Derek Flint

The courthouse, as has been pointed out from the outset, is far too small to be an effective community space. This has been a decision made on heartstrings, rather than effective and efficient financial prudence. It was poor practice and bad judgement. If we wanted a big ‘indoor if wet’ venue, the old Methodist Church was where the money needed to go. At every level within the governance of this island, we really do need to wake up and immediately realize exactly where we are at this moment at time. Money is being spaffed at a faster rate than ever, the public sector is bigger than ever, and receipts are not healthy. lets just get rid of it, take the hit and move on.

Disappointing but pretty much as I thought it might prevail. COVID will have played a part, but I was surprised they only raised 14 grand. I think they needed about 10x that? the plan should now be for RTC to take it on the chin, apply some well thought out covenants and get it on the open market and off the ratepayers burden.

Remember that Lord St Police Station was earmarked for demolition when the Middlemarch site behind Celtic House is (one day) redeveloped. for some reason the Steam seems to have gone out of all of these big schemes that were slated under the Bell administration.

It works - to a point. What it achieves is that our internal mechanism can operate without face masks, essentially. In general terms on a recent UK trip, that was ostensibly the only difference it made to us. There needs to be a big reset on the hospitality side still, as I do think it is those prolonged mass gatherings that are significantly contributing to transmission. But on the whole, the world is still spinning. OK, so back home things like the superb food and drink festival couldn’t have taken place, but look at all the questions now being asked about students coming home for breaks. I know long haul pilots that call the island home are really struggling with finding the balance now. One guy has had to endure 28 days lockdown for four days flying. His choice to live here you might say, but IOMG are of course grateful for their 20% of his hefty salary. If this policy of locking ourselves away from the rest of the world is going to persist then I think it is going to do us more long term damage, and it’s not going to take long for that to start to impact. Lets hope for something pragmatic and based on some proper risk management this afternoon.

It should never have been built, and was just another example of the thoughtless spaffery that was taking place at the time. Four and a half million quid that cost. That was the time Peel Road and the Prom should have really had the work done - when things were gong on! Furthermore, it was totally useless as a police station. I don’t think the cops actually had any design input whatsoever Yes. And the advantage is that most services can be operated on a dispersed basis anyway. Fire trucks run that way during racing, for instance, and data is held on the cloud now rather than in servers on site. I did suggest some futureproofing by building custody as a 2 storey building with offices above but there was no appetite for it. You could also systematically take the top floor off and put on a new modular 2 storey top deck without that silly slopey Dutch barn top roof, which would help, but you are really just throwing good money after bad. Lots of it needs upgrading, such as the firearms range, training facilities need bringing back up from Porto Erin - it was designed for seventies policing and we stopped doing that a few years back. best build something new with a bit of foresight and vision this time, with shared facilities with our other emergency services where we can. We are too small to triplicate admin, messing, stores etc.

Site is in Government ownership already, which helps

Plan would be to build on vagas field then knock old nick down

It would be “Inside the course” . also it’s the fire response times that are critical. Glencrutchery fits well for Onchan, and a straight run through to Braddan or into town. I do hope they look at this strategically rather than a bit silo-ey as is often the way.

We sort of looked at this around 2006, siting ambulance and RPU at the QB alongside the fire station, when they were going to build one big roundabout. The architect engaged was not very good and couldn’t translate the fag packet sketches into something workable. In the end we put it in the too hard to do box, which was a shame because at the operational level we were beginning to work together much better than ever before. Douglas fire station is now compromised due to flooding. The sensible option is to move everything up to Glencrutchery and have a big police fire and ambulance hub on the old Vagas pitch, with parking on the subsequently flattened police station site. Close to ESJCR , arterial routes and all that, as long as clearways are maintained during TT etc. Police HQ is an old building. Custody can be left standing As that will be good for a design life of 60 yrs.

It will get to the stage when they are lobbing them out the back of a fat Albert on a pallet and a parachute

There’s probably a good case for quietly retiring the Isle of Man Bank brand. It should be the default, go-to high street bank for the Island, a branch in every town, as strong as God’s earth and all that. Instead, all we see is continued closures and contractions which is probably doing more overall reputational damage to IOM PLC than is immediately realised. its a sad indictment of where we are right now and how we need to really think hard and fast about our place in the world.

Did he strike you as a leader? Someone who could motivate, inspire, coach and develop people. Was he restless until he had achieved the best for his people, and then remained restless until, they had achieved the best for themselves? Perhaps, across the board, this is where we are failing?

As you’ve proven time and time again Dilli, you know more on most things than everyone. Two sailings. Watched both being loaded and unloaded and there was very little on them. My point is, with the very low numbers of cars that excess deck space could be filled with trailers and one crossing rather than 2 a day be completed. If I’m not mistaken, didn’t that cabinet office insist that there would be 2 sailings a day even when nobody was sailing for ‘a sense of normality’ turning back to Dilli; What would be the carbon saving, and overall tonnage burn in heavy oil on a return sailing to Heysham on the Ben? As a supplementary what would that cost in pound notes? I’d ask a shipping expert but it seems pointless seeing as you are on here already.

Its bizarre. I’ve recently been across. It was OK. People were generally just going about their business, masked up. Blackpool was however rammed, as were beer gardens around the fylde and Wyre areas. Supermarket distancing was fine, shopping was easy and we just kept out of the busy places. You couldn’t have put on the food and drink festival, but a mass demo in central London seems OK. No doubt that the increase in R is being caused by gatherings in a social setting from what I saw. Yes , there are more cases but it doesn’t seem to be being tracked by an equally high number of hospital admissions? I think they need to take a step back and have a pragmatic look at the whole thing. The other thing is how on earth-even on environmental grounds, they are justifying two Ben sailings a day? There were a dozen cars on our outward and 18 on our inbound sailings -and not a great deal of freight.

I hate to disappoint but it was pinched from a similar thread to this... https://www.strategypage.com/humor/articles/british.asp