Mac the Knife

Neil, No not Jerry, if you bothered to study my profile most unlikely to be Jerry. Do not leap to uneducated assumptions Jerry actually represented me or companies in which I was involved in the past withsadly not great distinction! I feel however someone who is under the "cosh" to my mind unfairly, at least deserves to have his side of the case put forward, even though he has not asked me to do so and I have not spoken to Jerry for some five years. Before jumpimg to such hasty conclusions, perhaps study the full transcript of the judgement.

I have some sympathy with Jerry Carter, although I do not believe him to be the best advocate and it appears that he was apparently deficient in his duties here, one needs however to read the full report to understand the whole murky episode. Jonathan Irving was apparently a "naive". buisnessman after some 30 years plus in business, so naive that he apparently provided Mr Gilbey with figures which were according to the report concocted to get a £70K loan. In addition, money was taken from the Festival company to subsidise SHL, which by itself, in a potential insolvency of SHL would have probably been deemed illegal. SHL failed to pay employees tax and NI to a very substantial sum, which was why the Manx government were pursuing the debts of SHL The Manx Government had also arrested his own personal house in respect of tax debts, I believe in respect of both personal tax debts and possibly in connection with SHL. Was Jerry Carter that wrong therefore in believing the whole Irvings empire was insolvent? I supect that as a result of this judgement there may be a substantial claim against Jerry Carter's firm for damages. We shall have to see what happens, but I wonder about the justice of it all. There is no doubt that Jonathan Irving helped develop a somewhat depressed Peel, through some of his property developments, but equally sad for all those parties involved who then lost out through the collapse of his empire, especially any creditors or employees. Perhaps like Icarus he flew to close to the Sun and believed in his own infallibility!

Well it looks as if we may have to eat our words on the Pinewood Investment and call Mr Teare an investment genius! Article in yesterday's Sunday Times, saying that a consortium bid is imminent. The shares are up to pounds 5.71 today. Perhaps we should have punted more (only joking), but it will help offset some of the public pension shortfall. I am sure we will get a laudatory press release if a bid is forthcoming and we bank the profit. Trebles all round!

An excellent exposition by Newsnight. He/she isto be congratulated on the research and to my mind plain explanation of the total conflict of interest of Steven Christian and the obfuscation of Mr Teare. In addition the manner in which both Mr Teare and Mr Bell reply to genuine and valid questions from both MHK's and people like Newsnight is demeaning and in many cases downright rude. Whether this bluster is merely trying to hide the true facts is also open to question. All one can do is plug away at the facts as Newsnight is currently doing. It would be interesting to see whether his post if framed as a letter to IOM Newspapers would be published,they currently seem to publish some rather lengthy boring stuff and this is far more germane. As raised elsewhere if they had any investigative skills, they would be following this up themselves. Keep up the good work Newsnight