loaf

1 hour ago, WTF said:

its supposed to , but how many fires have we read about where a chung wang scooter has been plugged in to charge and a house fire has ensued?

Petrol/Diesel driven vehicles going up in flames do not make the headlines any more, but it happens often enough. And you only have to read this thread to spot the vested interests falsely claiming any vehicle fire that does hit the papers is an EV.

1 hour ago, WTF said:

the use of larger lithium type batteries requires a lot more diligence than your old tech lead acid.

True, but thankfully technology has evolved to manage the complexity. For example, the lithium iron phosphate leisure battery I have has bluetooth and all sorts of telemetry that protects it from being under and over good operating limits.

31 minutes ago, A fool and his money..... said:

What chance do you have with the newer more advanced technology of EV's?

The old 12v lead acid battery is a bit of a relic by modern standards.
Newer battery technology comes with charge and lifetime management, often built into the unit itself.

10 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

Of course no covenant will also mean the building could be used for other purposes that might need a licence, such as a restaurant.

Up until its fairly recent change of heart about running pubs altogether, H&B seemed to have a strategy of only keeping the pubs that had adequate kitchen space, so in Ramsey the Royal George and the Swan remained, the Central and the Stanley were axed. The Stanley is quite a small building, really. Starts to get really small when you devote upstairs to flats with adequate fire escapes, etc.

11 hours ago, Anthony Ingham said:

Are engineers ever likely to want or be politicians?  The two things seem diametrically opposed to me.

Lack of progress/reversal of progress in STEM is almost always due to politics, at a macro or micro level. It is possible to care about politics because you see what the political numbnuts are doing with your chosen field.

A journalist is defined as 'one who keeps a journal'.

Always thought Gandeys were serial litterers; The circus is here for a week or two but their posters are on any building they can get away with, rotting away all year round.

If you were a snidey utility provider that wanted to extract more money from your customers, why would you want to do it via a costly replacement of meters when you could simply increase tariffs?

13 hours ago, Mysteron said:

Sadly, I'm a lost cause because I'm uneducated and a sheeple.  Unlike them.  

It's a cult. The cult tells the uneducated that they're gifted, special and better than all the rest, a feeling they've perhaps wanted to feel all their lives. For them, shouting 'educate yourself' to others is the ultimate thrill because they were never good enough academically to be the professional people they are emulating.

Reminds me of the Melanesian cargo cults but in this case they're cosplaying as lawyers, medics, biologists, etc.

1 hour ago, HeliX said:

The "people would still gamble if we didn't facilitate it" argument is utter piss by the way. A lame attempt to absolve ourselves of responsibility of the harms gambling causes. Feel free to apply the same argument to people trafficking, murder for hire, etc etc.

Adults should be free to gamble if they so wish (with plenty of controls and help available to mitigate the risk for those who struggle with addiction), but acting like we have no moral responsibility for people's wellbeing because "well, they'd do it anyway if it wasn't with us!" is tosh.

I would say the argument is subtly different. It's not absolving from responsibility as much as accepting that removing online gambling businesses from the Isle of Man would not help people on the island struggling with gambling addictions.

The protesters likely drove past betting shops, supermarkets with National Lottery stands and pubs with fruit machines to congregate outside of a business that mostly works with businesses located outside of the UK.

16 minutes ago, Derek Flint said:

Or at least I was for the weekend....

I was over last weekend for some family business. The Manxman was 'great but late' both ways, and it was a joy to bump in to our many friends around the North. Food out at Milntown and The Hawthorn was good too. 

The trip home is always difficult emotionally. I love the rock passionately, but returning does bring in to focus the general feel of decline. Folk are trying really hard in retail and hospitality, but are being hit with rent increases. The 'bomb sites' remain undeveloped and there's just that feeling that despite  the goodness of the community, a brave face prevails against some real difficulties.

Reading the other threads on stuff like getting a credit card means there are further challenges for residents that makes the offer for incomers really hard to sell. I'm increasingly concerned as to where the golden egg of recovery is going to come from. The island plan seems to offer little.

What is to be done?

 

If I had left the island and was missing it terribly, maybe regretting my decision I'd write something like this.

16 hours ago, Roger Mexico said:

And I'm not sure he does need "help", not least because he shows no sign that he would ever accept it.  He's not insane, he's just wrong.  Wrong not just in his particular beliefs about specific things (though he is) but in his belief in the way he thinks he is entitled to impose them on other people.  He's bad, not mad.

I agree, Courtenay is very unlikely to accept help because right now because he's never felt better. His belief system is constantly telling him that he's special, he's gifted, that he's one of the enlightened few. He's buzzing; he can't wait to get up every morning, march into town in his blue shirt and leer at passers by.

19 minutes ago, Declan said:

So is Mr Love-Rash, a former journalist,  saying that when he tweeted "please take care" to a stalker, on the day he was sentenced to prison, he was actually asking that the stalker "takes care" in how he raises issues in future? 

And rather than apologise for expressing himself so badly, he blames Dr A for getting the wrong end of the stick and the public for responding with the "wrong sort of heat". 

Giving him the benefit of the doubt perhaps, but I read his post originally as being tongue in cheek. A sort of 'bye-bye, deary' with feigned affection. He clouded this with his personal views about Abbotswood, admittedly.

On 3/1/2024 at 12:18 PM, ricardo said:

I don’t intend to return to the forum

1 hour ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Going by the lack of remorse seemingly shown, he'll probably see himself as some kind of martyr. Bloke should have been ordered some kind of mental health counselling or the like.

The verdict some weeks ago made him seemingly double his efforts, at least as was visible on on his Twitter account.

For those who thought a 7 gig file for 2 hours of speech was a tad excessive...

19 minutes ago, swoopy2110 said:

And strangely enough, they all have the same views / failed in their original professions. It's like a cult where you can't buy into just one conspiracy theory, you've got to go for the whole lot.

Every crank theory has to fight for its own survival, or it gets forgotten about. The crank theories that refer to and support other theories are mutually doing each other a favour and tend to stick around more.

3 hours ago, ricardo said:

In short there is an ongoing and concerted campaign to de-populate the World, ie; kill us.

2 minutes ago, Wake Up Call said:

Clever people choose to live in better weather and enjoy plenty of bars and restaurants. This place can't even be arsed to organise a plan for a bus station.

When I lived there the cleverest people drove around in Aston Martins on an island with a maximum speed limit of 40 mph.

3 minutes ago, IOM said:

But I am not sure it is island hopping that is driving the numbers. If you take a look they have around 8 flights a day to Heathrow and Gatwick served by BA and EasyJet . These will be 156 seater or 180 seater planes . Compare that to the Isle of Man with currently on most days 1 flight a day to Gatwick ( EasyJet 156 seats ) and  one flight a day to Heathrow (Loganair 76 seats ) . They have much much stronger connectivity and regular flights and times that in my opinion helps drive passenger movements. 

 No I agree that they do seem to be doing better. Jersey is the centre hub airport for a total population of about 170,000 people, so I don't know, maybe we should potentially see over twice the flight connections the IOM gets if they were compared?

10 hours ago, IOM said:

It’s being proactive in this way that likely drives circa 1.3m through their airport ( 2022) compared to Isle of Man ( 0.6m ) . The relative difference is huge and in no way proportional to the difference in population. Probably just one example of many . 

Indeed, but the Channel Islands are an archipelago which necessitates quite a bit of air travel between the islands for its own residents. External visitors might want to go to Guernsey or Alderney but must do it via Jersey, for example. So there's a lot of 'island hopping' in that locality that we simply don't have here, and I have always been curious as to how that is represented in their air travel statistics.

15 hours ago, ricardo said:

I'm sure you must be right

 

 

 

 

If somebody described to me a picture where there was a group of determined, ignorant people repeatedly not listening to sense, lining themselves up for failure and humiliation, whilst someone with their feet on the ground and a reasonably objective point of view was pointing out their mistakes in vain, the person standing on the riverbank would not be representing your point of view, put it that way.

In fact, to extend the metaphor, the conspiracy theory sailing team repeatedly plummets off the cliff face of humiliation, lands at the bottom and willingly climbs back to the top to give it another go.

The fact that your cult occasionally hits the truth by pure coincidence amongst a multitude of bad takes does not prove that your methods are sound or that you know remotely what you're talking about - a broken clock is accurate twice a day, but it doesn't make it a reliable timepiece.

1 hour ago, ricardo said:

Fair point!

This is like every interaction I have with the conspiracy lot.

• "Here's a picture of..." - turns out to be bollocks
• "Here is a recording of..." -turns out to be bollocks.
• "They're doing this [technical thing]" - person with skills and knowledge of [technical thing] proves it to be bollocks.
• Where did you get your 'research? - A highly reputable resource known as a YouTube video link nestled amongst woo-woo grifts like 5G reflecting amulets and other such nonsense in Telegram.

But my guess is that you will not be shaken by this one bit because you've basically joined a cult that repeatedly tells you you're special. No doubt they'll say that everyone on here is a sheeple and not ready to see the amazing wisdom you possess.
 

28 minutes ago, ricardo said:

However, that is the belief of far more people than you might imagine - only a few of whom are 'morons’ or feeble minded.

People can be very intelligent and still suffer from delusions or paranoia - 'They want to poison us, they're surveilling us, they're lying to us, I'm especially gifted and insightful and the ordinary people can't see it' - all common themes in the conspiracy theory community that are also symptoms of psychosis.

For the most part whenever I read output from the usual sources and they move onto certain subjects where I do have knowledge and experience, I can immediately see that it is risible gibberish and I have no further reason to examine the remaining parts of their argument.

6 minutes ago, ricardo said:

World Trade Centre...

Two things strike me on that subject (pun not intended).
1. Like most of these theories, it requires an absolute absence of baseline education on the part of the "conspiracist" on the subject matters of ballistics, groundworks, geology, architecture, metallurgy, fire prevention etc. This comes as standard with all popular conspiracy theories.
2. It's like a 'Moon Landings Were Faked' claim - There are countless hostile powers who would love to muddy the waters and claim that the US government demolished a building in their own city, but don't, just like Russia/USSR could have made the claim that the US landing on the moon was faked, but they didn't.
 

13 minutes ago, ricardo said:

untouched

^Doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
You saw a couple of camera angles that, to you, did not sufficiently show enough damage to cause a collapse. That doesn't prove it was not damaged.

It's all driven from some baseline delusions, no? Some hidden 'they' are poisoning us, want to control us, want to track us, - all to appeal to a paranoid mindset.