Flubbergump

I think by suspicious, they mean they have no idea the cause of death yet, so they're keeping an open mind. Bear in mind the death in Church Road last year was "Suspicious" until they further investigated. Also im in agreement with Manxberry that suicides in the woods are not uncommon, and whilst its speculative, I would take that or an accidental overdose as the most likely cause

I'm sorry, I don't think I made myself clear here. There is no way to lead on this, because the right think you're a leftie and the left think you're a Nazi. Schism in politics, been going on a few years, thought you might have noticed.

I would suggest the current level of economic instability caused by Coronapanic (markets down 8-9%) is going to halt funding on a lot of projects in the short term. And this will be one of them.

Ryan Giggs or Peter Weir on the Left Ronaldo or Luis Figo on the Right The political version of this debate is pointless. You cant hold centre ground politics currently because the right will accuse you of being a leftie, and the left accuse you of being a Nazi. Historically, we have always seen British politics go in cycles, when the country lurches too far to one side at an election, it self corrects at the next election. What we have now is a schism, a popularised belief that you must have one view or the other, and it goes back to the Brexit referendum. You cant want the economy to succeed and the additional tax revenue spent on infrastructure or social projects. You have to either want the economy to be solely for the benefit of the people with no reinvestment, or you have to want the economy to be solely for the benefit of business and all revenue to be reinvested. Economists will tell you that like anything else, you do need to invest revenue back into the areas that created the profit in the first place in order to create a slow and steady economic growth. You cant take too much of that revenue and reinvest it infrastructure (including social spending) as it slows growth. In an economy where we have just cut ourselves off from our biggest trading partner of the last 40 years, its clear that a bump in the road like that would have dire consequences. We need slow, steady growth otherwise people will lose their jobs. However the approach we have now in Government, which is Economic Growth or Bust, just hit its first, very unexpected roadblock. Coronavirus. The lack of investment in infrastructure and social spending (over an extended period) means we have a Health Service which is not capable of dealing with a national epidemic, hence the rather confused looking approach being provided by Government to deal with the outbreak.

No, you're making the same "everyone has to be left or right leaning" mistake that people make anytime there's a post that criticises a specific action. This is why we dont have a centre ground in politics anymore.

I think you need to listen to his previous media appearances to understand thats his sense of humour. He's not suggesting that people report those breaking self-isolation, he's pointing out that those on Social Media here cant help themselves but to announce to the wider world what their neighbours are doing, and will report them. There are certain FB groups which, when read, sound like they should be called "Manx Curtain Twitchers" . Ashford uses social media far more effectively than his ministerial colleagues, so he seems to pick these things up before others.

https://www.three.fm/news/isle-of-man-news/ramsey-pub-to-be-demolished/?fbclid=IwAR0zGmtWPWtzbLYD7tjXe-BVLbDVeAhIea-pOVzjiAPLqHU5vktE_yoBPxs So thats the story that kicked this debate off for me. The key thing that I take from this is the ideal of covenants. These were meant to prevent developers from building on public or private land which was gifted to the state for use by the public, but there seems to be a disconnect here in our system whereby the Brewery uses these to prevent anyone taking over buildings to reopen them as pubs. We know this is not the first time they've done this, but unless its suggested to someone to update the law, we also know this wont be the last, as there is a clear long term business strategy in play here as the big money for them is in selling the entire site to developers. The commissioners seem pretty powerless to prevent this happening in either Garff or Ramsey. Thats puzzling. Given the furore over losing the Courthouse to developers, I would have expected Ramsey Commissioners to intervene here and at least try and force H&B to maintain the building in an acceptable state or remove the covenants over the sale.

Boris is only interested in the market. If Healthcare was a private market, he would be all over this like a fly on shit. What will come out of this is an insistence on his part that a private healthcare system will generate additional hospital capacity, and prevent anything like this ever happening again. And voters will eat that up because they'll have lived through the biggest health scare in living memory. Until the next one ....

Romaticism aside, there's been calls to make our economy more diverse for a while, and its undergone a lot of changes in the last few decades. From being tourism led to being an offshore financial centre to an E-Gaming venue and now .... well all of those are in decline, and we seem to lack vision in thr house as to what we do next. Its clear that when one sectors revenue becomes dominant we dont usexthat tax revenue to diversify the economy. We complain constantly that the Meat Plant for example is constantly losing money, yet we want more Manx Meat on our tables, then we complain again that it costs more than imported Meat. We can't prioritise whether we want a service the benefits the public or a service that makes a profit. I think we should be clear to our respective MHK's during the next election cycle that we want people over profit. Task Skelly with coming up with ideas that make sense rather than giving him £50m to shake around like a Carnie at Douglas Fair trying to persuade people to try and hook a duck. Give Ashford the budget to run the hospital properly with a full complement of staff and fund the private wing with state of the art equipment so we turn a profit from the wealthier individuals who dont want to wait in line (if enough investment is made theres a case for us getting private health tourists). Task stuttering Alf to rework the taxation system to make the billions sat static in accounts here to become more mobile locally rather than internationally. If we are a World Class offshore financial centre, we should be generating considerably more tax locally. And send Howard on a training course to understand how to look ministerial instead of like a headteacher of a failing high school.

Ashford looked composed and Ministerial throughout. Actually quite impressed me. Alf mumbled and seens to fluff his lines, as though he needs cue cards. Skelly seemed to be there to make this look more important.

Statistically , the Island will get cases. We don't have any now but we will. Whoever mocked up the DHSC release is a moron of the highest order. I'm not sure what Ashford can actually do over Nick Crowe sharing that image other than out him as behaving like an idiot and not check his sources (which if thats how he does research, thank fuck he didn't get in as an MHK). Do our archaic libel laws come into play here?

Given his ever growing list of health issues, im surprised getting a splinter hasn't seen him off.

We have one. Ever sat in on a LEGCO meeting?

If anyone thinks for a second that a private company is going to shell out £100m+ for a leisure facility here on Island , at a time when our transport links are at the weakest and most expensive they've ever been, I've got a "UK to Ireland Tunnel/Bridge combo that goes through the Isle of Man" idea to sell you. We cant get basic infrastructure projects here done on time or budget unless they're part of the TT Course, and thats before we get started on the NIMBY's that attack every project that's proposed on island.

Well our Italian contingent looks like it wont be visiting https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51787238 At least any of the 16 million in Northern Italy anyway