Millman

I hope you are right. Many of the head office staff have been with the company for many years and quite a number are around or over 50. Lets hope the job market is accodating to their needs and skills and everyone is quickly able to find new work. It is really sad to see yet another unique to the island brand go. These brands, all be they far from perfect, are part of our distintive culture. Without doubt without them the Island looses just a little of its sparkle thats makes here so indivdual. My thoughts also go out the many local suppliers that partner Shoprite. I doubt if all of them will find a home with Tesco. Despite the shiny words of the Cheif minster I think the fall out from this decision will be hard felt in quite a few places and may lead to further consequences. I just hope this is not the case. Good luck to all those affected.

The absolute stupidity of the current fear mongering is staggering. Firstly this constant obsession with case numbers is very misplaced. It is hospital numbers, iCU numbers and deaths that is more important. You can argue they are linked, but recent figures indicate despite large variances in case number per day the hospital figures have remained much more constant. Lets keep in mind so far as we know we are not even talking about the new variant yet. Also we need more information of who is dying with Covid there is a big difference between a disease that can take anyone and one that is killing those who are very very ill in the first place. This may sound rather heartless but it all counts towards the irrational fear factor being generated of what is now a disease that has a death rate of 0.07%. Secondly we are miles away from where we were at the start of 2020. We have stocks of PPE, ventilators, testing kits, drugs that treat cases (which still do work), and effective treatment regimes. Plus a massive vaccine uptake, and we are now not dumb enough to empty hospital beds into care homes. No variant will strip all of the away. Thirdly we have no idea what the omicron variant can do. Yes it may be more virulent but if it is less deadly it does not really matter. Some say better act now than be sorry, if that is genuinely the case then the only effective measure we have come up with is closing the borders so why not do that. Covid in now endemic and we will be living with it forever to do so we must get back to normal. Does this mean doing nothing, no. We have the vaccines rollouts. We must educate the vulnerable in being able to protect themselves (heck why not have Tuesday and Thursday morning for them to shop). For the rest of us we need to be able to make our own decisions and take our own risks. Keep an eye on hospital capacity and act when it is threatened but not before. The current governments over reaction spreads panic, hurts businesses and livelihoods and does little to achieve anything. What is worse having children sitting in drafty cold classrooms is more of threat to their health than Covid is. Let alone restricting Doctor access and all of the other damage that has been wrought on the health service by cancelling everything at the first cough. Spreading half truths and rumors about a new variant is not helpful and is a vast over reaction. Since the last administration it seems we have gone backwards very quickly.

Overall I still maintain that I see little or no advantage to the user for this huge outlay. However I do see the potential for cost to us. Due to reckless lending and massive debt the Isle of Man is in a strange situation where the vested interest of the energy supplier to make us use more energy matches that of the government (as they are essentially the same group). Therefore we should be very nervous of the MUA committing to any more massive spends as the likelihood is we again will be the ones to pay..

On reading on smart meters: - The money saving reason is almost meaningless, with households saving on average £30 a year. - They do not work well in areas of poor cell phone reception (That's Governor's Hill then), and this can lead to false readings. - They can cause fires if poorly fitted. The big advantage to the user is they make it easier to switch providers which is irrelevant here. So in summary for the user of the service they are almost pointless, especially in the Isle of Man. I hope that like in the UK these things are optional.

Worse still these evil terrorists will insist on proper paragraph structure on forum posts to make them readable. Kersal poop your pants now.

You need to learn the difference between moaning and being practical. I am massively in favor of leisure developments on the island (even if this one is more of a consolidation \ improvement of existing or recently departed facilities). Heck this should only be the start we still need a replacement for some of the previous Summerland's facilities and those lost from the Crescent \ Venue shutting. However they must be practical to use and well planned, something which seems beyond most (including all the MHKs) on the island. This facility is desperately needed. However so are others. Certain land on the island should be zoned exclusively for leisure use and those developers putting in for planning permission for large blocks of flats should only be granted permission unless they contribute some of these leisure facilities. My one major misgiving about this facility though is that as pointed out by another poster, is this not just a ploy to shut the existing facilities in order to get planning permission to build flats on the existing sites with no guarantee that this will ever get built. It is imperative that the Sefton group is made aware that this has to come first before they get permission for anything else.

Oh very wise, I bet you work the planning board. Yes lets build a massive entertainment complex that no one can get to. That has only thirty spaces none of which are usable in rough weather. I bet the people who live in Port Jack will be overjoyed when they can't get into or out their houses. Better still lets rely on our Victorian public transport. It was good enough in 1895 it should be good enough now after no one owns one of new fangled automobile carriages do they. They are most frightful, and travel at such velocities that a person's blood will stop circulating. Meanwhile in the modern REAL world where we have such concepts as planning laws, traffic management, etc. (I know we are Manx and we don't need such new fangled sensible ideas). Anywhere else though and if you were considering building such a venue you would insist on a high number of parking spaces BEFORE you build it, this is why many of these venues are out of town.

One comment about the new design where are all the cars going to go. Looks to me like there is barely more than 30 or so spaces. For a major leisure complex this is laughable. Maybe they should consider scrapping the gimmicky wind turbine (which lets face it is pretty impractical there) and consider a multi story car park. Oh no not an unsightly car park you say. Well just consider how difficult it is to park for the existing shed of a cinema even before you add more screens and loads of other facilities. A venue of this size will need hundreds of spaces.