Roger Mexico

Reporting from Day 3 (and presumably 4) of the trial (ie Thursday/Friday last week) here : https://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/fraud-trial-hears-letter-used-by-isle-of-man-company-director-in-talks-to-buy-airline-was-fake-685451

Of course the interesting thing about that article is that it reveals that: Between January 2022 and December last year, just over £470,000 in overpayments were made - the same period saw £1.1m in underpayments. So if anything the Government is in profit. But of course there's no context - whether there was more in Keys we'll find out later. What percentage of payments (both in number and total) does this represent? Are there systematic errors here and where does responsibility lie (it could be incorrect information coming from Departments)? Is this level of errors normal by historic standards or do these two year represent things getting worse? That said, it may be part of a pattern we see across a range of government services in the last few years. As the number of civil servants increase, many of the services provided by them to the public become worse. Presumably this is because rather than recruit and train more people to actually do the work, they prefer to employ more managers and their hangers-on whose 'leadership' will somehow transform the situation.

They did until he stopped getting Covid money for them. Then he decided to turn them into permanent lettings (which he may have been doing anyway).

No but not surprising either. If you look at the current immigration rules, they're 928 pages long and have changed five times in the last year. What is more the office will probably be so small that staff won't be able to specialise in a particular type of visa, so they'll have to know all of it.

I suspect the main benefit is to divide up the workload of opposition. Rather than all of them working on every area of policy and departmental responsibility, they can split it up and concentrate on particular areas where they may have some expertise. This is one of the genuine uses of party politics, the ability to provide a more coherent opposition.

The piece is here: https://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-company-director-used-forged-government-documents-to-try-to-buy-airline-685253

It looks just like they haven't loaded any results yet (understandably given the amount and how recent it was) and that's just a placeholder.

Looking at Wannenburgh's actual question: In how many cases overpayment of wages to a public sector employee has taken place in the last three years; what the reasons were; what actions were taken to recover the monies; and what measures have been put in place to alleviate any financial stress and emotional harm to the individuals concerned. I suspect this is something he's been approached by a constituent about. The public servant probably isn't someone particularly senior, if it was one of the favoured many it would be quietly written off for fear of upsetting them. It's most likely a manual worker who's been paid the wrong rate of overtime and they're now trying to claim years' worth of money. Assuming it's even valid. I may just be some 'clever' person in HR trying to 'save' money - rather like when Douglas Council tried to take money off that poor man stuck in Cyprus at the start of Covid.

Adding to code99's point, pre-Brexit, VAT had already been reduced to 5% on sanitary products in the UK, so already wasn't significant. It was also reduced to zero on "reusable period underwear" at the start of this year (though it took the IOM till March to notice). And as Harry Lamb's link shows, a reduction in VAT is now possible in the EU as well. How much good any of this taxation virtue-signalling actually does to improve the lot of those who it is supposed to help is another matter. We've seen a couple of decades of such adjustments on certain products, the plastic bag tax and minimum alcohol pricing and the main effect is always to increase the profits of the supermarkets, while making life actually harder for the least-well off.

No, transit passengers have always been exempt. The same usually applies to connecting flights, though you need to be careful as the rules are complicated.

It's not odd at all it's the normal way that property refurbishment is done for local authorities. These are 18 local authority houses, dating from the 1930s, that are said to need new roofs and windows. Taking out a loan is the standard way this happens and required government approval. There's full details of everything here: https://braddan.im/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Petition-Coronation-and-Jubilee-roofs-2.pdf Now there are all sorts of general questions involved here as to the system and the costs and the way bidding happens and so on. But none of them are the particular fault of Braddan, assuming that there is a real need for this work to be done.

It's what local media do all over the world. According the Gef (which loves this sort of thing): Now living in the Wirral, Roisin moved to the Isle of Man from Ireland when she was nine years old and went to Ramsey Grammar School. Having worked for a travel company for several years, Roisin took the brave step to change career and move into the world of interior design after helping redecorate her parents’ home near Ramsey. So there will be lots of people around who know her from school or know here parents and will be interested. The best thing is that the DfE hasn't tried to claim responsibility (at least yet).

For completeness, here's the relevant bit from the Upfront Footy tweet that contains a full match report (to this point) as well: It's not clear why the referee didn't resume the game once he had been deterred from hitting anyone.

Tuesday and Wednesday overnight Heysham sailings are often designated for the carriage of dangerous goods and the number of cars and passengers severely restricted. So that may have been the case here.

It may be one of those where regulations differ a bit between UK and here and Tesco organised everything from head office without checking. The Castletown shop's in a conservation area, so regulation on things like signage will be tighter - as it is in the UK - but Tesco may have missed that. The application is here: https://services.gov.im/planningapplication/services/planning/planningapplicationdetails.iom?ApplicationReferenceNumber=24%2F00269%2FD

As already pointed out, it's not difficult to find out her academic qualifications, but it does give rise to the question just how many members of Tynwald do have a STEM background. If you include medicine Allinson and Barber qualify, but everyone else tends to have agriculture, media, business or politics. LegCo is actually better with Kelsey being an aeronautical engineer, Mercer in IT, Craine a geographer and Henderson a nurse. In comparison, according to this study: Of the 541 MPs with higher education degrees in the 2015-2017 Parliament, only 93 (17%) held degrees in STEM subjects; for comparison, 46% of UK students in 2019 graduated in STEM subjects.

Virtue-signalling isn't about whether views are 'genuine' or not but whether the activity is effective towards whatever ends are supposed to be intended. Removing the vote of the Bishop while keeping those of the other unelected eight, just shows there's no real commitment to democracy. One of the disappointments of the 'reformed' LegCo is that they seem to act as even more of a block vote for CoMin than it did when it was the Home of Rest for Retired MHKs and you can't help feeling that Hooper was motivated as much by the previous Bishop having backed Callister against the DHSC bureaucrats as anything else. But then petty spite is pretty much all the DHSC has as a job these days.

Neither of those examples really fit. Tea Junction aren't closing down till May 2025, so it's clearly viable at current rents and not having regulation/tax issues. It's the rent that's the problem. There's been no explanation of why Looney's is closing, it may well be personal reasons, judging by the speed and the way it's happening. Government as a landlord may be a problem - look at Dhoon and I've heard other stories - but the main one quoted appears to be staffing judging by the LVA proposals. And that's has got less to do with regulation than them prioritising 'business' for many years in the shape of the construction and property sectors. If anything it stems from lack of regulation and a reluctance to interfere with those.

Quite a bit higher, according to the CIA. The Isle of Man is #177 at 10.5 births per 1000 people crude birth rate, while Japan is at #225 out of 228 with only 6.9 per 1000. That said I can't find a figure yet for 2023 births, but it was only 586 in 2022, which would be about 6.9 per 1000 as well. So the CIA may be basing it on old projections.

There seem to be a number of bishoprics vacant even longer than Sodor and Man, so it may just be that the CofE is just slow at appointing them at the moment. I suspect the hierarchy would like to abolish it, because it's an awkward anomaly, but it would incredibly complicated to do because it's been around for so long.

I don't think that's true. Simply because Hooper is so full of himself that he obviously thinks that his recent behaviour has been impeccable and universally acclaimed except from a few teachers who had it in for him since RGS, no doubt because they were jealous of his transcendent genius. He wouldn't think any cats - live, dead or Schrödinger's - necessary.

They haven't got rid of the Bishop at all. Firstly they'd still be a member of LegCo and Tynwald, just without a vote. And secondly the Bill has to go through LegCo itself and we know the members of that are opposed and will probably vote it down. The truth is that this is just virtue-signalling, both from Hooper and most of those who supported it. And like most virtue-signalling, it was designed not to do what it claims to do - increase democracy in this case - but to distract from the the fact that there was no real intention to do anything effective.

What do you think the e stands for? And of course those disciplines and many other are based on mathematical principles and those with STEM qualifications have long been sought by finance companies of all sorts, including those from disciplines which appear unrelated (such as astrophysics) because of the experience of handling mathematically complex situations.

It's very interesting isn't it. What struck me was the evidence that King Gaming had so few visitors and so presumably punters and income. Which leads not just to questions about where the money is coming from (with all its implications of money laundering) but also about what all those people up at Victoria Road do all day. And how many of them are there? In a neat coincidence, an answer to a Written Question from Julie Edge was published today. Effectively it was asking for an update to some data that came out in an FoI last July and was worded: How many work visas have been issued since October 2021 by broken down by a) category of visa, b) nationality, c) salary, d) public or private sector and e) role within that sector. There's a lot of information there, including the fact that the total number of such visas in the last two and a half years is 2,100 (there will also be dependents associated with many of these). The vast majority are for the private sector (91% of employees) and 339 of them were Chinese citizens, the second most common.

Well-qualified for commenting on Manx police investigations then.