Freggyragh

In my opinion Tynwald should be for exchanging ideas, representing the people and debating the important issues of the day. They are paid to express opinions on the big issues. I respect Joney, Tim Johnson, Alex Allinson, Daphne Caine, John Wannenburg and Chris Thomas because I think they work hard and I kind of know what they stand for, even though I don't necessarily agree with them. I respect Stu for setting out his opinions, if not his work rate. There's always a place in politics for the hail-fellow-well-met, which you get in spades with Juan Watterson, and a bit with Sarah Maltby and Tim Crookall, and a place for the honest brokers who meticulously weigh up what they hear, eg; Lawrie Hooper and Rob Callister. To be honest, I'm not sure what skills most of the rest have or what they stand for beside looking after numero uno and being the big I Am - and one or two of those are jaw droppingly dull individuals. Still, that's a better mix than you get in most parliaments.

Interesting to see how many of you presume that these 'resignations' have been instigated by genuine political scrutiny. That isn't usually how our government works, because if it did the other departments of government wouldn't be so badly run. It looks to me that there seems to have been some sort of collective gross misconduct. I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of whistle-blowing or external investigation has uncovered some sort of dodgy and botched collusion to arse-cover over a bad decision, or get rid of a dangerously or expensively crap civil servant. You can't just have people 'resign' on the spot unless there is evidence of gross misconduct, can you? It seems like some sort of damming evidence has come to light and the guilty parties have resigned one by one as they realise their positions are untenable. That's what it all looks like anyway. In my opinion this all stems from appointing people with no personal investment in the community they are to serve, and almost always from our neighbouring jurisdiction to the right - which has had awful standards of governance for decades.

Well, I think regular readers will know how little I think of that man. It was a good speech, to be fair. Maybe he actually did write the Churchill book himself, or maybe he just read it?

Woolley, you posted as I was writing. I agree with your 'with hindsight' comments. I spent almost a month in Vladivostok in 1995. At that time it was very dangerous, as in, you really had to carry a gun, especially if you went anywhere at night. Hospitals and schools had no heating in below freezing temps and nurses and patients wore thick coats. The local bureaucrats and politicians where unashamedly corrupt and in cahoots with violent gangs. The police, marines and navy were demoralised and frequently unpaid. Foreign currency was extremely powerful - you could buy any public asset for buttons, but you couldn't hold on to it without paying large bribes and hiring serous protection. Most Westerners I knew left even quicker than I did, because setting up a serious and useful business there seemed impossible. I will say as well, that although most people were very friendly, none of them wanted foreigners telling them how to run things. They were simultaneously afraid of a Chinese military takeover of the Russian Far East, or a humiliating capitalist takeover.

Putin invaded Ukraine to distract from his domestic troubles. He needs people to believe that his Tsarist / nationalist rule is superior to and stronger than democracy. Without people believing this he cannot keep stuffing his pockets with state funds. Recently, he has been challenged at home and abroad. The corruption of Putin and his cronies and his investments in foreign football clubs, politicians, media and tax-haven bank accounts and private palaces and estates in Russia were being questioned. The Paradise Papers, the Navalny campaign, the reports into voting collusion, etc., were feeding into his paranoia. Putin's campaign against democracy was also going off the rails. He was able to curtail democracy at home and harming democracy abroad (by bank-rolling morons and sociopaths) quite well until recently. He's been able to push Russian nationalism (from wars to running a national athlete doping programme) at home, and he's been sponsoring racists, nationalists and crooks abroad. When Trump lost it was a bitter blow, despite winning brexit. Democratic Ukraine was looking increasingly better off, as were the Baltic and other East European states. Putin needs to show to his own people that democracies are inherently soft, self-doubting, dysfunctional and weak. Pushing the bizarre notion that this war is somehow partly our fault for welcoming functioning democratic states into the fold is not just ludicrous, it is music to his ears, because it shows how weak we are. Likewise, the half-hearted response when he chooses to have opponents and bystanders poisoned slow and, until a couple of days ago, our can't-be-arsed response to his war. We really should be doing all we can to crush this dangerous madman. And afterwards, we have to help Ukraine rebuild, and help Russia de-Putinise - by which I mean - rebuild with stict protection of individual liberty, democracy and rule of law.

I've heard a couple of intelligent, well intentioned but uninformed people over the last couple of days repeating the nonsense that people like Farage have been pushing (its all NATO or the EU's fault for 'poking the Russian bear'). So, I'm sharing the link below to Alexei Navalny's 'Putin's Palace'. It's a long watch - but important if you want to know about Putin. After it came out and people started protesting, Navalny was poisoned with novichok nerve agent. He survived, after two months in a Berlin hospital. Incredibly, he returned to Russia, where he was arrested and sentenced to 30 months of 'corrective labour' in a notorious prison - a very slow and painful way of killing a recovering novichok victim. Putin is not our fault. https://palace.navalny.com/?fbclid=IwAR3m1QHI3KAnkiGrwPd_3-fNHRwDDgWaXD9SrKZKNQXhWNW3nm-NPChb9mo

The protests in Russia are growing too - & looks like the police are getting the message and backing off a bit.

We all thought China had its eyes on Taiwan. How about if what they were really planning for was what they've always wanted - the Russian Far East?

Amazon Prime EU just bought up all the MiGs & other aircraft in the EU that Ukrainian pilots know how to fly - donated them to the EU & they've been donated straight to Ukraine. Should be in the air now, or very soon. Edited to say: Not sure about the Amazon donation - seems like the money maybe coming from the EU itself.

Fighter Jets from the EU are fighting Putin's invasion over skies of Ukraine tonight. 🇪🇺🇺🇦

I feel desperately sorry for the poor cannon fodder being sent to war by Putin and his cronies to defend the super yacht lifestyles of the kleptocrats.

Putin sits on a golden throne dishing out cash to stooges and quislings at home and abroad. He runs a country that covers 10% of the earth and is massively rich in resources - yet thanks to autocratic kleptomaniac governance has an economy the size of Italy and horrific poverty outside St. Petersburg & Moscow. Putin is a paranoid lunatic running a failed state by fear. Look what he has done to his critics and political opponents. He doesn't check on your EU or NATO credentials before he slips you a polonium sandwich - anymore than he checks for collateral damage. He is a narcissistic psychopath. He couldn't stand to have a free, slavic democracy on his doorstep that he couldn't intimidate and control - so he started a war there in 2014, kicking off with shooting down civilian aircraft MH17. Of course Ukraine has been wanting closer ties to Europe and NATO. I have friends in both Russia and Ukraine by the way - they all agree with this assessment, it is almost unbelievable to them that this Kissenger style realpolitik / balance-of-power / great game view that La Dolce Vita has is being put forth and digested by intelligent people in the West. Sorry to say it, but Putin is a bad man, with no shades of grey, he despises us and everything decent we stand for and we are not to blame for doing everything we can to protect ourselves and others from him.

You can only achieve that by giving three of your best natural harbours to the US Navy, and having multiple large-scale US airbases. And paying a couple of USD billion towards it. And having your own (albeit comparatively small) well equipped defense forces.

Oh yes - many more of them. I think we'll find it isn't just tories and fellow travellers though - probably less so because; 1. they already support Putin and don't need paying. 2. they have other sources of cash.

If we just look at the instances we know about, because they are in the open, such as appearances on RT News - Russian state-funded broadcaster 'Russia Today', that pays politicians up to £1,000 per hour in appearance fees (no wonder they hate the BBC!) then it clearly isn't just Brexiter Tories and Nigel Farage that take Putin's cash. George Galloway and Alex Salmond have had their own shows. I'm pretty sure RT News represents only a tiny fraction of Russia's total investment in propaganda and political influencing, and it isn't just brexiters, anti-vaxxers and separitists who benefit. My conspiracy theory is that Russia has been undermining democracy by promoting the most idiotic, corrupt and destructive politicians and journalists they can find.

I see those 'teething problems' haven't just wiped out the car industry, but steel too. F*ckwits.

Who put this in their manifesto then? I don't remember it being discussed in the very recent election. Haven't you lot got election promises to attend to first?

The rage is being directed at the fraud, the lies and the parties. The rage comes from the Brexit penny dropping.

Warning: rambling thoughts on Stu's comment ahead: De Valera swore an oath of allegiance to the crown in order to sit in the Dáil, then rewrote the constitution so it wouldn't be required again. Will you be making any attempt to do the same? IMHO you shouldn't have a problem swearing allegiance to the Crown, after all, MHKs were self appointed until the Crown intervened. Unlike in other colonies, the Manx struggle for democracy and 'home-rule' was against the Lords of Mann, the self-elected Keys (a mates club of landed gentry) and often the Bishop,— English parliamentarians were often on our side and it was Crown appointee Governor Loch who implemented the reforms. So our history in relation to the Crown really is very different to those of other colonies. (To be honest, I'm not a fan of 'monarchy' either, and I wonder what place it has in the modern world. 'Mrs Windsor' herself seems to be an excellent human being of course, but then that is pure luck.)

Johnson is pm of the UK. The UK threw away its influence in the world when it threw away its voice in Europe, and threw away its credibility when it elected Johnson. The UK are saying they won't do anything about DUP loon Poots breaking the trade treaty with the EU at the brexit border between Northern Ireland and Britain by refusing to check goods. They cannot be trusted and they don't care, because they will do anything to avoid talking about the economic, environmental and cultural disaster they have will fully overseen.

Well, we give plenty of aid to landowners, holiday cottage owners etc, so it is all a matter of priorities.

1.4M in aid for refugees is hard to take because: 1. Many people do not earn a living wage. 2. Funding for DLA, Carers Allowance, Child Benefit, Job-Seekers Allowance the State Pension, Education and the NHS (vital to improve work prospects and keep people in work) has been cut back drastically and relentlessly for years. 3. Foodbanks and tax-dodging have been normalised. The sort of people who complain about aid for refugees tend to be the sort of cold Daily Express reading shits who also hate rises in the minimum wage, taxing the wealthy or any compromises in their lifestyle to mitigate climate change, and can't wait until brexit England privatises health and education and we end up paying double in insurance and fees than we ever paid in taxes.

I think it was Frankie Boyle who asked what was the point of nuclear weapons to protect the UK from being taken over, when most city centres, factories, banks, government debt, football clubs, hospitals, schools, newspapers & politicians are actually owned by the Russians, Chinese & Saudis already, so why pay 4.5B per year to protect what's left, which is probably just Barnsley. Britain doesn't seem interested in stopping Russian intelligence from bumping off people within the UK (beyond a stern warning from professional idiot Gavin Williamson), doing anything meaningful about interference in the brexit referendum, or censuring politicians like Salmond, Galloway, and a host of tories, as well as professional gobshite Farage, from making up to £1,000 an hour working for Russian State TV channel RT News (some of them while simultaneously calling to defund the BBC). So, I doubt that Johnson, a man apparently ambushed by a birthday cake, is going to rally the nation around the defence of Kiev.

I have both Russian and Ukrainian friends. Here are some of the things they've said: The Russians seem to believe that Kiev is an integral part of Russia, always was, always will be, as Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are all descended from the 'Ancient Rus' of Kiev. The Ukrainian language is a dialect of Russian. The very name 'Ukraine' is made up, and their independence is an historical anomaly caused by Lithuania-Poland's occupation of the area centuries ago, and the Soviets should never have accepted it. Many famous Russians were actually from what is now 'Ukraine', Trotsky and Brezhnev to name but two. They say that the West is trying to weaken Russia by taking Ukraine away from its sphere of influence. They also say that the Ukrainian government is corrupt and has ties to corrupt American political dynasties, such as the Bidens. The Ukrainians say that since Moscow was overrun by the Golden Horde many centuries ago Russia and Ukraine have developed separately. They say their language is quite distinct from Russian, and has been for centuries. They say that Russia exploited Ukrainians for many years - taking gas and food off Ukraine, engineering a famine in the 1930s that was as bad as those the British inflicted on Ireland and India, that the Russians were responsible for Chernobyl, and that, yes, their government is corrupt, but that is because of Russian interference, not American or European. They say that whatever Putin says about them, they should be able to decide their own destiny.

Britain in the seventies was in a mess. Up until then its economy was based on the very unequal trade and administrative arrangements of a trade block where one state (Britain) set the rules, known as the British Empire. As difficult as it was for the colonised to recover from empire, so was it for the colonisers. Britain's economy was geared up for processing raw materials from the empire and paying for it with tariff protected manufactured goods. Once the Arabs started charging for oil and newly independent countries decided to manufacture their own goods, the game was up. This was always going to result in the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Heath, Thatcher and Major understood that free trade with Europe was the way out of the crisis. Thatcher's Single Market and successful appeals to Japan and others for investment turned the corner for the UK. Sadly, the cretinous English newspapers could never acknowledge the huge success of the EU. Now the tories have saved their masters from the European Tax Directive they will move onto something else. Before you know it we'll see the masses demanding the asset stripping and flogging off the NHS & BBC, and then the freezing of pensions and social care, further cuts to benefits and workers rights, and then the privatisation of education, prisons and community policing. And as the quality of life of whatever is left in Britain deteriorates, they'll of course be blaming it all on foreigners.