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Isle of Man Budget 2024


Maugholdmafia

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6 minutes ago, Gladys said:

Getting rid of the bloat will cost, it can only be done cost effectively by natural wastage.  But there is no hint of that, or even plans to try. 

And there seems to be no shortage of funding available to allow the bloat to increase 🤔

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39 minutes ago, Fred the shred said:

Josem has had his five minutes of fame posing as the Manx Tax Alliance or something like that what a plonker .

Well he’s probably working on his next election campaign as we speak. 

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1 hour ago, slinkydevil said:

I don't think it matters who is elected. Loads of people on social media saying 'I can't wait to vote this lot out.' But we all know that budgets are written and put together by the CS. They alone have the control and voting in a new batch of no-marks will do nothing. MHKs have no power to change anything, Manx politics is designed that way. There's little chance it will ever change.

 

There has to be a way though. Either that or, as I've suggested before, they know something we don't about the UK's attitude to the future funding of the Island.

They need to recruit a CEO for the government machine from the private sector. Somebody determined. Not one of the depressing bullshit merchants we routinely employ, but a person who can run a large organisation properly, and have that person onside and incentivised to actually reduce the bureaucracy. The first task would be to convert just a few at the top of the monster who can see the reality staring them in the face that the present course is just not sustainable in the medium term. Home truths and self-preservation should surely be enough to persuade them of it.

Then the real work can start. Not with wholesale immediate sackings of civil servants, because that would disrupt the wider economy given the scale of the headcount, but by evolving the situation with a target of reductions over the next 10 to 20 years to what the Island can reasonably afford. It is ever more obvious that we simply can't afford the current scope and size.

This can be done, and it is a viable strategy, but a start needs to be made. Every job that becomes vacant should be assessed for its worth as to whether it, and the function it serves, needs to be retained with a presumption not to do so. If the job is absolutely necessary, the first option should be redeployment from functions found to be surplus to requirements. Only positions requiring essential skills beyond pen-pushing should be recruited as a last resort. It is not an impossible quest given there must be a turnover of staff continuously coming and going, and about 60 retiring each year from the office bound civil service.

It would at least be a statement of intent to the wider population that is paying for this outrageous nonsense that somebody at the top actually grasps the gravity of the situation and understands what needs to be done. Even seeing some reduction in numbers at the end of each financial year would give encouragement. Instead, they are still going in the opposite direction, and it gets worse all the time as those people move up through their increments, get regraded, are awarded cost of living rises etc, etc. It needs to stop. It's the only way. All that's happening at the moment is the projections are being massaged to show a time when draw down from reserves will cease, but that time is receding ever further into the future, pink book by pink book, and it's looking like numbers just plucked from the sky and inserted into the accounts to fit the fanciful official narrative.

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, woolley said:

Then the real work can start. Not with wholesale immediate sackings of civil servants, because that would disrupt the wider economy given the scale of the headcount, but by evolving the situation with a target of reductions over the next 10 to 20 years to what the Island can reasonably afford. It is ever more obvious that we simply can't afford the current scope and size.

The problem is that with the  current rate of reserves burn, we don't have 20 years, unless they raid NI, which they probably will, which might give us that period.

Plus, we can't just sack them anyway, there are expensive redundancy terms to be adhered to.

It just seems to be amazing that they cannot see or begin to address some of the reasons that we need to draw £100M< a year from reserves.

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It really comes to something when Eddie ‘Bednight’ Teare ex Treasury Minister and MHK gives his opinion, and it’s not complimentary either. Eddie Teare wasn’t exactly the greatest Treasury Minster either, but he seemed positively competent compared to both Alf Cannan and Alex Allinson. 
 

 

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2 minutes ago, 2112 said:

It really comes to something when Eddie ‘Bednight’ Teare ex Treasury Minister and MHK gives his opinion, and it’s not complimentary either. Eddie Teare wasn’t exactly the greatest Treasury Minster either, but he seemed positively competent compared to both Alf Cannan and Alex Allinson. 
 

 

How much of the budget do you really think was the idea of or decided by cannan or Allinson?

They might. Be the front me and they have signed it off, but the contents of it really had very little to do with who happens to be treasury minister at the time.

Do you really think if the Dr had taken ill six weeks ago the budget would have been any different?

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Teare was just another right-wing mediocrity. He couldn't even read the short speeches his officers wrote for him without sounding like the class dunce. A petty, insignificant drone: why does the north of the island keep voting in these no-marks?

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8 hours ago, woolley said:

Then the real work can start. Not with wholesale immediate sackings of civil servants, because that would disrupt the wider economy given the scale of the headcount, but by evolving the situation with a target of reductions over the next 10 to 20 years to what the Island can reasonably afford. It is ever more obvious that we simply can't afford the current scope and size.

The island doesn't have 10 - 20 years. At most the reserves are going to support current spending levels for 4 - 5 years at most, that's barring any unexpected national emergency. 

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4 minutes ago, Hairy Poppins said:

The island doesn't have 10 - 20 years. At most the reserves are going to support current spending levels for 4 - 5 years at most, that's barring any unexpected national emergency. 

What are reserves now?  Whats in the pot?

 

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7 hours ago, woolley said:

Then the real work can start. Not with wholesale immediate sackings of civil servants, because that would disrupt the wider economy given the scale of the headcount, but by evolving the situation with a target of reductions over the next 10 to 20 years to what the Island can reasonably afford. It is ever more obvious that we simply can't afford the current scope and size.

 

The intersection of "Turkeys don't vote for Christmas" and "Too big too fail".

Our next 'chance' will be September 2026. by which time Allinson will have gotten his levy in, they'll have found an excuse not to reverse the 10% tax increase and anyone who genuinely stands on a 'smaller government' platform will never get elected. Simply because the percentage of the electorate who work for government or depend upon someone who works in government will always be enough to ensure that.

And of course 'smaller government' gets translated by them that want to retain an expanding trough as 'less frontline services'.

The government are basically barnacles on a ship. It's fine when it's plain sailing, when you hit rough seas the trouble starts.

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