant that it was over a year after Charters was got rid of and Couch appointed to sort things out.

Given that English is the main and official language of Nigeria, I would doubt that many of them would require the assistance of Cafe Lingo. I suspect that most of them, rather than being 'economic migrants' were friends and relations coming over for some family celebration. Hence the 'traditional' dress - rather like those Scots men who only wear kilts for weddings and parties. They'll have been back to Peckham or further afield after the weekend.

Well the answer to that is to change the law, so that the accused isn't named until conviction, as I suggested above. But expecting the media to not report stuff is just going to lead to the sort of selective reporting which the Manx media is all too capable of in any case. As to any exceptions, I wouldn't see them being used very often - any more than the current ones for naming the victim are. But there are cases where a serial offender has a pattern of offending and finding more victims can help achieve a conviction.

Actually a lot of countries do prevent the naming of the accused in sexual offence cases - Ireland for example (though only for rape) - or even in all crimes. But revealing the name of the victim is hardly 'equalling it up' - it's just causing two wrongs instead of one and discouraging victims from reporting sexual assaults. You can imagine how the papers would perve over it - printing pictures of the victim to look as salacious as possible and going through their social media to accuse them of things. No doubt some of their readers would get off on it as well. It's quite clear that when the media are getting indignant about those who have been mistakenly accused, they aren't really concerned about them. Otherwise all they need to do is not report the case. Instead they really want to treat those who making the accusations in the same way.

But reporting restrictions can only be imposed for a reason - to protect alleged victims or to preserve evidence, say. And to some extent there are restrictions anyway - they haven't provided any more information than the charges brought plus background information in the public domain. And we'd all complain if the identity of a member of the 'establishment' was protected from publicity while charges against other less prominent people were made known.. There's an argument that the identity of the accused should be normally[1] be protected in such cases until conviction - and there's polling evidence from Britain to suggest this would be most people's preference. Indeed I think this was the situation (at least in Britain) when anonymity for victims was brought in, until pressure from the media, annoyed at losing their juicy court cases, got it changed. But until the law is changed back, the media is entitled to report what it can. [1] There are some cases where it might be an advantage to publicise an arrest, so as to encourage other victims to come forward, but this could be dealt with by the judicial process.