craggy_steve

35 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

It's a scary thought, but we actually despatch our elected representatives to fledgling foreign democracies in the name of showing them how to engage in good governance 🤭

If we are the tutors, who can teach the tutors? Will this affect our credibility with the CPA?

It will probably improve our standing no end. CPA member Prime Minsters / Chief Ministers will be asking the IoM CM for advice on how to bypass their formal chains of control.

8 hours ago, Gladys said:

I just cannot think of any other body sufficiently qualified to understand government operations and structures who will have the familiarity.  Absolutely no way some 'independent' consultant. 

Maybe look to the Canadian or New Zealand gov't for expertise? Both Commonwealth, neither are perfect but both are well separated from the UK model? Might be that the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association could provide a pointer to suitable experts from those systems who could review IoM? As I said, dunno, it's a tough one.

Edited to Add: Albeit I suspect from the disclosure that Alf was directly expressing his views to the top of the DHSC CS, bypassing the DHSC Minister, that whatever "structure" IoMG is supposed to operate within was being usurped / undermined by Chief Minister and Chief Sec anyway - clearly players other than the Departmental Ministers have been pulling strings.

1 hour ago, Gladys said:

As the review is from the bottom to the top of the whole culture in government, it cannot be undertaken by anyone there, in any capacity, in  my view.   That is why some kind of involvement of the UK Ministry of Justice is vital. 

Otherwise, there is just too much scope for 'inconvenient truths' to be watered down or dismissed. 

Just to point out that Greenhow originally came to IoMG from UK MoD, Magson & Ewart came from UK NHS, etc. Asking UK MoJ to review is rather like asking them to mark their own homework. There's been much in the UK news lately about the culture issues in UK Gov't and tensions between Senior Civil Servants & Ministers... they're hardly a paradigm of good governance, IoMG should aspire to be better than them!

Dunno who to suggest tho'.

9 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

My main take from the whole thing and looking at the amount of money involved from just these seizures (and it's interesting that only cannabis seems to have been involved) is to think just how much could be made in duty and VAT if all this was legalised.

100%. IoM should decriminalise cannabis use, licence and tax local production and supply. Anyone importing to or exporting from the IoM for supply should do hard time, but local production for local consumption should be lawful and taxed similarly to spirits.

A little shocked by this. One of the Manxies imprisoned used to be an employee of an organisation I was a director of. Not recently, he resigned over 5 years ago to pursue other employment, but he seemed an OK bloke and I would not have anticipated him becoming one of the IoM's cannabis kingpins. Seems you never can tell!

On 10/15/2022 at 6:00 PM, Albany said:

Hello, I am planning to start a new consulting company and have a solid cash position to fund the company. I know my sector well, having worked in it for over 15 years.

I am a British citizen and also looking to move to the Isle of Man. I'd like the to enjoy the twin benefit of low / zero corporation tax rate and also a lower income tax rate. Being honest, I'm also not a massive party animal (I do enjoy the outdoors and going for a few drinks to the pub / cafe with close friends), so I know I won't miss the busy city life at all. I just want to hunker down and build my business and live in a peaceful, healthy environment.

Based on the information above, please can some kind folks on here advise me on the following:
- Would I need a work permit to work for my own company as a Director (once the company has been incorporated and I have registered my residence on the Island)?
- Are there any good websites or IOM government agencies that provide support for people looking to do what I am planning?

Any other useful general advice would be much appreciated. I am in the initial planning phases, but really serious about this. Planning a visit to the Island for a week to do a tour and potentially some networking & research.

Thank you,
Albany

I have done this. Moved from UK to IoM and brought my technology / business consultancy business with me. Set up a new company on the IoM which employed me to service my (primarily UK) clientele. That was before more recent changes to Work Permit legislation, so at the time I needed a work permit. I spoke nicely with the head of the work permits team and was granted one without difficulty.

Since then the rules have changed, in your favour. See section 2 of the Work Permits guide and I think you'll find there are likely three categories of exemption that you can claim https://www.gov.im/media/1359068/guide20171102guide-to-work-permits.pdf

Get yourself a decent small business accountant, I used Alistair Clarke-Wilson of Shimmin Wilson and was happy with their service and their charges. Alistair may have retired / semi-retired now, dunno, but they are worth considering and will be able to deal with your NI, tax etc. https://www.shimminwilson.com/about

In respect of disentangling yourself from UK HMRC - you will basically need to sell up totally in UK, including terminating membership of any UK social clubs (golf clubs & the like) to show to UK HMRC that you have truly "left" (retaining professional memberships is OK, and IoM has sections of the Institute of Directors, BCS The Chartered Institute for IT etc.)

Hope that helps. Good luck. I'm recently retired and left IoM earlier this year for personal reasons, but on the face of it I've done what you are hoping to do and it was fine.

11 minutes ago, John Wright said:

Well the autumn booster campaign for Covid vaccinations is as confusing and poorly organised as the rest.

I e-mailed vaccinations on Friday for an appointment.

I got a wholly meaningless confused standard e-mail in response. It could have said “we will be sending out appointments for your priority group next week” instead it referred me to the web site.

Monday I tried to book, following the link. First it wouldn’t recognise my nhs number, then it said no appointments available. Tried again yesterday. Same.

So, this morning I phoned. Lady had a script and read, non stop. Transpires neither web site, nor she, could make an appointment until I’ve had an invite.

Given I was missed off my priority group in March 2021 and had to chase, and the mess up with my third primary dose appearing on the App I wasn’t impressed. Her only solution was to suggest I e-mail vaccinations. I’d already done that with no real success. I said I’d wait until the weekend and try again next week.

An hour later I got a phone call with an appointment on Friday. That was confirmed by e-mail shortly after. I’ve now had second appointment e-mail with different date/time.

I tried to make appointment for Paul at same time. For our first two primary doses and first boosters we were same date/time as he was in the same household as a clinically extremely vulnerable person. They aren’t doing that now. He won’t be called until November. But, he’s had a text from his GP for a flu jab on Saturday as he is in a household with a CEV.

Its not joined up!

That's crazy given your age & health. I was done a couple of weeks ago in UK - anyone over 50 can walk-in if the vax hub is doing walk-ins that day, only pre-booked appointments are restricted to 65 & over. Might be worth Paul having a go next time you're across.

3 hours ago, Manx Bean said:

You really couldn’t make this shit up!

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/interim-public-health-director-only-works-for-the-island-two-days-a-week/

 

Be thankful. IoM would have coped much better with Covid if Hetty had worked zero days per week. 

To many senior bureaucrats employed full-time by IoMG but doing part-time workloads on the IoM due to small scale, IMO. Public Sector needs to spend less on chiefs & more on indians.

On 9/25/2022 at 10:04 PM, Roger Mexico said:

As for the issues, I couldn't help noticing that the top priority for these directors is to "Cultivate the culture within Manx Care".  Rather that reform it.  

And this is bang on the point. There appears to be sod all recognition at leadership level, in Manx Care as in the wider Manx Public Sector, that culture needs to change, radically. The Manx Public Sector will continue failing, and dragging down the island and the quality of life experienced by most of the island's residents, until its culture is reformed.

On 9/26/2022 at 12:15 PM, Newsdesk said:

Do you think they check all that stuff before they appoint? A personal consultancy company with hardly any assets and hardly any income. 

Utterly irrelevant distraction. Manx Care have hired him as a NED, not his Personal Service Company for payment and liability purposes. There are hundreds of thousands of similar one-man companies in the UK (and a fair number in the IoM). 

Whether they have done adequate due diligence on him as a potential NED is a separate matter!

6 minutes ago, Yibble said:

Whilst not a pensioner myself, I can't help but feel there are some lazy stereotypes in play here.

It's surely a bit simplistic to view all pensioners (or over 55s) as being a burden on the state. Many will have substantial incomes, be taxpaying and be spending in the local economy, rather than clogging up the hospital. They're also not requiring the state to educate their children, not clogging the road into Douglas during the rush hour and maybe spending their Grey Pounds in shops, cafés, restaurants etc. at times when there will be little or no trade coming in from most of those of working age*

Some of the posters on here seem to have an almost Maoist view of who the state should and shouldn't allow to be here. Be careful what you wish for.

(*aside from the old gits who still insist on hitting the supermarket at peak Sat / Sun time. Maoists, you can shoot them 😉 )

 

Problem is not pensioners / retirees per se, but the disproportionate immigration of them compared with immigration of workers. I am retired, albeit a tad early, and very conscious that retirement massively reduced my tax conribution - no employers or employees NI for a start    IoMG has modest corporation tax reciepts, which puts more emphasis on employee taxation in order to meet the cost of seemingly ever-increasing gov't spending.

4 hours ago, 0bserver said:

 

Lol. I don't know what's so controversial. The island's dependency ratio has been out of whack for years. There's no point pretending we can support more retirees coming to the island to expect 'free' healthcare, bus passes and benefits. 

There is appropriate Manx Residency legislation already on the books, just never brought into force. I've harped on about this previously https://legislation.gov.im/cms/legislation/acts-of-tynwald-as-enacted/category/2-primary-2001.html?download=27:residence-act-2001&start=20

The IoM needs to drop Work Permits, which are an anachronism that dissuade immigration by the "economically active", and bring in Residency Permits which shall be granted by default to Workers. That would remove uncertainty for potential off-island job applicants while reducing immigration by retirees who currently face no barriers in coming to the island and inflating housing demand and health service pressures. I think it's the only "kind" way of fixing the economy and the dependency ratio.

I had a chat with Alan Bell about this years ago over an informal coffee while he was CM; his opinion seemed to be that the motivation for Tynwald passing the Residence Act was fear of the IoM potentially being overrun with incomers as happened in Jersey, while the reluctance to remove the Work Permit restrictions was (is?) basically driven by politicians' fear (of losing their seats). Alf needs to man up and JFDI while he's feeling brave.

That there is what DfE need to be publicising for their "Locate" promotions. Nothing else matters really. IoM doesn't need more retirees / old farts /  TT fans, just a full-on worker immigration campaign in the same vein as Australia and NZ used to do.

1 hour ago, The Voice of Reason said:

But Ranson won. ( And may end up with a handsome pay out).

 

Doesn't that seem to indicate the system is working?
 

 

If you're not trolling then you are the problem.
 

Yours is one of the most seriously disturbing posts I've ever seen. 

4 minutes ago, Lost Login said:

I don't think I have ever been asked to attend any other event, sporting pr otherwise, where there is an expectation that somebody may die whilst I am watching it.  

I was thinking along these lines early this morning, then I remembered that when living in UK I used to attend a lot of horse trials / one-day and three-day events - and I have seen plenty of people seriously injured or killed while competing in the cross-country phase. I've even won one myself long ago, so I know first hand what it's like, the thrill of riding "on the edge". Competitors take risks, mishaps happen and can be life-changing or fatal. In horse trials the course designers try to make the courses more "technical" these days, to minimise bad falls - but of course they still happen.

Personally I think the TT needs a revamp to make it more relevant for contemporary motorcycling: more classes for lower-speed "greener" racing - fuel limits, more e-bike / zero-emissions endurance classes, more classes for Cat A2 license road bikes - look to the future because the evolution of the petrol superbike has pretty much stalled anyway, and that will naturally reduce speeds and fatalities. Celebration of achievement doesn't need to correlate with highest risk.

Peanuts. £30M p.a. shortfall is only 3/7ths of a ferry terminal.

37 minutes ago, WTF said:

you weren't quoting for the now old new radar at ronaldsway were you  ?  i heard a pub  rumour that a  few tenders for that job got lost.

Ha! No. But on the commercial front I have had experience of submitting bids when I'd been told by others that I would be wasting my time because XYZ Co. would be the winner - and sometimes they were correct.

25 minutes ago, Banker said:

Not sure why you would apply for a digital role with a paper application?

If it’s done online you automatically get an acknowledgment that it’s been received 

Errmmm. Maybe I had a little less faith than you in the online jobs system used by IoMG? Jobtrain, and IoMG's usage of it, have improved as a consequence of my previous criticisms and the ICO's intervention, but I'm a tad fussy about the data governance practices of 'officialdom'.

Dunno if there's a blacklist, but I am certainly one of those who has made an application only to later discover that it never found its way through to the hiring Department. There are certainly many coincidentally similar anecdotes to be heard from others who have been vocal in expressing that Government's performance could be improved.

https://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/business/my-application-to-join-new-agency-went-astray-221389

40 minutes ago, 0bserver said:

Here's another light sentence. 

22 months for indecent assault (not sure how it's not actually rape)... the UK would have been a 6 year sentence

https://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/offender-who-assaulted-woman-while-she-slept-would-have-got-a-longer-jail-sentence-in-the-uk-548795?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1653811358

Yep. That appalled me when I saw it. Maybe there is some valid reasoning behind the short sentence, but to my mind it was rape and should have been prosecuted and sentenced as such.

1 hour ago, code99 said:

Allegedly, people are leaving the Island due to our sub-standard medical services.

Certainly this was a consideration for my wife and me. No disrespect to the medical professionals on the island, but the accessibility and responsiveness of the health service within which they operate seems to have significantly deteriorated over the past decade.

17 minutes ago, Derek Flint said:

Before I left the IOM there was talk of DHA being absorbed into the Cabinet Office.

 

That was merely more of Greenhow's megalomania. It may be now that CabO shrinks.

2 hours ago, Roger Mexico said:

Effectively this was a coup against the most powerful person in government.

Long overdue, and I hope Alf and Co have recognised the the huge depth of the public sector cultural issues and can carry their clean-up through all the way. I've gone, not a stakeholder anymore, wasn't prepared to wait, felt that Alf should have grasped this nettle as his highest priority as soon as he was elected CM. He's said some of the right things in that interview, it will take his full term and probably the commitment of his successor, but done well could stimulate a renaissance for the IoM.

1 hour ago, Bandits said:

Steve Burrows parting shot to the IOM? Left us with the Monkey Pox after two years of raging about covid.

Not on my radar.  Gobsmacked you're getting excited about it but I guess you know your own exposure risk profile. 

Ashford needs to go. So does Cannan. Cannan appointed Ashford to Treasury Minister despite having shared a full term with him in the Quayle CoMin, there is no way Cannan can claim to have been innocent or misled, he's essentially given Ashford the No. 2 spot in Manx politics; why, for what? When Cannan became CM succeeding Quayle there was a _possibility_ for improvement.  Cannan dashed all hope of that very quickly, so he too is unfit for office in my eyes. CoMin and COG both need a rigorous clear-out.