Policy vacuum on deprivation

I’m quite fond of Howard Quayle MHK (our Chief Minister) in an abstruse sort of way. The very fact that I’m writing about him when in the throes of almost deathlike fits of coughing induced by ‘the murran’ - indeed the sort of coughing attacks that are normally only experienced when Manx Radio’s John Moss calls Travelwatch ‘respected’ - says it all.

Howards trump card for me is that he is not Alf Cannan MHK and every day he stays at the helm of COMIN is another day of torment for Alf who thinks that should be his chair.

Facebook pages like this can lampoon Alf or deride him but none of that is as uncomfortable for him as sitting in a room where Howard is boss and gets to ‘delegate’. Poor old Alf even had to play second fiddle to Howard at the Conservative conference. That must have been like being in the orchestra on the Titanic at 2.20 am.

However even my patience with Howard can start to wear thin. Howard know that in the Isle of Man there is great inequality which for the first time for probably a generation is leading to real deprivation. Yet the response of COMIN the government he heads is to steadfastly turn its back on the issue. The only strategy Howard seems to have is ‘policy poverty’ when it comes to the needy.

To compound it he, other members of COMIN and indeed Tynwald ‘frolic and play - quaff and gorge’ with those architects of economic misery the Chamber of Commerce. Their main delight is to hold a twelve month long ‘Hunger Games’ in a continuing cycle where you go hungry and they and the Chamber get even more wealth.

Howard smiles on benignly and mutters platitudes. Alf smoulders in the background waiting his turn in ‘the big chair’ at COMIN and a great many of the population are forgotten.

Like some latter day ‘sage’ I portend a bleak winter for many - this cannot go on surely!

Image: The ‘conductor’ and his second fiddle - No life support for the hungry!

Bernard Moffatt