Cambon

are you me?? Quick question, what shape are the loaves? My current machine makes cubes which are great for slicing into sandwiches. I am looking for a new machine but most I see make small, oblong loaves which (when sliced) would be too small for butties really. It is a great shame. My current machine is about 15 years old and needs a new pan, which is no longer available.

It is already in public ownership as Macquarie is a publicly traded company, whose shares can be purchased by any person or legal entity. If the IOMG became the majority shareholder then ....... Job's a goodun. Personally, I don't think having the ferry company as a government controlled company is a good idea. However, I think having it controlled locally would be of great benefit to the Island.

Exactly! SP would not run the two non-freight carrying fast craft over the spring/summer periods if they were not profitable.

And this about sums it up for me. Full boat - Huge number of passengers. Same the last two times I travelled (last month). No spare room for cargo. This whole issue is dummy spitting / sabre rattling. Woodward worried for his position when he has to explain why the 30% PA profit is down to 20% PA - still double the averge profit for this type of company.

So jobs leave SP and go to Mezzeron. SP still sabre rattling?

It is very difficult to accept based on the fact that at only 40% capacity, and after paying over the odds for a sister company's cast off fast craft, he is still making 30% profit. You have lost two freight customers. Get over it. Treat the ones you still have with the best possible service, and try and win your lost customers (and some new ones) back. But most importantly, stop threatening people!

Err, kind of. If it had not been for the fact that airbus industries wanted the space for development of parts for the A380, it would still be flying today. Also, Bransons bid failed as the french would not release the moulds, casts etc. for spares. Rolls Royce were happy to keep the engines going. I think the truth is tha the french said -"if we cant have it, then nobody can have it!"

Yes, but no. It just means every few years MIOM buy a knackered second hand boat off another M entity at a vastly inflated price and pay M £1,000,000 to get it here. This total is then creamed off the profits which then are "only" 30% . The whole thing is a con. As I said earlier, only one steam packet boat carries freight. The other two are passengers and cars only. If passengers were not profitable, they would not do them

This is kind of getting to my thinking. The Snaefell is sat in Liverpool doing nothing, Manannin is buggering off soon and some slow boat is going to eb doing Birkenhead. So, the people want to go to Pier Head - use the Snaefell to take them. Give the people what they want and more will travel, and probably be willing to pay a bit more for the opportunity.

Figures not overstated. Those given in previous post were for 9 months. I simply rounded them to a year, but reduced the foot passengers to compensate for extras in the summer. My fares are pretty accurate too. Keep in mind that for 13 weeks of the year, it is virtually impossible to get anywhere near a car and two for £240 return. In fact for 3-4 weeks they have to put on extra boats to allow for the mass influx of overcharged bikers. My figure is not £11 million too high, but actually quite conservative. The Eurotunnel has had a massive impact on passengers travelling to Europe and that is why some companies are going freight only. We don't have a tunnel (or monorial) so will have to make do. Besides, as I said earlier, only the Ben carries freight. The others do not. If it did not pay they would not do it.

And this is where we see the truth start to come out. MW spits the dummy because of the freight situation. Only one of the three SPCo boats that have been running all summer carries freight. MW's rantings would therefore have you believe that passenger carrying is a loss leader. BOLLOCKS!!! In reality, freight is quite a small part of their business. The basically ignored passengers are literally taken for a ride. Of those three boats that ran all summer, one is tied up in Liverpool (they must be doing well if they can afford to leave a boat idle), one is still limping on three engines (or is it?) The other is doing two half empty runs a day to Heysham. The liverpool run is about to go to Birkenhead again so Christmas shopping day trips and football days out are off the agenda (a certain loss of revenue). The figures about equate to about 700K PAX a year and 200K vehicles. Lets just say conservatively that each passenger paid £20 for their ticket each way, and each car was £100. THese are not unrealistic figures, but woudl add up to £34,000,000 before credit card charges, on board spends, change fees, TT subsidy, etc. The company make s a fortune out of transporting passengers. This is simply a call for a handout from the tax payer to stop his bosses asking questions!

A bit? Are you taking teh piss? Why do you think they don't open until 12 miles off IOM and 2 miles off UK? So they don't have to pay VAT and duty on alcohol sold. Yes, at £3.50 a pint, they are making about £2.50 profit!

Err.....who paid for the £40,000,000 runway extension and £8,000,000 tower that is still not being used? Not forgetting the new lights and fence. Could start up a brand new ferry service for that!

Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and makes up a fairly small percentage of the total of greenhouse gases in the atmoshpere. Next time there is a flood somewhere, before you start crying "global warming", have a look around. Guaranteed a few miles up the river, some new outlet centre / tesco complex/ industrial estate or something will havfe been built on a flood plain, if the flooded estate itself is not built on the flood plain. However, explanations like this are not good for the global warming cause so rarely get airtime.

Yes No. Yes that is irrelevant What was the population of Europe back then? Where were all the tarmac roads, concrete jungles that absorb heat? Yes No. The only solution is to reduce the earth's population and stop building roads, estates, cities, massive shopping complexes, car park, industrial areas. As I have said before, and I am sure I will say again, CO2 is probably not helping the situation, but it is not the cause. ]

Actually, I said earlier that the change in sea levels (and climate for that matter) has been going on since the beginning of time. However, I am arguing that although you and all the "experts" are desparately trying to link global warming (now called climate change because it s actually cooling) to excessing output of CO2. It just so happens that all the data, all the graphs showing climate versus CO2 coincide with the increase in, and over population of the planet. Unless that is reduced the manmade effect on the climate will continue to change, regardless of CO2.

From what I can see your graph and the above are the only other two points you have made since I engaged you in debate. The graph also just happens to coincide with overpopulation of earth. Drilling and burning carbon based fuels is not helping the situation, but the removal of rainforest and the covering of what was green area with asphalt and concrete alone is raising the temperature of the planet. Your tanzania / american example is irrelevant.

Quick, run for the hills. We are doomed!!! From the article: ......could add 2.6% more water to the ocean than the water displaced by the ice, or the equivalent of approximately 4 centimeters (1.57 inches) of sea-level rise.

Man made diversions - not carbon. Lakes drying up causing more greenhouse gases - not carbon. Water from drying lakes raising sea levels - not carbon. Cause of evaporating lakes? a more arid landscape as more and more green area is turned to concrete to house the masses - not carbon.

Wow! Back to school for you then Yes, the sea level is rising. Yes, scientists say that the northern ice cap in particular is melting. As a very large proportion of that is floating, it is already displacing it's weight by volume of water. So a bit like ice in a glass, as it melts the level stays the same. On the other hand, the likes of the Aral sea (fourth latgest sea in the world) has halved in size since the 1960s. The massive man made lake that feeds the Hoover dam is drying us as the rivers that feed it dry up. Even the world's largest freshwater lake, Lake Superior is at it's lowest level in the best part of a century. All the great lakes are drying up. All that water has to go somewhere and my guessing is water vapour (the biggest greenhouse gas) and then the sea.

But Slim, sea levels have been changing ever since the dawn of time. Off Jersey there is an area called the petrified forest, which during an exceptionally low tide you can see. This is from when that whole area (including the channel Islands) was dry land. In other parts of the world lakes and seashore have dried up. A whole re-balancing act of nature. I am not saying that adding carbon from fossil fuel is not adding to the already unstoppable problem (called nature). I am just tired of the scaremongering and industry that has grown up around it. Carbon is carbon. There is a finite amount of carbon on earth. All the carbon that is now oil, coal, gas, was once living organisms. It was all above the surface. As Albert Tatlock continually bangs on about, the only way to reduce the amount of carbon used is to reduce the number of people. As the population of earth continues to grow, so will the atmospheric carbon problem. It really is as simple as that.

Ah good, I'll get the suncream and shades out then, and wait for the summer.

There are literally tonnes of boats that cross the Irish Sea on a daily basis for a fraction the cost of the Steam Packet. If the linkspan was deregulated, don't you think some of these companies would want to pick up some of the very large, lucrative trade monopolised by the Steampacket? I mean, all they need to do is stop here for an hour or two on the way to Belfast or Dublin! The IOM is small in population compared to UK towns, but it is much richer. There is actually a market for shops other than Lidl and Poundstretcher. A lot of companies know this but cannot get in because of red tape. It took years to get McDonalds, and fairly soon after KFC was here. It is all very closely controlled. Remove those controls and it could be amazing. Look at Jersey. They have a thriving high street, much more than us and they are much more independant than us. I think any movement is very small. A few sabre rattlers at best. I don't think anything will come of it but that does not mean we should not be looking at all possibilities.

Independence does not necessarily mean cutting ties with the rest of the world, only the UK. There is no reason why IOM could not maintain good relations with Europe, USA, etc. It could actually work out very well for IOM. However, i don't think the IOM has enough governing experience to carry it off. Also, I think your ideas about full amalgamation are wrong. It is more likely that transport links would improve. Things like the MEA and steampacket monopoly would go, and freight would be subsidised as per northern ireland. More UK chains would come here because there would not be the red tape (back handers etc.) required to open up. The red tape and backhanders are the route of the monopolies here.

Carbon offset? What a load of cock!