joebean

It’s good that it has a new owner and anything they do with it has to be better than having an empty eyesore on the Quay. I’m not sure that there is a great deal of point in a hospitality sector investment but I wish the owner luck in finding a suitable use for it. Let’s see what the Planning Committee make of future proposals.

I have no idea about the issue but it does demonstrate the tendency of those in Government to believe that every policy has to be enshrined in legislation. There is also a tendency to judge a Government by the amount of legislation it passes. Legislation means enforcement and if we have to force every right and decent thing it demonstrates how poor we are as a society.

Any person who has 30+ convictions for vehicle offences is displaying a complete contempt for the rules regarding vehicle ownership and driving that everyone else is obliged to follow. The courts should have the power to rescind the driving licence of the offender in such circumstances.

There is no reason to pick her out, particularly. She represents a common theme in Keys candidates. Having no particular views or convictions; no record of achieving anything significant in previous life; a desire to be part of the Tynwald club; being generally unchallenging, these are all traits shared by many of our elected. It’s what the system generates and our political apathy selects and will keep doing so until the Island hits the crisis that demands something different.

It does say something about the current state of the event that the most reassuring and unexpected announcement about it is the merchandise supplier. Apart from that, it’s all the same old.. thank God the visitors mainly want to see exactly what they saw last year.

And you have to ask what exactly they contributed to the Isle of Man. I can think of a few leavers in the last few years who drew big salaries and then big pensions who achieved little in the way of positive outcomes and at least one whose influence had negative impacts on standards in office and senior management culture.

It’s not just about headcount, it’s about not filling natural wastage. Headcount has always been subject to business case increases, which is why the PS has expanded over the years. There should be no increase in the general civil service headcount for a few years. Only increases in essential public services, particularly front-line health service personnel should be considered and funded by savings elsewhere. The public would support that, if only politicians had the courage to demand it.

Many roles within the CS involve no specialist skills, merely the ability to administrate something, therefore many staff are interchangeable and staff can be moved to new tasks, without a great deal of retraining. A lot of savings could be achieved by not filling new vacancies; asking what the implications would be of leaving roles vacated through natural wastage unfilled; examining administrative process to streamline tasks and seek opportunities to double up roles or create part-time positions; regrading; reducing capital expenditure; contracting out; identifying savings in management structures. There are many avenues to explore, short of mass redundancies and there is a huge amount that could be done if the will existed to do the work and achieve expenditure savings. I don’t know how many people are recruited into the general civil service annually but I suspect a two-year moratorium on recruitment to it would have little impact on essential service delivery and would achieve a meaningful reduction in staff numbers. This would, of course place additional demands on public sector managers and administrative staff. That might be considered better than constantly increasing the cost of services to the public, if the public sector and our politicians thought that was important.

The usual prepared waffle, noting more. There will be no measurable set of actions or targets, just words.

I have made the same point on here before.. we have a political system that delivers personality over policy, is not capable of allowing the voter to make democratic choices about policies and that is designed to limit and stifle opposition voices and debate. More often than not, far from encouraging those people on the Island who have conviction, experience of leading and the personal qualities required for the task of leading Government and communicating effectively, it discourages such engagement. Tynwald is uninspiring and its procedures lack relevance to this century. Change will never come from within; it’s a self-perpetuating entity feeding the interests of bureaucrats and the mediocre personalities sucked in and puffed up within its chambers.

I often think that Alf Cannan talks quite well but his messages are contradicted and conflicted by what is actually happening. He attempts to reconnect with the public but ends up alienating people further. This message could have been delivered far more effectively with a bit more thought and positioning. First should have been a promise to examine, as part of this "regrouping" (whatever that means in this context) current financial priorities and a refocussing on the delivery of core services before promising greater financial discipline. That would have got the public onboard and more accepting of tough decisions about service delivery. Instead, he comes up with some buzzwords (otherwise known as drivel) before flagging up further reductions in public services. This, after a tax rise. If this is reconnecting, I wonder what disconnecting would look like. The Cabinet Office, considering the huge salaries being pocketed there, should be better than this clumsy delivery; wise and experienced heads there should be giving the CM decent advice about policy and communications. We are paying handsomely for that but they fall far short of delivering the goods. Instead of professionalism and service to the public, we get what appears to be an amateurish shambles where self-interest and self protection is the priority. If that isn't the case, their communications are even worse than I think. I am struggling to think of one member of COMIN who is an effective and emphatic communicator. We just need more quality, everywhere.

I used to be a landlord, with a property in the UK. I made sure that the house was regulation-compliant, well maintained and if anything went wrong, I had it fixed immediately. I also charged a rent that was at a fair market-rate. The maintenance and management costs ate into the income I received and I paid tax on that income too. The return on my investment, in income terms, ended up being around 3% per annum. Of course, the other factor was property inflation which meant that the asset was appreciating. The UK Government then started to increase the regulatory burden which would result in me having to make a substantial further investment in my property to raise the energy efficiency rating from the level D to C. The house had double glazing and exceeded the roof insulation requirements already. This investment would have wiped out any income I received from the property for around 4 years. In addition, changes to legislation were proposed that would increase the rights of tenants to remain in the property and impede my ability to sell it, when and if I needed to do so to add to my retirement financial planning. Like many other small landlords I decided to sell the property as soon as it became vacant. The house did not re-enter the rental market. I know many have a jaundiced view of landlords but it is not the small landlords that are killing the market for affordable rental properties. Houses are a considerable investment with considerable financial risks but a one-size fits all approach to the rental sector in the UK is driving up rental costs and reducing availability. The lack of imagination in Government here, following UK regulation and policy trends, will further erode the rental market, drive up housing costs and reduce affordability.

I have family ties here. If I didn’t, I would have gone about 8 years ago. I have always advised my sons and daughter to get into professions that can expand their horizons. Having all your eggs in a small basket run by basket-cases is never wise.

Wearing a wig doesn’t necessarily come with the job. Nobody forces him to wear it. He chooses to wear it. Any Speaker worth their salt would decide the wig was a relic of another era and entirely irrelevant to this day and age. The speaker in the Commons does not wear a wig ordinarily.

Ok, but when a Minister has proven himself to be immature and shabby and everybody with any objectivity can see he is an arrogant little man who is unfit for office, another option has to be explored. There are one or two others in the Keys, yet untested, who could do no worse and their appointment would at least demonstrate to the public that we have some standards of conduct in public office. It’s Government, not a Boy’s Club. In any event, we have seen in the past that whenever a matter of concern arises, it’s nothing to do with Hooper. It’s not the most demanding role and even if it was, a shuffle in the ranks would be better than keeping the smirking Hooper on.

One thing that has emerged out of this saga and is crystal clear; Hooper is an arrogant little prick that should be nowhere near any position of influence or authority. Obviously, the CM has not got the standards or guts to sack him. We must all rely on the voters in Ramsey.

That never happened. 100% bull. If we are going to talk about the negative sides of the TT let’s at least not make stuff up.

It might have something to do with the fact that everyone has a mobile device these days that can capture and post footage on social media. This is ok when it’s just bikes passing but the organisers will wish to claim rights to any footage depicting serious incidents and fatalities, mostly so it can be restricted or taken down. Sooner or later such footage will make it onto social media and when it does, it will soon go viral. In my opinion, video or pictures of fatalities will signal the end of the TT as an event the Island authorities will wish to be associated with. It’s an attempt to prevent or delay that happening.

You are correct, it’s not. Insolvency involves not being able to finance repayments on debt. Any Government will prioritise debt repayment to avoid this and, unless there is a dramatic development, IOM Government will continue to repay debt. The issue is what debt repayment is given priority over. At the current time our public services cannot be financed from existing resources, evidenced by the taxpayer on average or lower earnings being required to pay an additional 2% income tax to prop up the Health Service. As debt increases and repayment increase with it, further shortfalls in revenue available for public services will occur. Obviously, increasing revenue by growing the economy is an answer but this is where the meaningless drivel comes in. Strategies, plans and ambitious targets that never come to fruition. Expanding the economically active populationtargets that are contradicted by inaction and policy.. it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors which appear to disguise nothing really being achieved. Meanwhile the drivel-writing class expands and nobody in Government seems to be able to grasp the concept of efficiency. It is concerning to those that wish to think about it.

To be fair, Derek has a point. Our Government is very good at producing words on paper and some of those words on paper are trotted out by politicians in the Keys and in media interviews. The words sound like progress is being made but, most of the time it’s just meaningless drivel dressed up as a strategy or Plan that lacks any specific actions. Targets are set and hardly ever met and a generally apathetic public and media don’t hold the Government to account. The only area of real growth is in the numbers of people employed on big salaries to produce the meaningless drivel. I sometimes believe the Next Big Thing will be bankruptcy and a simple but brutal plan to respond to a crisis that we could have avoided, if only we actually did something rather than write about doing something.

How does Lawrie Hooper keeps his job? Is the CM happy with his performance? The recent allegations show, at the very least, that he is not able to act maturely and respectfully in a ministerial position and that his standards of conduct are “shabby”. I can only put his survival in his job down to his arrogance; lack of self perception; the weakness of our CM and the lack of candidates that the CM finds as acceptable, for whatever criteria he applies to that judgement. Hooper is one of the best examples of failure and lack of integrity in our political class.

But what would marshals say, let’s say hypothetically, if a report was published that said the cause of the incident was poor performance by marshals, both in directing riders along the course in the wrong direction without permission and, having done that, not reporting riders going in the wrong direction unescorted, for several miles until a collision occurred? What would marshals say if the report identified which marshals were responsible and where? When the event is reliant on marshals coming forward and lots of those marshals are very sensitive to criticism, what might be the response in terms of the number volunteering in future? As I keep saying, I’m not bothered if the TT happens or not; I don’t watch it, I don’t watch the TV coverage and I’ll be somewhere a long way from the Island when it happens. It might be that keeping the investigation conclusions private is designed to do the absolute opposite of what is being suggested.

Quite so. Anybody thinking about that situation rationally would realise that it was not a CoC decision to send riders WD and that the issue lay with a misreading or misunderstanding at Sector or Deputy Sector level. Also, that the expense and logistical issues surrounding GPS tracking of bikes was designed to prevent a recurrence. The lack of transparency about the results of the investigation has to be something to do about protecting marshals rather than covering up. However in the eyes of those that think if you are a marshal volunteer, you are an angel-like figure who can do no wrong, it has to be all about Race Control and the CoC. As I said, I couldn’t care less these days but dislike any opinion based on prejudice rather than logic.

Oh, so you know what the cause of that incident was? In your eyes all about the decisions made by the CoC rather than errors by marshals? And you also know that nothing has been done to enhance rider safety as a result of it? Life must be quite different in your parallel universe. I couldn’t care less about the TT these days and will not be on the island over the period. It seems that those that say they care about it are least interested in any facts and prefer their own opinions about it.