Bernard Moffatt's blog

It's nothing new for Tynwald members to keep bad company but in rolling out the red carpet (no pun) to a visiting senior official from the Chinese Embassy in London they are plumbing the depths.

China’s aggressive global expansion most epitomised by the territorial sea grab in South East Asia is bad enough but it is there treatment of national minorities that most inflames me.

The annexation and subjugation of Tibet are well publicised with many Tibetan families now into their second or third generation of exile in India.

BBC Northern Ireland has an interesting piece here on the American artist Rockwell Kent and the time he spent in Ireland (Donegal) in the mid 1920s

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-44534911

Kent was one of a group of socialists and intellectuals who were involved with the American Socialist movement in the early twentieth century.

The Isle of Man Chamber of Commerce have been in the news in the ‘Neverland’ that is the Manx media

They had a ‘meet’ and stuffed their faces into the bargain.

The title of this little soiree which is reported to us courtesy of their affiliate Manx Radio is ‘Drawing the future’:

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-business/chamber-hosts-drawin...

I despair I’ve been watching Paul Moulton and Richard Butt glad handing about a meet the public stunt this weekend. Now it may be news after the event but is it news now or just mutual back scratching (link):

https://youtu.be/ulRfzSgLavo

Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against either Butt or Moulton who are both very personable people but seeing a conversation they could have had privately in a pub turned into news leaves me cold.

The Chinese water torture is a process in which water drips on to the victims forehead eventually making them insane.

I suppose Manx Radio can ultimately have the same effect because surely that is what this story in which one noneenity apparently refers to another nonentity as ‘Bold’ is designed to induce.

A can think of a lot of descriptive terms for our current Treasury Minister but Bold is not one of them unless of course Manx Radio are subtly referring to the interpretation of the word as ‘flashy, gaudy, lurid’.

News from the Celtic League:

I reported last month on my Transceltic blog about renewed calls for a prosecution over the killing of GAA player Aidan McAnespie at a border crossing in Aughnacloy Co Tyrone in 1988. Now a trial is to proceed.

The British Army said that Mr McAnespie was killed when a GPMG (General Purposes Machine Gun) was accidentally fired.

However the McAnespie family have long disputed the circumstances of the killing citing the harassment that Aidan had endured from the security forces over many years.

News from the Celtic League:

‘By appealing to the desire to belong, the Army have latched onto a very powerful recruitment tool, in particular among adolescents who feel isolated or marginalised.’ (ForcesWatch UK June 2018)

Juan Watterson Speaker of the Isle of Man House of Keys has been holding forth on population growth during a Tynwald jolly to the Cayman Islands.

The Caymans has imported so much external labour that indigenous people are becoming ‘as rare as hen's teeth’. Juan its seems would like Mann to go the same way. That way we could make every year a ‘year of our Island’ because no bugger would know the first thing about the place. I suppose that would keep Chris Thomas MHK and the other assorted political imports happy.

First they froze you then they starved you soon having a drink of water could become a ‘luxury’.

News that the Manx government is considering metering for domestic water shows there is absolutely no political gutter that this wretched Tynwald will not trawl.

In the Republic of Ireland metering has led to fierce controversy with politicians not only berated but physically attacked. Folk have been jailed in water protests.

I’m worried about the Chief Minister (CM) Howard Quayle MHK! I know it may sound an unlikely scenario as those who used to click into my weekly utterances on CL Facebook before I moved over to the more serene environment of Transceltic usually hoped that every third post would include a knock at Howard.

Still unlikely as it sounds there was never anything personal and if you follow the political meanderings of your average CM (and I’ve followed a few over the decades) you study them astutely - they almost become kindred spirits.