Frances

Well I got 3 letters today - All from Manx Gas as was - tho I'd phoned in a reading and they did their own reading 3 weeks later in mid December they still ran it through the system to generate 3 bills at 2 month intervals most of which undid the previous bill!

Not having received a bill since late June I phoned at end of last week, both to give a reading and ask why no bill - phone answered quickly, apparently I'm one of many without bills but the guy answering stated he was sent in the previous week to help sort out the mess left by those previously running the company - it sounds as though the Government should step in at least to salvage what they have paid out for much of the infrastructure.

surely a couple of wind turbines up at Jurby would be considerably cheaper and operate both at night and short days in winter when power is needed - all such still need some form of energy source to cover the sunless calm days (eg when the Island is covered in mist) - as the UK will get blackouts this winter will they still supply the Island thru the interconnector ?

maybe he can do some academic research - suggested title "Government Secretary - Servant or Master: a study from Betram Sargeaunt to W Greenhow"

well if freight remained the same or even increased then maybe no TT or MGP was to blame - I guess 40,000 paying maybe £200 a head would give a lost revenue of £8M and the season's tourists maybe a similar figure

I suspect Covid would have altered the freight - how much construction was done? all of which used to involve imported building material. Why they ran two boats daily defeats me as a bi or tri weekly sailing would I think have sufficed for foodstuffs etc

this site merely links to the arch satan of all - pagead2.googlesyndication.com -

the bigger loss re airports was Burtonwood near Warrington - a major USAF airbase with very long runway that served as supply depot for American troops in Germany - the cold war went on just too long for it to replace both Liverpool + Manchester - would have had easy road + rail links. Putting the gaol out at Jurby was IMO stupid - removed any sensible use of the airport site

actually the many usual users of that road pay either for additional miles of travel or in opportunities denied because of access restrictions

the report states crash on the Patrick Rd near Peel - which for is probably somewhere near to the Knockaloe to GlenMaye stretch

I agree it requires some mechanism of trust but of course they go back after a fixed period - but the only option I can see is to remove the ability of the existing CS and the politicians to select the new entrants - remember a certain MHK whose basis of selection was on riding a Harley Davidson.

The root of the problem lies in the small pool of talent from which the higher levels of the CS are drawn and the stagnant nature of the waters of this pool - in terms of population the Island is smaller than any of the several authorities that form say Greater Manchester with its elected mayor who is delegated some powers from Central government who can (+ do) exercise power over him. There is no oversight over the Island's CS other than the bunch of individuals, some excellent many mediocre with a leader none of the electorate voted for and elected with policies nowhere set down for the approval of the electorate. Given the deliberate corruptible nature of the governing clique it is easy for the long serving CS who have no obvious promotion path and thus generally have risen to just above their level of incompetence to run rings round these neophytes who have little experience other than a parish council. The only solution I can see is to give up a bit of independence and arrange a regular exchange of CS with a larger body so that the pool is regularly stirred by people not selected by those already in the pool.

there are two long sections of the Peel to Douglas that are, out of TT season, unlimited but the 40mph limits do seem to expand each year - catch is that the traffic also seems to increase each year and also more estates feeding onto the road.

sorry my machine has hiccuped in trying to reply to Banker but we shall see re the infected packaging - NZ are still checking it - recall that judging from the large number of infected food processing plants the virus seems to find cold + probably damp conditions good for survival - the team that finally proved that aerosol transmission of viable corvid19 virus was possible used a cold damp protein rich solution as the 'trap' on which to catch + hold the virus

the NZ case is most interesting as it is possibly another case of infected packaging on refrigerated food imports - there is thought by the Chinese to be a similar case due to infected Brazilian seafood imports