Blogs

I highlighted the apparent ‘bonhomie’ of Ireland’s Taoiseach Leo Varadkar with the reality of rural communities fighting to retain services. I cited the campaign to keep the Post Office open at Inverin a village on the Co Galway coast road between Spiddal and Casla.

‘The Chamber of Charlatans’ you can’t take your eyes of them. To use that hackneyed phrase from an episode of Inspector Morse:

‘They’re like Special Branch you never know what the blighters are up to’

Ironically they pick the dead season of news to launch their latest offensive on work permits appropriately using their good friend in the Keys ‘Bela Lugosi’ (aka Bill Shimmin(s) MHK (see earlier post).

Strange something called the business ‘community’ is organising a debate about another tranche of immigration. The debate will take place against a backdrop of emigration which despite government attempts to tell us otherwise still is going on:

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm?id=42422&headline=Event%20will%20a...

Following a campaign supported by many Cornish patriots, Waitrose have changed their policy and will be removing the Flag of St George of England from chesse they sell which has been made in Cornwall to be replaced by our much loved and unsullied flag of St Piran.

Waitrose initially said that “the use of national flags was introduced to help our customers to quickly identify UK produced cheese” and that the use of a national rather than a regional flag was more easily recognised by their customers.

The internet search engine 'DuckDuckGo' has now included Cornish (Kernewek) in its list of languages available to users.

LIONEL COWIN A JOURNALIST OF THE OLD SCHOOL

I was very saddened to read of the death of Lionel Cowin former Editor of Isle of Man Newspapers but best remembered by me for his days at the IOM Courier when it was a self standing freesheet and considerably more bulky than it is these days.

Lionel was one of the old band of journalists in the mould of the late Harry Bregazzi and of course from the world of TV and Radio journalism Terry Cringle who I’m pleased to say is still ‘bounding’ around!

The great disappearing data mystery reported by IOM Today does seem to have something to do with Manx Radio if the graphic rich construction to this link on Crown Dependency News is anything to fo by (link):

https://www.facebook.com/crowndependencypoliticalnews/posts/200695890265...

The Elgin Marbles, or Parthenon sculptures, have long been the subject of dispute. The collection of classical Greek marble sculptures were originally part of the temple of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens.  They were removed and shipped to England, in what the poet, peer and politician Lord Byron described as an act of vandalism or looting. They have been kept in the British Museum since 1817.

Its like a bus you wait for one and them two come along at once. I mentioned in the earlier post about a possible coup but in the case of PAG they don’t want to take politicians power they just want to subordinate them by slashing the pay...of some.

PAG have been applying ‘The Chris Thomas Theory of Economics’ to MLCs pay and they were in the star spangled studio of MTTV to set out their stall - obviously the one they nicked of Mec Vannin on Tynwald Day (link):

I hear worrying rumours of conspiracies in the corridors of power I hope these are false - as Howard would put it ‘fake news’. However my source is a pundit not known for flights of febrility.

Our democracy may not have much going for it but one of the good things is that at the inception of the new Tynwald ‘the head honcho’ is chosen and should short of breaking any political crockery get to carry through his programme. Well that’s how its worked with the exception of an unfortunate turn of affairs some years ago.