woolley

I now have this disturbing vision of an Alf/Peter hybrid delivering his prospectus for our dream future.

Blimey. That'd cost us. And I think we're confusing quoted PLC Royal Mail Group with the UK Government owned Post Office as far as shagging is concerned.

Not all postboxes were always emptied twice a day. For the past 40 years at least, some of the small rural ones were always emptied once, mid-morning, by the postie delivering in the area. This practice has now been extended to many of the standard boxes. You can't examine the subject though, or criticise the changes, without paying heed to the fact that frequently the postman will unlock and open the postbox to find......... nothing. There's no point in doing that twice a day. I wonder if they could put some kind of sensor in the boxes to tell them when it's actually worth going to collect! The volumes have shrunk massively for reasons we all know about. I've been down to Spring Valley and played hell with them for pricing themselves (and the Island) out of the game for our business. They just say they were losing money on doing the work, which is difficult to argue against. A vicious circle of increasing postage rates to combat falling volume, resulting in even lower volume. Demographic changes aren't helping. Younger people don't write to each other by mail or send greetings cards. Another part of it is the over-management of IOMPO. Really, unless we are all going to start using the postal services more, there isn't a palatable solution, so the diminution of service needs to be seen against the backdrop that it's becoming a non-essential, marginalised operation.

Typical skinflints. Anyone else would bring in a dredger.

Yes.

Routine in Peel, but extremely rare event in Laxey. Certainly when compared to the capital cost, scale, running costs and environmental hangups involved with the proposed solution. Ludicrous.

I like the way they ask if you want them to keep what they owe you until you owe them some more. Neat that.

Don't like her especially, but this is clearly a hatchet job by political opponents given that the amount of money is buttons. Nowadays, if you are in these positions, there are people digging dirt on you all the time.

They are proposing a complete dog's dinner of a solution which will be infinitely worse than the status quo. It is power intensive, and you can bet your bottom dollar it will cast a mushroom cloud of sewage stink over the valley on warm still days in perpetuity. This will effect everyone in the locality, and is hardly environmentally friendly. My logic for continuing discharge to the sea is based on the reality of the situation. The steep sided valley is completely unsuited for outward, uphill pumping. The discharge is not a problem for the water quality because of the currents. Globally, 85% of sewage is pumped raw into rivers and sea, and there is only one body of sea water. The Island has more than reversed this discharge percentage when Peel is sorted, so we have more than done our bit to pull our weight in the grand scheme of things. It makes no sense to throw grandiose, expensive and inefficient solutions at such a minuscule problem as Laxey, if indeed it is a problem at all. I would be in favour of extending the outfall pipe if they feel the need to do something.

Peel needs sorting. The topography of Laxey just doesn't lend itself, and the sea quality is fine because of the prevailing current being away from the beach.

GET A CLUBCARD!!!

First, it doesn't really mean what everyone thinks it means, and second, we have world class bullshitters.

Of course. I certainly acknowledge that the situation is bad generally. Anywhere there are large numbers of people and industry, really.

Manipulation is part of the human experience. It's what we do to each other subtly all the time. It's life.

So it's horrible to buy 3 x 10 Jaffa cakes at 60p = £1.80 rather than 1 x 30 Jaffa cakes at £2.70? You're a plonker!

Thank you. Saved me the trouble. @Happier diner As above, and add to that virtually every other industrial estate where waste and even escaped product can be found in local water courses. Nothing is ever done to stop renegade operators it seems. Add to these, numerous historical mine workings and abandoned rubbish dumps where the leachate remains a problem decades and centuries later. The Raggatt, Point of Ayre, problems downplayed by the government. Have you ever walked down the river bank past the White Hoe? Goodness knows what the disgusting multicoloured soup that constantly makes its way across the footpath and into the river consists of. I was told it was near the site of an old industrial dump that's full of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, but I don't know for sure. The colours are pretty, though somewhat unnatural. As for the chlorine in the water @Blade Runner is quite right on this. For some reason they simply cannot keep the levels right and it's always far too alkaline. One of our processes required a steady neutral pH of 7-8, but the mains water was routinely over 10. They didn't believe us until we had them down to test it. God help us if they get the go ahead for fluoridation! I am not saying that this stuff doesn't go on elsewhere incidentally. It absolutely does, but that is no reason to stick our heads in the effluent.

This is just the same as @IOM. You are taking the same curious line, ignoring many popular items that are the same as the UK if you buy correctly, and it's all been addressed before. My reference to a list was alluding to the contents of a personal shop. You don't so much go with a physical list as simply know where all of your regular stuff is, and you just charge round the place and grab it. There is no hunting involved at all, and if you think there is, it strikes me that you are unfamiliar with the procedure. If you normally buy a pack of 30 of something but packs of 10 are on offer so that 3 of those are cheaper (and at the UK price!!) then obviously you buy those instead. It is blindingly obvious on a multiplicity of big signs on the shelves. You don't even have to engage brain. Same if you buy online. The offers jump out at you. Some people must be completely inept. In IoM we pay about 3% more than when we do the same shop in the UK, and that is up from 2% before the Shoprite takeover. The difference about a penny in the pound more now than before. If you call that "a good wedge" then fine. Then again, why would we expect to get everything at the same price as the UK when we have the Steam Packet between there and here? This time last year it cost us 2% more. Now it costs us 3% more. I think that is reasonable. I do appreciate that there is potential for it to change adversely. Have to wait and see.

Because a shopping list is what is relevant to a real person. It doesn't matter that you post up a load of items with 5% on them. I've previously demonstrated to you that many of those items were available on offer at same as UK price on Clubcard price or multibuy offers or in different sizes, so the total effect is about 1% in a real world experience. Not "a lot more".

(Yawn). They are not costing a lot more. They cost about 2% more across a typical shop before the takeover, and they cost about 3% more across a typical shop now. An increase, yes indeed, but a small one - a penny in the pound. The reason for the discrepancy is that you take no account of the way people actually buy goods, availing of Clubcard multibuys and Aldi price matching which cover thousands of popular items at the same price as in the UK.

Such as?

In theory there's no reason why it can't be, but it never is. The Isle of Man is the perfect place to observe that public service and efficiency do not belong in the same sentence. I fervently wish it were otherwise, but it simply isn't.

I know. Shoprite even used to bring some of their branded stuff to the Island.

As I said, it isn't really a problem in Laxey. The prevailing currents are away from the beach. The projected solution is completely out of proportion to the problem, particularly in hard times. Probably more damaging to the environment too, all things considered. Box ticking.

No, I won't flame you on that. There's lots of agricultural effluent going into the sea at all points of the compass, and huge amounts of industrial and chemical waste. The biosphere notion is an effin' joke.

Because they couldn't sustain the debt it was carrying, like the previous owners before them. Thanks to Macquarie and their ilk.