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You could buy a 3 bed semi for under £50,000 in 1990. And your repayments change every 3-5 years if you change your mortgage. You' be an idiot to pay £1025 for 25 years on £80k.

I don't disagree. The volume of water actually got worse after they had an attempt at resurfacing a few years ago. They had some contractors working on the access to the marshals hut on the other bend in more recent years and the water got worse on that bend, too. I don't even think it's lack of maintenance - it's the fact large swathes of the road are designed to help, or at least not hinder, 4 weeks of racing.

At this time of year when we have persistent heavy rain there are a couple places, directly on or straight after corners, that have streams running across them long after the rest the of the road has dried off. You shouldn't have to rely on local knowledge to negotiate the roads safely.

Pretty sure this is an NEC main option B contract from the information available, so not a cost reimbursement contract. There will have been bills of quantities and usually on the island, variations for like work are valued at bill rates. I haven't seen the news regarding bonuses for finishing on the revised completion date but these are usually offered when the cost of the overrun is greater then the cost of acceleration. All of it is supposition anyway, as I'm pretty sure none of us here know what the specific contract terms are.

As a society, we do not allow a virus with this type of consequence to spread unabated. The diseases are treated, quarantines imposed and vaccines administered where applicable. Schools are closed and ships quarantined at sea when there's a norovirus outbreak. If there's a meningitis infection in a school, kids are given vaccines or boosters. Quarantining to protect everyone else is not a new phenomenon, neither is limiting the risk of infection by reducing contact or exposure. And they did that 50-200 years ago when they didn't know how these things were transmitted or where they came from. The issue with trying to achieve this type of herd immunity - by building up antibodies from catching the disease - is that the vulnerable are still vulnerable. The people most at risk still aren't protected adequately from it and if someone's Nan in a nursing home gets it, it could still wipe out half the home. The chance of them catching may be reduced but if they catch it, the end result is still the same. How long will it take an adequate % of the population to get to the requisite level of immunity?

It depends what the person spouting about herd immunity thinks it means. You simply aren't going to get it without a vaccine. Thinking that if enough people catch it, it will go away is idiotic and has never happened with any other virus. Even with a vaccine, the list of eradicated virus' is extremely short.

That's not really how it should work. You shouldn't be encouraged to move countries because you're not happy with policy. I don't agree that we - the general public - should be privy to all of the information that goes into decision making processes at CoMin. There will be advice and papers on the theoretical affect their proposals have; the economic impact, how much assistance they can give businesses, the number of business that might go bust, how many job losses they anticipate. What the impact limiting DHSC leave will have if cases pick up, how many cases or deaths are expected as a trade-off to sustain or increase economic turn-over, at what point they might shut schools and the impact that will have. All of those issues are too personal for many members of the pubic. As is constantly demonstrated on social media, it is not the moderate voices that are heard. The vocal minority on both sides are extreme and no good can possibly come from all of that information being in the public domain. Any report commissioned, knowing the public will see it, will not be as impactful or as forthright as it needs to be. If you want an input on policy, if you want to be in a position to make these decisions then become a politician.

That's interesting, and perhaps something that was more of an issue in years gone by or on jobs without properly managed or implemented contracts? I have never experienced it. Architects and engineers might not like their work being questioned but that is true of most people. I can't think of any occasion where they haven't either changed their design or agreed to change in specification where things have been demonstrably wrong. There is often a difference between working to legal and statutory requirements or 'a reasonable standard', and thinking that it could be done better or to a higher standard. An often used phase is "if it looks wrong, it is wrong" but the client pays for changes to the spec or design, not the design team, so you have to be able to demonstrate *why* it is wrong.

That's really not how those percentages work.

I would largely agree with this. To build on your point a little - Ostensibly, nothing with Covid-19 itself has changed since it first reached Europe and shortly thereafter decimated Italy. There is no vaccine and no definitive evidence that it has mutated into a significantly less dangerous version. So how do they walk-back the measures they took before and not apply it again now that cases are increasing at a seemingly near out of control rate? They shut the country, encouraged people to work from home, closed schools, set up a separate pot of money to pay those who needed it - how can they now say "Yeah, we probably didn't need to do that". And how do we definitely know they didn't need to do it? Are we now, after over half century of social care and doing everything we can to prolong everyone's lives, deciding that entire swathes of society aren't worth protection and telling them to get on and shield themselves if they want to minimise exposure? At what point do we decide, after telling parents and carers that they can take their children out of school if they're not comfortable with the risk to their household, that those children and families are not as 'valuable' a part of society as others? How do we bridge the education gap between the kids who will be removed from school, and the kids whose parents are happy to manage the risk themselves? It's a class thing too, poor families are more likely to have underlying health conditions and be affected by Covid. It affects races differently too, and very obviously the elderly. These are known facts. So the Government now are to write those people off as "collateral damage" in getting the country to return to normal prior to a viable vaccine being developed and given? I don't know, I wouldn't like to be in possession of all of the facts that those higher in Government should have and then have to try to make these decisions. It's obvious that there does need to be a more balanced approach, but where you make those compromises, I have no idea. I am generally happy with the fact we are separated from it at the moment and I think that currently, our Government wouldn't make the compromises that are needed to get a better balance so on the whole, the current border situation is preferable to what they will deem a second wave and the inevitable lockdown that would follow.

I think their only agenda is to show you don't know what you're talking about. You don't need to work for Government or the designers or any of the contractors involved in the scheme to be frustrated by the 'knowledge' of a few vociferous lay-men in this thread.

The fact the most recent cases of people being caught have been wearing masks in the stores surely indicates they've not understood that they need to immediately self-isolate? If you were intentionally going out, knowing you shouldn't be, you'd not wear a big, flashing sign saying "just got off the boat" in the form of a mask? Or indeed say you'd just got off the boat!! The rules clearly need reiterating to people. Perhaps the confusion comes from the fact they've been brought in to do a job and would be going to work in the morning - not quite self-isolation, is it.

Let's be thankful that they haven't started that yet. Getting into Douglas from the North is difficult enough with their new layouts, bus lanes and one-way prom - it's only bearable now because the schools are closed. Don't give them the idea that anyone wants any other main arterial routes into Douglas dug up.

Typical Manx Crab attitude... "Nothing has happened before so it won't happen now. It won't go ahead because of these few other times that no-one went beyond planning in principle or the application stage". No-one bought the site before, it has planning permission, and has multiple franchises attached to it. I'm sure the uncertainty around travel and large scale gatherings at the moment will have given some of the investors cold feet but the sale went through during covid, if it was that bad they would've pulled the sale. For it to have even got as far as it has, it must stack up. And that proves my point, a global pandemic could stop it, a nuclear winter could stop it, they could find all the voids that were supposed to be under the prom in there when they start digging holes, and people will still say "Told you it wouldn't happen".

Even if nothing happens within five years (and it'll have to or the money spent on getting planning permission will have been wasted) they are perfectly within their right not to start. Can you give examples from around the island of these bomb sites? Bit hard to discuss otherwise.