Manx people lack trust in their government to offer decent employment opportunities

Bernard Moffatt wrote an article for the Mannin Branch of the Celtic League recently (see below). He pointed to results from last year's Social Attitude Survey  undertaken in the Isle of Man.  This showed that only about one in three people trust ether the government or parliament. Not really a surprise given the very negative views that consistently continue to be expressed by Manx people on a daily basis towards the present Manx administration.

In the article, Bernard points to the concerns raised by local people in the survey in regard to the lack of career progression. There are increased calls to offer greater training opportunities, not only for those who want to progress in their employment, but also for young Manx people to gain the skills for employment on their Island. At the same time offer further training for older retired people, who would like to add, without penalty, to their pensions. They have a wealth of experience that is known to be under utilised at present. We know that that the Isle of Man is a special place of great beauty. That it has its own Celtic language and unique culture and has been described as the Celtic heart of the Irish Sea. Indeed the Manx government points to these things when promoting the Island and have produced some great short promotional films.

However, given the concerns raised by Manx people about the lack of training opportunities, the government appears to be mainly concerned about importing labour to the island. Often at the expense of opportunities for the local workforce and young people. We need to make full use of our best resource, our own people. As Bernard Moffatt points out in his article: "You would think the government attitude to this would be to attempt to skill up the workforce to increase optimism and enthusiasm in some sectors. In contrast what they do (via the budget) is improve the ability for external labour to access the Island." This is bernards article:

IF THIS IS ‘FAKE NEWS’ ITS BASED ON THE SOCIAL ATTITUDE SURVEY!

An interesting feature of the Social Attitude Survey last year was that around about 47% of respondents said that career progression had ‘failed to meet their expectations’ or ‘they had no expectation of career progression at all’. In contrast only about 37% said it met their expectations

You would think the government attitude to this would be to attempt to skill up the workforce to increase optimism and enthusiasm in some sectors. In contrast what they do (via the budget) is improve the ability for external labour to access the Island. One assumes that the next social attitude survey will be worse if the government haven’t worked out how to gerrymander the figures by then - they are working on it!

You may have also forgotten that the same survey showed only about one in three people trust ether the government or parliament and that of course is endorsed by electoral take up with only about 50% of people voting at general elections and that's before the election process is messed up as it was in Ayre and Michael.

Meanwhile confidence in the Police was down and confidence in ‘posties’ was up. The government's response to this is to give Chief Constable Gary Roberts more money while simultaneous punishing postal workers.

When it comes to social attitude surveys it seems the government use them as a barometer to inflict even more bizarre policies on any areas performing well while compounding those that have screwed up. Take Justice! Confidence in the judiciary is in decline so no doubt in an attempt to improve things Alf Cannan MHK is on a mission to make ‘access to justice’ more prohibitive.

The Isle of Man is certainly governmentally a curious place.

I found the most interesting statistics on personal finances. An overwhelming bulk of people felt their financial outlook was unchanged or worse. A tiny proportion thought they were better off. The Treasury response to this is to lift the tax cap for the HNWIs so that presumably this will make us feel even better next time there's a survey....lets see

As for the rest of us well about one third are unsure if they will stay here after retiring...you can kind of see why!

Bernard Moffatt

Manx Nationalist