Freggyragh

The backgrounds of most MHKs fall into the following four categories: Failed business people; Failed government employees, Wealthy heirs looking for purpose in life; Activists (eg; religious / eco / socialist). Politics suits some of them and they go on to do do reasonably well — despite the vitriol they get. Not many people put themselves up for election, and many of those who do are desperately in need of the work and wouldn't have put themselves forward otherwise. Ripping in to them all the time, especially after they've taken pay cuts on principal, is not helping anyone, and certainly not encouraging better candidates to come forward in the future. This Island has a toxic political culture and it's no wonder the government is hellbent on turning the Island into a concrete debtors prison.

Get a round of applause for stating the obvious. 

Personally, if I had to generalise, then I'd say that I like muslims. That's a ridiculous generalisation of billions of people spanning the globe, but if that's the kind of thing we're doing here, well, I didn't start it. I'm not just thinking about the muslims in the NHS who have saved my family members' lives, but many of the ordinary ones I've met in muslim countries, specifically Pakistan, India, Afghanistan (around 1990), Malaysia,  Indonesia, Dubai, Qatar, and Nigeria, and the ones I've met in the US & UK. Of course I think their religion is nonsense, and yes, there are volatile, dangerous movements within Islam, but on the whole, I like them. 

What a turgid event. 

On 3/8/2024 at 8:48 PM, The Voice of Reason said:

Could I have had a Continental breakfast instead?

Sorry, can't staff the kitchen, or import the ingredients. Wouldn't sir prefer a share in the shit sandwich he voted for?

The traditional route into Manx politics is to have a go after losing your job or failing in business. Some are just bored toff's who have a go after growing bored of living on a trust fund, or the spouse's income — but the vast majority go into it as a last resort. Occasionally you get a Peter Karran, but they don't fit in and get rounded on sharpish. Not judging — someone's got to do it, and if they get a little jolly to Malta, well that's on the whole a small price to pay for keeping the absolute roasters they beat at the polls out of  Tynwald. Having said that, apart from Fowler obviously, the selection in Marown wasn't as awful as it was elsewhere. 

For the £40B per year that Brexit has cost Britain it could have delivered Breakfast — a hot cooked breakfast — to everyone, every day of the year. 

Americans, generally, don't travel much outside of the US, in fact less than half of then even have passports.

The Brits were like that until the mid-eighties. Older Brits, especially the parochial English, tend to have limited knowledge about Britain and especially Ireland, and even less knowledge of countries further afield. Most older English are entirely monolingual, and are less likely to have close foreign-born friends than the Scots, Welsh & Irish (who have comparatively much wider experiences of living away for work). 

If I were a big sports brand looking to invest in football, I would be looking at Leeds. A very big club that will soon be back in the premiership.

Now, maybe I'm reading too much into things, but I see that Klopp went to watch Leeds against Leicester the other day — rather a strange thing to do considering Liverpool's upcoming priorities. I then read that Red Bull are trying to take over Leeds and remembered that Konate, Keita, Szoboszlai, Carvalho, Minamino & Mane were all Red Bull Salzburg or Red Bull Leipzig players before moving to Liverpool, and that Firminho and Matip started their careers with Ralf Rangnick, albeit just before he took over Red Bull Leipzig in 2015 — so Klopp clearly has strong connections to the Red Bull set up who are trying to buy Leeds — and wonder if a move to Leeds, maybe as a consultant, is the real reason he's leaving Liverpool? 

I suppose that's easy to believe if you follow the British establishment's narrative on the root causes of the conflict, which is that it was entirely down to irrational bigotry and the population's innate propensity to violence, and nothing to do with how the place was run.

Oh, I doubt that very much. The Good Friday Agreement extended the European Convention on Human Rights to Northern Ireland, and commissions North and South to ensure equality of opportunity. People don't support the taking up of arms against the state without bitter grievances, and I think that lesson has been learnt. There isn't a Bill of Rights in the North yet, but the sectarian 'Protestant State for Protestant People' is, for the most part, long gone. There is still a deep sectarian divide, but the sustained violence ended when the state signed up to a rights based settlement. I can't imagine that the Republic in 2030 would want to recreate the conditions in reverse of Northern Ireland in 1970, with the pogroms, the detentions without trial, the torture of prisoners, the jury-less trials, the censorship, the sectarian police force, the gerrymandering, the disenfranchisement, the state collusion with psychopathic sectarian murderers, and the various other forms of discrimination and abuse. 

People voted Leave for many reasons and they weren't all red-faced xenophobes, racists or morons.

Many of my Irish and Scottish friends voted Leave. They understood that the UK leaving the EU would be a huge boost for Irish reunification, and present Scots with independence as the fastest route back into the EU.

I think, thanks to brexit, the re-unification of Ireland in the not too distant future is now a cast iron certainty. However, I think the Scots (and the Welsh) are likely to cling on to the United Kingdom long enough for the UK to renegotiate its relationship with the EU, and return in all but name (as a rule taker).

11 hours ago, The Voice of Reason said:

You may not be aware but the UK suffered a number of recessions whilst a member of the EU/EEC In the early  eighties  and nineties,for example, not forgetting the Great Recession of 2008. 

I am well aware. I remember that when building was on its uppers in the UK British builders had the option to go and work in Germany, which they did in droves. Thanks to brexit that option has gone.

Woolley will no doubt say I'm being inconsistent here, but the idea that either budgeting for strategic investment in railways, or purchasing ppe stock for hospitals needs supervision from Brussels bureaucrats is ludicrous. And of course, that was never the case. Blaming the mistakes of bad national government on Brussels was one of the great lies of brexit. The EU doesn't control national budgets like that. The UK votes for morons, toffs and spivs — that's something that brexit hasn't changed.

The lies, the loss of FoM, the loss of access to the SM, the shoddy rushed through trade deals and the additional costs for ordinary people — that's why I say brexit is a turd, which it is. Not the state of the HS2 project. I'm also not going to blame the recession entirely on brexit. I'm an anonymous internet poster — I don't need to overegg anything, and if there were any benefits to brexit I'd be happy. Fact is, we're in a fuel price crisis. We've got a decade of hard times ahead if us, and brexit will make it worse, but it's not responsible for all tory incompetence and corruption. 

You've got that arse-about-face. He's lost freedom and won the argument, at least insofar as brexit is a festering turd. You won an advisory referendum with dodgy funding and without knowing what you were actually voting for. 

4 hours ago, woolley said:

Hardly a persuasive stance from somebody who was unaware that EU Primary Law as passed is immediately binding in all member states, cannot be amended by them and is supreme over domestic legislation.

The UK is a party to the Vienna Convention on the Law on Treaties, so all treaties and conventions once signed, ratified, or otherwise accepted are law, (eg.; the Good Friday Agreement, and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU). Hope that hasn't spoiled your night if you think leaving the single market gave you 'sovereignty'. You'll have to scrap all trade deals and international memberships if you want real 'sovereignty'. 

Brazil alone uses 150 pesticides banned in the EU, and can simply clear forest to expand production as they see fit. Even if deforestation and pesticide clauses are introduced to the deal, Irish and French agriculture is never going to compete on price with Brazil.

The EU's deal with Mercosur is bad for the EU's farmers, although probably not as bad as Great Britain's deals with Australia and New Zealand are for British farmers. The biggest losers might be the Irish (North & South), who now face fierce competition for their exports to Great Britain (half their beef and dairy output is currently exported to Britain) from Australia and New Zealand, whilst facing competition in their own market and the rest of the EU from Mercosur. 

There is a saying in agriculture that goes 'up corn, down horn' — when arable is good, beef is bad and vice versa. On brexit, nearly three quarters of British farmers say they regret it, both arable and beef. Vegetable, fruit and pig farmers have suffered more though, as Britain now has industry threatening shortages of vegetable & fruit pickers and pig slaughterers. Those farmers are now 80% regrexiters, like the cheese producers and fishermen. 

John, sincere thanks, and I'll extend that to all the hard working folk at these underfunded institutions. 

17 hours ago, Hairy Poppins said:

You've hit the nail on the head. 

Unfortunately nothing will change. There are too many of our not so great and not so good (and their associated hangers on) who make a nice little salary from the Arts Council/Culture Vannin/Manx National Heritage and those kind of quangos. 

The true cost of them must be something like £10m+ each year. 

Culture Vannin's accounts for year end 2022 are online. They got £100,000 from government, £39900 from lottery duty, and have other ringfenced assets from private donations. From the published accounts of the Manx Lottery Trust it seems that the Arts Council is on a similar deal, with a little more from the lottery, and Sports Council gets less from gov, but more from the lottery. Unless I'm mistaken, government grants from the taxpayer for all three was £220,000 for year end 21 — which is frankly disgusting for a reasonably wealthy jurisdiction. Even with this tory administration the UK central gov spends £4.5B on cultural services alone, with devolved admins, councils and universities adding much more. No wonder people don't want to live here anymore. 

Mention of United in this thread is just  indicative of the age profile of the forum's contributors. There will be loads of greybeards on here who remember when United were good. 

I think it would be better somewhere in Laxey, where it might fit with the more industrial landscape, and where Brian's roots are.

China has been busy working away at softening up movers and shakers in key industries in the West for many years, particularly in infrastructure, communications, energy and education. It's a far slicker war on democracy than the clumsy trap—bribe—bot modus operandi of Russia. They now know a lot more about us than we do about them. 

And, as if to prove my point:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/dover-tractor-demo-protest-b2493825.html

The EU has done with MERCOSUR exactly what the UK has done with brexit & the deals with Australia, Canada & New Zealand — kill off its own agriculture sector. Why? Because its an easier win on the way to net zero than tackling more powerful industries.

Of course it means that Europeans will be consuming cheap hormone enhanced feed-lot beef & dairy shipped from the other side of the world in refigerated containers rather than local pasture raised product from their own continent — but it won't show up on the EU's own carbon spreadsheets. 

I can't see that brexit has much bearing on this — the UK & EU are equally shortsighted and disingenuous when it comes to food policy.