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Poverty and deprivation which results in misery, despair and recourse to food aid is not something that just sprang up in the last year or so successive Manx governments have known about it and seemingly done little to tackle it.

In 2011 there were no ‘official statistics but a query from an MHK to then Social Care Minister Chris Robertshaw MHK revealed that:

‘There are large numbers of families who are clearly struggling to make ends meet.

I’m spoiled for choice! Lunch consumed I settle back for the ‘after dinner rest awhile’ interlude and scan Crown Dependency News. Eddie Power has an item with Kate Beecroft MHK averring that something called the NEWSNIGHTBLOG is a ‘good read. It certainly is very well written and thought provoking but it's spoiled for me by being drawn back to would Kate consider it a ‘good read’ if Howard hadn’t fired her after that ‘No Orchids for Miss Blandish’ episode.

I think the Chief Constable and the Lubyanka crew are losing the plot if this story is to be believed. Either that or there’s to many of them with too little to do. Come to think of it with cuts everywhere and the population falling how do numbers in the force stand up to scrutiny? (link):

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/police-support-castletow...

I’m becoming more than a little annoyed with Howard Quayle the Chief Minister which is sad because I was starting to warm to him especially now his ‘Two Ronnies’ double act with Paul Moulton was rivalling ‘Unforgotten as the high point of my weekly viewing.

I mean Howard can come across as smugly indifferent especially when you learn that people are starving on his watch (link):

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/the-big-table-welcomes-e...

One of our regular commentators contacts me to say they are just a tad angry that various people seem to want to peddle the myth of a ‘subterranean village’ under the reservoir in the West Baldwin valley.

Imagine them all down there in their watery graves - the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker - just one problem its a load of bollocks!

A lovely photograph of Piran carved from Cornish granite and now at home in the Valley of the Saints, Brittany.

There, Piran, weighing 6 tons, stands with an Irish granite millstone and a Breton granite base marking the close relationship between the three Celtic Nations where it is the 100th such statue.

The sculptors were David Paton and Stéphane Rouget, two sculptors based in Cornwall,
 

The Milwaukee Irish Fest is North America’s largest celebration of Irish music and culture. The four-day festival showcases more than 100 entertainment acts on 16-stages at Henry W. Maier Festival Park on Milwaukee’s lakefront. The annual festival occurs every third weekend in August. The 2018 festival takes place August 16 to 19.

‘The great man’ (aka Chief Minister Howard Quayle MHK) is out and about in the media beavering away in line with his mantra that Tynwald have not all buggered of on holiday it’s business as usual. Strangely although one or two Minister are about there’s no sign of Cannan and Thomas they are in a bunker somewhere no doubt reprising Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film ‘Downfall’

Despite the best efforts of a few shortsighted politicians and others to strangle development of Cornwall's living indigeneous language, ITV news reports on the latest developments featuring Gwenno, Matthi and Radyo an Gernewegva and Rob and his Cornish speaking family.

The current exhibition at the Hodgson Loom Gallery, situated within the Laxey Woollen Mill, features some unusual work this summer entitled The Eyes of the House, by former local artist David Swinton.

He has exhibited at the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, the Laing and the Royal Watercolour Society as well as a number of solo presentations in both the UK and the Isle of Man.