Roger Mexico

For every cyclist? Every small child on their first bike or person who gets theirs out once a month? It's an enormous amount of bureaucracy to cover a very low level of risk, especially from such sort of users. As discussed the very low additional cost of Third Party on broader cycling insurance implies that it is a very low level of risk indeed. Other countries that have tried registration and compulsory insurance (you need the first for the second obviously), such as Switzerland, have abolished them because of the cost of bureaucracy and those who have retained registration do it for theft prevention (for which there are voluntary schemes). I know there are those who love the idea of even more bureaucracy on the Island so we can employ even more civil servants and impose even more stealth taxes. I've not noticed it being that popular on Manx Forums before.

As ever it's worth looking at the actual wording of the joint statement[1]: As you can see most of it is boilerplate blather, but what they are actually saying is that they won't promise to do anything till 2023 (sorry "before the end of 2022") and even that is the sort of limited access ("obliged entities for due diligence purposes") that they were implying they gave anyway. Any decision as to public access is actually put off to 2022 when they will be forced to comply with whatever the EU comes up with anyway. And again nothing is promised before 2023. The date of 2023 is significant because that is the latest date that even the UK government is promising public registers for the BOTs by and it's very possible that the House of Commons will insist on 2020 as it told the government to implement, as the Guardian article of the latest announcement reminds us: So all that is happening here is that CDs are reluctantly saying they will jump at the same time as the last possible date for the BOTs. If everyone else gets their act together. As @bankerboy implies above, a lot of the business that is done on the Island now relates to Trusts anyway, which seem to be untouched by this. [1] A download I'm afraid. Why do 'PR professionals do this, by the way? I could understand it for some vast dataset that they don't want a lot of people accessing at once, but a one page pdf? For anyone wanting the words of wisdom of the three Chief Ministers, the link comes from the usual stilted and old-fashioned press release.

They need to be covered for Third Party - but as we've discussed at some length in this thread, that just isn't the same issue with cyclists.

That’s good value. Amazing more don’t do it. Well quite. But no one is arguing against cyclists having whatever level of insurance that they feel is appropriate for them. They're just arguing that it shouldn't be compulsory. What is suitable for a regular cyclist with £1000 of kit may not be fair to impose on a 10 year-old with a £50 bike.

I don't know where you lot have been, but tap water on the Island has always had times when it was over-chlorinated - to the point of undrinkability sometimes, though never reliably bad enough for most people that they bother to get filters or whatever. It's not a new thing and I'm not sure it's got worse. Maybe because more people drink bottled water, we've had something to compare it with in recent decades.

To be fair it says it's a UK competition not that it's a UK politician. It could be a award for World's Most Embarrassing Press Conference won by Quayle for example. (I suspect it may be for Allinson for his work on the Abortion Bill, but who knows - or as no one has revealed it - who cares?)

The technique with all Mail stories is to read them backwards. Any actual information will appear in the final paragraphs while the headline, opening paragraph and so on are designed to rile up their readership to the state of perpetual indignation, safe in the knowledge that hardly anyone will read to the end of the article (there is scientific data for this). In this case the key finding from the judge is 'The appropriate finding is that the parties were equally responsible and I make a finding of liability at 50/50.' You'll also see that earlier on there was some evidence that another cyclist felt that the rider had been careless (though the judge decided against that on balance). The basic thing here (again stated by the judge) is Even where a motorist or cyclist had the right of way, pedestrians who are established on the road have right of way. which is a very long standing legal principle. Damages have yet to be decided, but may not be substantial the complainant will only get half what she would have done and the 50-50 rule might mean that she will have to pay her own costs. She may yet regret her day in Court.

Indeed. When I saw this on the front of the paper I thought that they would have been more honest printing "There's F*** All News This Week".

That's not really right. The usual distinction between 'series' and 'season' is that the first is British and the second American. It gets confused by the differences between television in the two countries. British series then to be shorter (classically six episodes) while US ones can often be upwards of 20 and American TV schedules tend to be more fixed across the year, so a run of programmes will often start at fixed points in the year. And of course usage gets copies across the Atlantic.

Interesting piece in the Guardian headed: Painted bike lanes are waste of money, say cycling commissioners Though, given that it's Grayling, it may just mean that he will install more of them. Of course if you see the main points of running an infrastructure department as (a) producing large amounts of greenwash PR that fools nobody and (b) giving lucrative contracts to your mates (or indeed anyone who can fool you), then these 'cycle lanes' are perfect. Do you think Grayling may have had special training from the DoI?

I can see how it happened. The description on the website and the advance programme is: IOM Newspapers have just read the first line. I suppose the Festival is trying to say something along the lines of "People who like G&S will like this", but it's confused things by replacing the first 'and' or '&' with a comma, probably to fit it to a line.

You don't - unless you use NowTV to watch anything that is being transmitted 'live'. It's not how you watch it or who made the programmes but whether what you watch counts as live as I outlined above. I suggest you look at the two links I gave in my comment above if you are uncertain..

No it's not. You need it if you watch any live television as I outlined. You may not think it fair, but that's the law.

He meant next October not the last one (the Report was only produced this Spring). The 'two sittings' rule[1] is meant to give the civil servants enough time to produce a 'response', though you'd hope the normal lead in time to a Tynwald sitting would be enough - especially as they probably have copies of the Reports before they are published and may have input and given evidence. Effectively it means a delay of 2-3 months before any recommendations are considered - enough time to let any public fuss and anger die down, claim that everything has changed since the report was written and nobble the politicians to vote against anything that doesn't suit. It's yet another way in which even the limited powers of scrutiny that Tynwald has over the Executive are undermined, and increasingly so. [1] According to the footnote to Section 5.18(3) of Tynwald Standing Orders

Oh this was years ago (2005 or so) when he was Editor of the Spectator - it was just round the corner from their offices in Doughty Street. He probably has 'people' to run over pedestrians for him now. So it was before the Boris Bike was launched, though not before it was planned. Even the few successes that marked his time as Mayor (such as the Olympics) were mostly set up under Livingstone and Boris just bounced up to take the credit.