Roger Mexico

It's more complicated than that, as it usually is with demographics. The drop in school-age kids is mainly in primary-age ones at the moment. Here's the 2021 Census numbers by age: Age Total 0 657 1 674 2 699 3 728 4 725 5 790 6 810 7 819 8 890 9 936 10 945 11 979 12 1025 13 919 14 918 15 884 Obviously you need to add 3 to all the ages to get the current situation. As you can see there's a bit of a population bulge in those who should be secondary school at the moment, but then it drops. So there will be pressure in numbers, but only for a few years. Peel has also seen a lot of population growth with an increase of 51% in the 20 years before 2021 (the population of the Island rose 10% in the same period). Most of that growth was in the first ten years of that and again these will be people who settled then, whose kids are now reaching secondary age. There may also be complications due to immigration, the 2023 Population report claimed: The large rise in 2022 is in part accounted for by a historically large influx of 152 children between the ages of 5 and 16, suggesting an increase in the number of families relocating to the Island during this period. and there are hints of this in the visa figures for dependents as well. From what I've heard the main pressures from this are in Douglas and on primary schools (and a lot of the problem is that the primary places are in the wrong bits of Douglas) but there could be some spill-over to Peel as well.

Of course if he was asking such questions while he was a Minister, that might explain why he was sacked.

Oh quite, hence my 'on the whole' and I think he may have tried to pull the same trick on a few charities that were closely dependent on the government as well as the disgraceful behaviour over patient transport. Weren't there also moves to insist parents/teachers moving a few kids around in minibuses had to have PSV licences? It was typical IOMG dislike of anything they don't control directly as well as trying to justify someone taken on as a minibus manager and the purchase of all those Mercs.

Big boat in the bay.

It wasn't (on the whole) charity minibuses that Longworth tried to take over, but the school ones, so as to force them to use BV vehicles and drivers. That bus has been there donkeys years. At one stage there was a requirement for passengers to ferried between plane and terminal if the distance was over a certain limit. How often this ever happens is another matter. Presumably the vehicle is an old one and may not even be licenced for road use.

In my case it's the opposite I hope that keeping the anomaly of the Bishop's vote there will mean that pressure to reform LegCo more generally will continue. Otherwise it will just be a virtue-signalling reform, like Blair getting rid of most of the hereditary peers in 1999. Since then the Lords benches have just been refilled with cronies of various sorts, usually with no outside experience except for sucking up to the right people. In a lot of cases it's just about giving someone a pension for life. The very limited reforms after Lisvane have if anything made things worse. At least most of the previous MLCs had previously faced the electorate one time or other. Now it's just another way of giving power (or at least position) to yet more of the people who never need to take the views of the public into consideration. We see similar things happening with all these arms-length boards. Because the Bishop's membership is not dependent on the goodwill of our MHKs and their civil service masters, taking their vote away will if anything make the place a little less widely based. Which may be the intention. What we need for LegCo are politicians who are answerable to the people, not the other way round.

Actually it seems to be the standard way of doing things. Here's the last one, Peter Eagles, "meeting Lieutenant Governor Sir Richard Gozney at Government House and government ministers" in May 2017 on the day his appointment was announced and the press releases sent out. Consecration and then installation take place later, sometimes many months later (Eagles' installation was in September), but they seem to start the meeting and greeting straight away. Interestingly they don't take up their LegCo post till they have been 'installed', Eagles didn't appear in Tynwald till October.

Not really. It's more to do with the way that the Bishop and other religious appointments were nominated by the Lords of Mann[1] and so were seen as part of the way the Lords governed the Island and thus part of LegCo who were the people who did this. It was probably the temporal power of the Bishop and Clergy that the people were more worried out than their spiritual control. [1] The Derbys/Atholls appointed the Bishop and other office holders up until the 19th century. The last was in 1814 when the 4th Duke put his nephew into the post, having kept it vacant until he was 30 and so old enough to be a Bishop.

There's some splendidly bitchy remarks in the commentary: We are tired of the local authority's high-handed and dismissive attitude - particularly by chair Christine Moughtin who should not only declare her interests and excuse herself from debates when licensed premises are discussed but should hang her head in shame at her opposition and eagerness to destroy so much which benefits the town. We have already had to suffer years of poor decision-making by Peel Town Commissioners. This year Oie Voaldyn was cancelled after Mrs Moughtin opposed it because a sponsor might compete with "nearby businesses" such as the one she works at. We have seen a failed planning application for an overblown, poorly thought-out clubhouse at the tennis courts - without any attempt to ask if ratepayers in Peel wanted to pay for it. We call for the board to immediately reverse its decision and assure the future of a facility which provides invaluable services to Peel. I do have to point out that Moughtin was the least popular of the Commissioners who were elected anyway. You can see all this becoming an election issue in the next LA elections in 2025 - which is of course before the lease expires.

From the location shot, no doubt it's another 'person in crisis' in Hanover House. Or maybe the same one. If they've any sense, they're on a percentage of the call-out bonuses.

Interestingly her statement says "[....] After many years visiting [the Island] as a guest I am thrilled to be called to make my home there" which suggests she's not a total stranger to the place. Otherwise her careers been very central London (she was a social worker before she was a priest). She's about 58-ish so she may be in place for around ten years (Bishops are supposed to retire at 70) hopefully a bit longer than previous ones.

Here they are if you're looking for a job. Apparently it's going to be called Odin's Thirsty Pidgeon with great originality. You'd have thought a Raven more in keeping.

To be honest I got the impression that it was a hastily-made up excuse that Caine had been fed for her team's not releasing the report that Thomas was asking for. Apart from anything else once the exhibition was set up and open on 20 April all the logistics and publicity would have been long sorted (even assuming they had much to do with it) and the ten of them would have been free to undertake the onerous task of uploading a report they've had for many months onto the internet. This wasn't even the only much-delayed report that Thomas asked about in Keys and I suspect there are other reasons for the delay of all these, possibly that releasing them would actually force the government to do something, which both Cannan and his civil service controllers thing would be a dreadful imposition. In fact I was actually surprised how little the Climate Change team had to do with GAIA. It seemed to be run by volunteers from the Church and the special events were organised by St Thomas's or the Manx Wildlife Trust. You would have thought it would have been the ideal opportunity to educate people and discuss what the government was going to do about things and there would be loads of associated workshops and seminars and the rest.

Were they colouring in the big balloon? It's cool, but would literally take one person a couple of days max to set up. You can listen to her rather feeble excuses here: https://intranet.tynwald.org.im/business/listen/AgainFiles/O-202401-1369a.mp3 Apparently the "very small climate team" of only ten people have been "very much caught up in the last month with the logistics and installation"[1] of GAIA and so far too busy to put a "communications plan into place" to publish a report that seems to have been already completed for many months. [1] Note that this doesn't imply they've been doing anything as vulgar as the logistics or installation themselves.

The trouble with the argument that you can't trust these people with sorting out assisted dying is that they're also in charge of the health service and everything else, so lots of unassisted dying (or not) and how people live. It's an argument for better politicians and public servants not against (or for) assisted dying. Ironically I suspect this legislation will get better scrutiny from them than 99% of the rest that passes through Tynwald. Simply because they know we are looking at them consider it. But a lot of the points that are being very validly raised are often things that affect other situations as well and need to be looked at there, by them and us.

If that were true it might actually be a good thing. If you have a temporary rise in work, it's sometime better to have people who can be called in to fill the gap rather than recruiting new ones to the permanent payroll. I actually suspect it's unlikely because 'retired' planning people often end up 'consulting' for those who they recently had to deal with.

You're wrong in the case of Employment Tribunals at least. The employee or ex-employee is almost always self-represented because legal aid can't be obtained for such a process and the winning side can't usually claim against the losing one for legal fees. If you look through recent judgements this is nearly always the case. It's only if you're wealthy or well-connected or have the support of a Union or professional body that there will be lawyers involved on your side (Ranson was fortunate enough to be all three). To some extent this is deliberately part of the system. The ideal is that both employer and employee represent themselves and the Tribunal adjudicates quickly and as informally as possible. That works with small companies and you'll see various cases there where the employer has been represented by a director of the company and the employee by themself. But with big corporations and especially the government there's a problem of 'inequality of arms' where an individual is up against specialist lawyers.

You've already mentioned this and if you think about it, it's the worst possible argument against the Bill. On a purely financial point, anyone who chooses to die in this way will be someone who is already costing Manx Care considerable amounts of money to support them in their condition. The longer they survive, the bigger the cost. So assisted dying will make that period shorter and so save the taxpayers money. As to civil servants, there is already a considerable bureaucracy around death (doctors, registrars, coroners, etc) and there's no reason to think it couldn't cope with a small number[1] of the annual total happening a bit differently. Oddly enough the only cost argument is the reverse of the first. Some people currently kill themselves because they are afraid of their condition causing them unbearable pain, discomfort and so on as it progresses and so they commit suicide when they are still physically able to do so. Obviously once dead their condition causes no more expense to the taxpayer. If they have the back-up of assisted dying, this means they still have agency over their death and will choose to live longer and so cost Manx Care more. "This Bill will prevent suicides" is not I suspect something its opponents would like to proclaim. [1] Looking at the Swiss figures for residents (ie excluding Dignitas, though that's much smaller) I reckon it's around 4% and Canada seems similar. This would equate to about 36 a year in the Island.

But it's always been like that. There simply isn't the space in the store, so staff have to restock continuously while open just to make sure there's anything on the shelves. What adds to the problem is that there isn't the storage behind the scenes to restock from in a lot of cases so the maximum stock that can be delivered may not be enough when there's extra pressure. In fact Tesco operate the same way anyway, but with more space and wider aisles you can at least dodge round the staff without you both having apologise every five seconds.

It's just a classic move from the right-wing playbook: "Let's distract the plebs with some 'Culture War' stuff, so they will ignore the complete mess we are making of all the things we actually are in control of". Except being Cannan, it's an incompetent attempt at even that. Partly because we know that assisted dying has heavy general support in the UK (here's a large poll from two months showing 75% - 14% support) and the Isle of Man is unlikely to differ that much. And there's no evidence that there's much appetite for such a referendum except for from a tiny minority of attention-seeking, bossy religious types. But it's also true that the whole topic is particularly unsuitable for a referendum because most people's informed opinion of the topic isn't "Yes" or "No" but "It depends". Quite rightly, people want to know the details of how it would operate. So the only valid referendum would be one after the Bill was ready to be signed into action and all the associated secondary legislation had been written and published and all the necessary practical measures had been set up and made public. And even such a referendum would be vulnerable to the objection that it might have got a different result if any of these factors were altered slightly. So you could have years of tweaking followed by yet another referendum. Even given Tynwald's delight in trying to find a way to kick the can down the road rather than make a decision, I can't see it being popular.

Yes see here (downloads): Of course it now relies on the DHSC to enact it, which I don't think has happened yet.

That's very interesting, because here is Alf Cannan announcing exactly six months ago saying that the Steam Packet wouldn't be subject to FoI and such impudence would undermine the position of the company. At the time people such as Chris Thomas were pointing out that he simply could make such a decision, it was against the current law. It looks like Cannan has finally realised or that CoMin has overruled him.

You'll be shocked, shocked to discover this did not happen: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14619136/jetski-romeo-splits-isle-of-man/ though the lady involved seems to have kept herself busy: Port Erin attack: Women jailed for assaulting woman in home https://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/courts/jet-ski-juliet-who-spat-at-police-officers-is-ordered-to-pay-them-ps250-each-557100 https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/trial-for-woman-accused-of-assaulting-and-then-intimidating-woman/

The travellers did themselves in the course of their daily lives, holidays etc plus some would have been paid by companies if they were travelling on business. Which? would have done this, like their other surveys, by asking members of their Connect panel about recent experiences (in the last three years in this case) of ferry travel. These are people who are subscribers to Which? and who keen enough to join this panel on top, so they are probably more critical interested in good service than average, but that would apply to their assessment of all the ferries they took. These people were asked to assess each operator and route combination they had used, but Which? seem to have combined routes run by the same operator where there weren't enough responses. The number who responded who used the Steam Packet would have been quite low (almost certainly under 100) because there weren't enough useful replies for some questions. Not according to the Steam Packet statement: In addition, last year, we delivered a fleet strategy proposal to the DOI that we believe will ensure the Company’s success in delivering what our customers and shareholders [plural] expect of us. We thought of nominating you to the Board, but you're clearly disqualified by knowing more than the management.

Well you can have a conspiracy to send someone to trial I suppose as well as one to protect someone who should be. Only last night I was reading about a government attempt to convict the Chief Constable of fraud. Mind you it was in 1911. (Other 1911 stories include anti-vaccinators being sent to prison and attempts to solve the Laxey sewage problem).