Roger Mexico

I don't actually think that Duty Free is much of a factor in the what success there is for Guernsey as a cruise destination. It's certainly not mentioned in their guide to those arriving on cruise ships. And of course cruise ships offer their own duty-free shopping when outside territorial waters. What Guernsey and indeed Orkney have as a cruise destination is position. They both make a convenient stop-off on the way between other places - to/from Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea in the case of Orkney; to/from Southern Europe for Guernsey. The Isle of Man simply doesn't have the same geographical advantage. Even those ships coming up the Irish Sea have better-known alternatives such as Dublin or Liverpool. So any cruise ship coming to the Isle of Man is coming because it wants to go there. Building more facilities won't help much. There are numerous other reasons why this is is a spectacularly daft idea even by the standards of capital works proposed on the Island, many of which have been mentioned. But the Isle of Man basically just isn't a very good cruise ship destination - in part and paradoxically because it does have a lot to offer as a holiday destination. People prefer to spend longer here than a day. That's not to say that some cruises will want to stop here - mainly smaller specialised ones and things can be done to encourage them. But the idea that we are a suitable destination for enormous cruise ships is idiotic.

That's my immediate worries about the idea that the private sector is somehow a solution. And even such 'private' solutions have a habit of gobbling up large amounts of public money for no return - look at the Garden Bridge in London for a recent example. Of course in the Isle of Man we have the additional risk that the project can end up in the hands of a 'local' subsidiary that goes under at the worst possible time, leaving the UK parent walking away with bulging pockets and no responsibility.

or even a 'head of tourism' would they have been considered appropriate to add their opinion ? According to his LinkedIn he's still there at the DED: Though it also says that he's based in "Winchcombe, Gloucestershire", so maybe the job of Director consists of standing in the West Midlands, pointing vaguely North and shouting "It's up thataway!". Certainly his internet profile is extremely sparse which him being mentioned in very few news items over those two and a third years. Given the scope of the role and the number of high profile situations that have occurred even in the last year over the Villa, the TT and so on, you would have expected him to be more visible. Instead he seems to have spent 16 months producing a Destination Management Plan, which no one seems to have taken any notice of. And, er, that's it.

And people say that satire is dead ...

On the contrary, leaving cancellations till as late as possible will indeed 'suit the coffers' of the Steam Packet as even a moment's thought will show. Before any announcement is made, those still wishing to travel may try to transfer their bookings to other sailings, paying transfer charges and possible upgrades on top. Once the cancellation as been announced the Company is forced to find alternative sailings at no extra cost for those booked with them. But customers who risk leaving it to that point may have difficulty in re-booking or there may not be capacity. So late cancellation forces some to pay extra or risk not being able to travel. It may well be that leaving cancellations till as late as possible is done for other reasons - they don't like cancelling sailings and leaving options open to as late as possible may mean they don't have to. But it can't be denied that there are also financial benefits in the policy.

'Some time' indeed. To revisit a post I made back in January 2012: So he's actually been off for nearly five years and was paid far more than the equivalent people in much larger jurisdictions. It all goes to show just how costly and slow the Manx legal system is. And how nothing much has been done over that period to reform it.

Serves you right for being so bloody cryptic! All first posts should link to the relevant news item when possible. Given that it's not the first time that Oliphant Smith has stood for Council, you'd have though he would have some idea of what the job entailed. Instead he's cost the ratepayers money for the initial election which otherwise would have been unopposed and now for a by-election as well.

There's an interesting item in the latest Tynwald Agenda, hidden away in the Schedule - supplementary capital authorities for 2015-16. This is a mere £8 million plus[1] where spending has gone over that originally budgeted for in 2015-16. It is claimed that much of this is due to 'timing' in other words stuff due to be done in 2016-17 being carried out ahead of time. Some of that may be true, but, because the evidence for that is authorisation being obtained in the February Budget, it's easy to put an over-run you already know will happen into next year in the Budget and 'then bring it forward' - even though it was always going to be spent in 2015-16[2]. As no one will be surprised, the biggest appearance on the list, both in terms of number of items and total spend is from the DoI. Item 25 is the 'Strategic Highway Refurbishment Programme', under which resurfacing the Sloc would presumably come. This had an original budget of £1,625,000. Far from being underspent as Gawne claimed (justifying the spending on the Sloc) the DoI actually spent £2,439,436 - going a massive 50% over budget. Some of this is claimed to be work brought forward, whether accurately or not, but £460,683 is pure overspend which they haven't even tried to hide. So rather than 'needing to spend the money on something', they were spending money they didn't have. [1] £1,650,000 is for the purchase of the Former Drill Hall - Tromode by the DHA, which may be a separate story, but technically isn't an overspend. [2] For example you would have though the Peel Road works would have been completed a while back, but £103,111 was budgeted in February for 2016-17, which somehow then got spent in the next six weeks.

Like Frances I got confused by this. There were 850 deaths on the Island in 2015 - an average of 2.3 a day. So maybe you could round that up to 3 with 20,000 or so extra bike fans. But where the 14 comes from heaven knows. Maybe it's the Class A drugs.

Bell been in as more complete control of the IOM Government than any of his predecessors ever managed. He has centralised all sorts of strategic functions into the Cabinet Office of which he remains in charge (no dedicated Minister as was intended). He was effectively running everything during the Brown years, though Brown would no doubt intervene to stop anything that would effect him personally. As we saw over the Post Office he takes decisions without even telling those nominally in charge (though without the bravery to them sack them personally). I suspect CoMin meetings consist mainly of those there being told what is happening. Given the sort of people he has picked as Ministers, inability to stand up to him seems to be the main qualification. There is no evidence he has ever stood up to the civil service, no matter what they are proposing. When things have become too dysfunctional he has tended to reorganise everything at great expense rather than get rid of the completely incompetent. Even then his refusal to make anyone redundant has meant either enormous pay-offs and pensions or promotion as a way of rewarding failure. He is the worst sort of leader - one who centralises power but is afraid to use or incapable of doing so. To now claim that he would do all sorts of reforms but everyone else is stopping him would be typical. It would also be untrue.

He said that he expected to be standing again and would be formally declaring soon. Having retired from the civil service he presumably will have more time to campaign as well (he came second last time - a long way behind Howard Quayle but beating the existing MHK). Of course he would only need to repeat that to get elected, as Middle (with the addition of only Santon) is now a two-seater.

According to what was said at the meeting the report on the Interim Census is expected to be out some time early next year, though it's possible that there will some headline figures released this Autumn[1]. The truth is that no one is really sure because this year's Census included an option for online entry. Only about 3,000 households seem to have taken advantage of this initially and on that basis I'd be surprised to see it get much over 20% of the returns, but no one knows if this will speed the process up - or even slow it down, IT processes being as they are. A bigger problem may be how reliable the figures will be. Previous Censuses have used a system where census collectors go door to door chasing up missing forms and checking out which dwellings are permanently occupied or not. I'm not sure if this was done this year and this may make the figures less reliable. [1] Paul Craine said that it might be out in August, but I would bet that anything 'controversial' (eg a fall in population) will be delayed till after the election.

I was highly amused by the enthusiastic, nay drooling, coverage that Manx Radio gave Bell's speech: It's so clearly a government-written piece from the Court of the Tangerine Emperor, very unlike the normal, briefer style of Manx Radio's in-house stuff and of course government press bumph usually gets put out first thing in the morning. The way in which the first para is a misformatted sub-heading is also a giveaway. (Not that I'm disagreeing with what Bell said - indeed some of us have been saying he should take this line for a long time. However as usual he seems to have waited to be told what to do by Downing Street).

...and me ...and Graham C is our MHK BUT the rest is correct, lovely new roads! But the real question is who will be standing in the new Malew, Arbory and Castletown Constituency (may also contain traces of Sloc)

It doesn't seem to be that 'unsayable' given that Cameron was saying exactly the same things according to the Guardian[1]: In fact there seems to have been a coordinated line on this with Bermuda and the Caymans saying very similar things. Whether this came from Cameron or not is another matter, though given that the UK is as big a tax haven as the other three, interests will coincide. We may be seeing a tactic for slowing down the various anti-corruption and transparency measures that other states are demanding as the US will be unwilling and difficult to change (there are constitutional problems). Of course with a Vice President from Delaware, things are unlikely to change till next January, but I can't see either Trump or Clinton changing much. At the moment if any of the CDs or BOTs are likely to be affected, it seems to be the BVI who are being set up as the bad boys as they don't even seem to be pretending to cooperate. But maybe they just have a lot of dirt of the UK Cabinet and other powerful types and will pull the pin out if they get genuinely threatened. [1] Yes I know that the Guardian's Diplomatic Editor, Patrick Wintour, seems unaware of the difference between a Crown Dependency and a British Overseas Territory, but journalistic appointments for a long time have been made on the basis of who you know, not what you know.

Quatermass and the (Money) Pit.

But it's not even true - and Gawne admitted it to the Select Committee: So there was no need to spend the money by a certain date - they wouldn't have lost it. The other thing in what he said, that I find extraordinary, is that Treasury, which you would expect to be trying to cut back on spending and make savings at least that's what they tell everyone else they have to do) was instead the Department that was going "Spend! Spend! Spend!!" There's another point here about priorities. Gawne and Black[1] claim that they don't direct the schedule of road improvements, but it's unclear who does and why. There doesn't seem to be any criteria for assessing which roads need to be done most urgently or of reviewing that list as circumstances change. So when there are resources spare, they end up scratching around trying to find something to do on the grounds that it will be easy or will look good, not that it's the most important action to take. [1] One of the odd things about these Select Committee sessions is that you'd expect there to be a whole range of DoI senior managers present to answer questions on their particular areas - the Committee could let them know roughly what areas they intended to raise. Instead Gawne and Black (who is pretty clueless at the best of times) spend their time waffling about things they have no knowledge of and promising to get back with information.

The Minutes of the Standing Committee on Environment and Infrastructure for 15 April are now available (they weren't last night) which was the meeting that Gawne made his 'flippant' remarks at - so it wasn't a throwaway remark in an interview or anything. I'll quote what Nick Black said (lines 110 on), editing to shorten: That doesn't look to me that they had a nice prioritised list of road maintenance work that needed doing and they just moved down the list. It's not like the Sloc was scheduled to be done on October and they did it six months early. It's pretty clear that, when some of their big (unpopular) schemes fell through they were desperately searching around for something to do. Not on the basis of what had the most need or would provide the best value for road users, but on the grounds that it was easy to do and would "keep the local construction industry going".

What is really shocking about the Sloc resurfacing (apart from the price) is the impression that there didn't even seem to be any plans to do anything about the road until the 'need' to spend this money. It's not like it was in the proposed budgets already and they brought it forward a few months into a different financial year. There doesn't seem to be any schedule of works to be done that was adjusted by circumstance - the minimum you would expect in well-run organisation. As with so much done by the DoI and its predecessors, you get the impression that what work gets done is dictated by the convenience of the contractors and the whims of civil servants. Whether it is also influenced by politicians wanting to be seen 'doing something' in their constituency is another matter. Though I don't get the impression that Gawne's constituents are much impressed by his demonstrations of affection so far (that roundabout, the endless work on Church Road, that other roundabout).

Hansard knows everything:

Sorry but this is nonsense - even if it is widely believed nonsense. Neither ISAs nor pension contributions would normally count as 'avoiding' tax because the primary purpose they are chosen is not to avoid taxes. Any more than people choosing Jaffa Cakes over Hobnobs is avoiding tax because you don't pay VAT on the first. People invest in ISAs or pensions because they wish to save for various purposes. Governments choose to encourage this by giving certain tax advantages. Savers may consider those advantages when deciding how to save, but would still choose some forms of saving anyway. As to gifts, it depends on the circumstances and motive. Most gifts are given to help need or as a reward, but it may be that tax avoidance is involved. For example Cameron's mother's gift to him is unlikely to be because they couldn't afford new shoes for the kids or the car had conked out and they needed a new one. So it presumably was tax avoidance. But most gifts don't come in that category. Just because something may be used for tax avoidance it doesn't mean that every case of it is or even that the vast majority of examples are. [1] There are situations in the UK with higher rate taxpayers making contribution that do indeed count as tax avoidance. But most people will not be in a position to benefit.

Well of course something can be immoral and legal (nothing can be 'logical' of itself - that refers to a process). You can't say that anything is moral purely because it is legal, unless you want your morals to be defined by the House of Keys. And good luck with telling your spouse that it is perfectly moral, even admirable, to cheat on them because it isn't against the law. As the whether 'anyone' would do it YouGov asked this week: There's some political differences, but even those who voted Conservative in 2015 are opposed 50-42 (and UKIP 67-26). There's a difference in class, with ABC1s less anti as are Londoners (against their normal political leanings) and women. YouGov also asked: So far from everyone being willing to do do so, as you imply, only about a quarter would.

Gladys I was just making the point that if a register isn't open there's no way of outsiders knowing that it actually contains the information it claims to and so it may be treated with some scepticism. The same would apply to any country's closed register of course.

Meanwhile here is an interesting question from a poll done by YouGov on Tuesday/Wednesday: If you ignore the difference between British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, which I suspect not many people answering would be aware of, it shows there is a sizeable, but not majority, backing for action whether the territories like it or not. Interestingly this doesn't differ as much politically as you may think. Those who voted Labour in 2015 were 43% in favour of unilateral action, but so were 38% of UKIP and 24% of Tories.

The Government press release says a bit more: But of course running a a "central electronic database of beneficial ownership information", even with presumably very limited access, means that it will be easy for a future UK Government to force it to be more open - remember that the UK can legislate for the Island if needs be on any matter - and often does in things with an international dimension. That's before the risk of leaks and hacking. Of course once revealed, the database may show all entities are really owned by Mickey Mouse. But it may put off the evil day for a bit.