Roger Mexico

They do seem to have been pushing the place recently. They had a talk last week on How might the Isle of Man be carbon neutral? and so of course held it at a place you had to drive to. (Normally they're at the Nunnery). Presumably some bizarre method of government accounting meant that it's 'cheaper' to hire somewhere for real money than to use a government facility. Though I also get the impression with the DfE that they want to get get away from all those horrible, common TT fans and into the fashionable world of vloggers and 'influencers' and so on.

There would probably be some substitution among casual use (obviously a minority) and presumably an increase in related opioids. But it's a silly hypothesis in any case because there's no way you could stop the supply chain for one drug and not for others.

Well they were deluded then because it was already here, 20 (and more) years ago. I can't find anything online because there's not much available from that long ago, but here's a death from 2005 and I'm sure I remember earlier ones. Heroin addiction has been around for a long time. Judging by Chief Constable's Reports, there doesn't seem to be much of an increase over the last three years and the figures aren't that different from a decade ago, though it's always difficult to tell because the numbers are so low and drug statistics are dominated by the pointless campaign against cannabis. It's a problem and a serious problem, but there's no indication it's getting worse. It's fairly typical of the way in which drug policy has been carried out over the last century that the standard way to deal with people addicted to a serious drug (heroin) was to try to replace it with something even more addictive but less effective (methadone). Especially when Britain already had a perfectly good system to deal with it, which was basically to accept people were addicted and supply them with heroin of reliable quality through the health service, supporting them till they felt able to come off the drug in their own time (or not). But the 'war on drugs' meant this approach became unpopular with conservative virtue-signallers and pharmaceutical companies could make more money out of the substitutes. Naturally heroin use and deaths soared. I suspect if the policy was still the main way of coping with the problem, your friend would still be alive.

Do you have any evidence that heroin use on the Island is increasing (or increasingly dangerous)? Certainly use in the UK seems to have been declining for quite a long period and cocaine and related drugs seem to be dominating the market more. Heroin is very dangerous (because of it's variable quality even without bodily fluids) and has been responsible, at least partly, for many drug deaths on the Island - but that isn't a new thing. It may even be that initiatives such as the naxolene project may be reducing them.

Someone I know had exactly the same speedy response recently. I think they do very quick initial referrals from opticians to see if it's anything very serious. It usually isn't. The wait comes if they find you need treatment but it's not dangerous.

Actually you can. It's used quite a lot for identifying animals and so on and even used to track down which misbehaving dog have done the dirty. Rushen Spy will be so pleased.

To answer that sensibly, no. The prison was built to cope with our ever-booming population (except when they all count them when they hide) and so there is plenty of space. It has a maximum capacity for 135 male and 16 female prisoners. The numbers in total never seem to have exceeded 121 and usually are around 100 or a bit less

3FM have managed to get no less than five stories out of this earth shattering event. Mind you they may have been biased by having the office next door. But then Manx Radio had four. It's fairly typical of the sort of story the local media feel capable of covering. Stuff that might require analysis or in depth investigation (for example the health service) gets minimised in favour of simple stories and passing on the latest 'statement'.

Presumably he's been in prison since the arrest in December and he still has got quite a long suspended sentence, but it is a bit of a surprise, especially considering the assault on a police officer, though he doesn't seem to have been charged with that for some reason.

There's two things going on here though. Speed is clearly a direct factor in some accidents, but as well it makes the consequences of any accident worse, no matter what the cause(s).

That's very depressing isn't it? Both answers are almost entirely meaningless word-salads[1]. A long, juddering train of tired managerial cliches strung together to sound good to themselves if no one else. If you're going to look at things from "the perspective of the service user", or patients as they used to be know, how are they being involved? And how is 'best practice' being determined? And why aren't such things being discussed openly and in plain, meaningful language? All they seem to be doing is promising to employ yet more people to produce yet more meaningless drivel. If Spicer's departure had no effect, why was he employed? Why was anyone? If the "deliverables of and commitment to the Transformation Programme are unaffected by this event", that's because those are abstract nouns that would be unaffected by anything, but what about the progress of it? What is the purpose of it anyway? And is transformation of everything even required? [1] No doubt one of the reasons that they didn't extend question time is that it would have given someone the chance to ask Quayle "What does that mean in English?".

You seem to be trying particularly hard to offend people. They do rather (and not just on this topic). The good thing is that most people seem to be ignoring it most of the time and either not reacting or replying briefly and politely. It's worth saying that the idea that suicidal tendencies are somehow innate or inevitable is a particularly stupid one, on the self-evident grounds that if it was, those who try to kill themselves would already have done so long ago. In fact suicide should be treated as the visible part of a very large iceberg of mental distress and to tackling that is the only way to tackle suicide.

The only problem with that is that usually people are only too quick to tell you how bad the standards of driving on the Island are (except their own of course). There may be other reasons for that, driving on over-familiar roads may lead to carelessness for example, but no one normally praises the standards over here. And if drivers can't handle 'frustration' (which more likely to be caused by other reasons than speed limits) then they oughtn't to be on the roads at all.

The law changed in 2011 to allow 'approved places' for marriages and civil partnerships and there's a list available. You can also apply for a one-off licence for a non-regular venue (even on planes or boats). Obviously burials are more complicated.

But isn't that games rather than e-gaming? It's still a good illustration how such schemes can end up helping those who don't need them rather than than building genuinely new business.