Stu Peters

I use my own Android phone and a second SIM for work calls. I don’t recall being offered an iPhone…

Merry Xmas youse bunch of bastids.

I don’t think there’s a simple answer. Yes, politicians need to ‘do something’ and are constantly trying to do that. But I think we need a wider discussion about what people can reasonably expect of our NHS and who should pay (much) more to fund it. I suspect (looking around some waiting rooms) that those using the service stopped paying for it many years ago (if ever) so there’s an immediate disconnect before you go an inch further.

I have respect for Lawrie, although we’re not bezzies or drinking buddies. So this is just an observation rather than a personal defence. The health service seems to have been a poisoned chalice for every politician brave or foolish enough to take it on, for as long as I can remember both here and in the UK. From the outside (I can claim no insights) it appears to be a monstrous bureaucracy with a mixture some wonderful and some sociopathic staff. Consultants ruling with a rod of iron (think the James Robertson Justice character) and a withering disregard for subordinates and patients alike, and more Spanish practices than a Madrid music school. Bullying and intimidation, mini empires and eye watering costs. It seems to be a juggernaut, out of control, doing what IT thinks is best with no regard to cost or consequence, and we all know it yet choose not to whistle at the devil for fear we’ll be customers at some point. So to blame ANY politician is unfair. The service is overwhelmed by demanding customers, there isn’t ever enough money in the economy to fund it, so neither side is happy. A suggestion I made during the election was to get rid of anything bar core diagnostic and treatment services and send people away to centres of excellence for everything else. We do that to an extent already, and people would moan that we’re a third world country. Manx Care may or may not be working, it’s too early to tell, but it was a sensible political decision to decouple health from politics. I’ll defer to Wrighty and others who may have a very different point of view.

It must be Xmas good cheer. It won’t last.

I hadn’t thought of that TBH. Probably yes, as a reasonable concession.

As Lawrie Hooper (or maybe David Ashford) said, what will happen will be more a referendum than a consultation - this is just a stalling tactic. I respect that some have religious faith, but the argument that the Bishop (and the last one was a super bloke with vast experience of the human condition) should automatically assume a voting role in parliament is deeply flawed. Politics and the church have little in common. By that logic the chairman of the local steam railway supporters group should also have a vote in Tynwald. I don’t suppose that bringing this forward has deflected Lawrie a jot from his ministerial role. Like women, politicians have to learn how to multitask. My compromise is to have the Bish stand for election to LegCo like any other candidate. If he has the chops, he gets the gig.

Absolutely. And think of all the carbon emissions we’re saving. You know I’m big on saving the planet or something equally virtuous, right?

You couldn’t take the truth…

I trample where angels fear to tread…

Rather than guess at the answers, can I suggest you direct the questions to IOMP customer services who can quote chapter and verse?

*clique*

No.

In some cases the information is readily to hand, but in others I don't think it's that easy - just based on some of the 'anonymised' requests that I see as a DOI member. Questions in multiple parts going back sometimes many years. Someone has to find the information, collate it, someone else has to check that it's not sensitive, etc. So one FOI can tie up a number of staff for hours or days - and is (along with all the other bureaucratic processes we all insist on) probably one of the reasons we have such a bloated public sector. I have no problem with appropriate transparency, but some people use them as a perverse hobby with no regard to the cost or consequences. If I had a sufficient grievance £250 (or any other reasonable amount) wouldn't stop me submitting a request, but it might stop some of the more frivolous applicants.

The concept of the FOI system is fine, in principle. Their very existence makes people accountable and think twice. However, they are being used primarily by people who have worn out their net curtains. Malcontents who want to put it to 'the man'. Maybe 5% of them (from what I'm aware of) are reasonable. Given the manpower taken up by them I'd levy a fee of £250 each. Things were simpler under Mr Churchill. Nowadays there'd be a slew of FOI requests to see which beaches, who would be doing the fighting and whether a consultation had been carried out beforehand, by whom at what cost and was the job put out to tender. So I think I agree with b4mbi.

It was actually Mark Williams

I think you can still have a drink and drive legally, despite the apparent desire to introduce a zero limit.

Be true to your own values (that’s hopefully why you were elected), realise at the outset that you can’t change the world by yourself although you can steer and influence decisions, admit it if you screw up, make decisions with a good conscience and be open to learning from people who think differently. And stay off social media, obvs!

Good questions Chie, and I don’t know all the answers, but suggest that tendering is a requirement in most projects as there often aren’t enough employees within government to take them on (without taking them off core services), the public expects the bigger schemes to go to firms with specialist skills, transparency, the desire to share the budgets with private sector firms, etc. Interestingly I believe the superb resurfacing job to the south of the Cooil Road roundabout was done by a DOI team. I think it’s the case everywhere that contractors have a ‘special’ rate card for government work, and unless someone tenders a significant amount less (I suspect hat rarely happens, and certainly have no evidence of a price fixing cartel) there’s no option but to pay the ‘going’ rate. When an off-island firm wins a contract (presumably on cost), there’s an outcry. Of course I appreciate that contracts aren’t solely awarded on price. I think there’s probably a lot more outsourcing than decades ago, and presume that’s down to accountants making a case for reducing a major ongoing cost (staff with benefits) for an ‘as needed’ solution. I take your point about minor works too. In my prime I’d have reached for a sledgehammer myself, but that would probably be a sackable offence nowadays.

See, this is the problem with trying to have a sensible discussion. By the way, the job doesn’t pay me expenses (or a pension). What have I done in (just over) 2 years? The job of MHK. I don’t keep score of the successes and failures that go into doing that job. To NBs more reasonable question, the civil service has grown partly because of the amount of time it takes to answer relentless serial FOI requests and apparently pointless parliamentary questions. The whole world is increasingly risk averse, so every work stream involves countless committees and experts to produce a paper trail so that everybody can sleep at night. I’ve said before but it bears repeating: if you have a pothole, I’d prefer to send a bloke round tomorrow with a bucket of tar and a bucket of gravel to fix it. Instead we have to have surveys, priority lists, budget approvals, an engineer’s report, sign-offs by various people and put the work out to tender, then organise road closures, consultations with stakeholders and all that other bureaucratic BS to try to ensure efficiency and best value, all the time recording every action as it almost certainly WILL be challenged by somebody, sometime. Trust me, it drives me NUTS! But I’m an old gammon who used to stand or fall on every decision I made, which is complete anathema to organisations today. That goes for much of my work. When people ask ‘what have you done’ I can only reply that I’ve done my best to bring some common sense to the job. But I can’t wander through government like Alan Sugar firing people I don’t rate. I’m not looking for sympathy or respect - I get reasonably well paid for the responsibility I shoulder. But I get cross at all those whose answer to our problems (which by the way were mostly brought about by external factors outside our control) is to fire all our ‘useless’ MHKs, disband our ‘part time Legislative Council, sack most of our ‘fat cat’ civil servants and hope for the best. Hence my question - ‘what would YOU do?’. There is no low-hanging fruit or any simple solutions, and the sooner people start to consider the unintended consequences of this kind of thinking, the better. I’ve not been ‘assimilated by The Borg’ and am beholden to nobody, but my understanding of government has (understandably I think) changed since becoming a member of Tynwald.

No ideas then boys? Just the usual insults?

Still waiting. Maybe the grown-ups have better things to do tonight? You don’t need to be a constitutional academic to realise that it’s easier to criticise others (politicians, cops, courts, civil servants) as a default position rather than to make any valid alternative suggestions.

I’ll make a coffee and wait for the grown-ups to post.

So, for the sake of a heated debate, suppose we sack everyone tomorrow (including most civil servants I presume from threads like this). What do we replace them with to run the Island better?

But LegCo scrutinises Keys legislation, and members sit on most boards and committees. They answer to nobody. Do you really want to give Keys unfettered powers? Asking for a friend who might be persuaded to launch a bloodless coup and become Benevolent Dictator for Life!