Taxpayers to dig for £20M for Liverpool Dock

[Omobono]

I am afraid Chris's reputation is in tatters ,cock up after cock up  and no one brought to account ,  all credibility for the DOI has gone , why do you think Glover has thrown the towel in  , he does not want to be the fall guy for the mess as the airport , and besides he wants 2 week of so be can be promoting himself on Manx radio over the TT period , how this sits with the rest of the Tynwald  members is beyond me , higher profile ,and more self praise  and airtime than Donald Trump

[Non-Believer]

8 hours ago, offshoremanxman said:

I think also the DOI has done a very good job of love bombing Mr T and convincing him that it’s the public that’s wrong and it’s all so awful that everyone hates them

I also strongly suspect that Stu Peters was also caught up in the blast radius of said love bomb.

"The motoring public just aren't paying enough towards our fuck ups and aspirations".

A Department that's fucked up a Promenade, the running of an Airport and the construction of a ferry Terminal as well.

Got to be some sort of record.

Edited May 20, 2023 by Non-Believer
Extra bit

[Dirty Buggane]

1 hour ago, Gladys said:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.legislation.gov.im/cms/images/LEGISLATION/PRINCIPAL/1987/1987-0013/GovernmentDepartmentsAct1987_1.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjv3-3yzIT_AhU7SkEAHRo4DbcQFnoECBAQBg&usg=AOvVaw2i9Gpgj0D3yfUHoDyEy9o8

That is one fuckin hell of an plausible deniability clause

[Non-Believer]

2 hours ago, Dirty Buggane said:

That is one fuckin hell of an plausible deniability clause

Apply that across all Govt Depts and one starts to realise why "we are where we are" and how people walk away with no accountability for hugely expensive ventures and errors and massive payoffs for that to boot.

Written by civil servants for civil servants and politicians alike.

Edited May 20, 2023 by Non-Believer
Typo

[Banker]

9 hours ago, code99 said:

The last time CT pulled a fast one was when he resigned from his Ministerial post about a year or so before the GE and then sniped at the IOMG… the same IOMG in which he was formerly one of the key players. I wager he will try to do something similar the next time around i.e., resign before the GE and then diss the Government in order to re-establish his personal independent ‘voice’. We will have to wait and see. IMHO, our political edifice is no longer fit for purpose.

He didn’t resign Howie sacked him for not toeing Comin lines on something!

[offshoremanxman]

10 hours ago, code99 said:

The last time CT pulled a fast one was when he resigned from his Ministerial post about a year or so before the GE and then sniped at the IOMG… the same IOMG in which he was formerly one of the key players. I wager he will try to do something similar the next time around i.e., resign before the GE and then diss the Government in order to re-establish his personal independent ‘voice’. We will have to wait and see. IMHO, our political edifice is no longer fit for purpose.

To be fair he got sacked over not backing Quayle over the Covid rules and border closures. It wasn’t his choice to be on the back bench then. Maybe that will happen again but honestly fronting that absolute money-burning shit show isn’t a healthy environment to be in. 

[Holte End]

11 hours ago, code99 said:

The last time CT pulled a fast one was when he resigned from his Ministerial post about a year or so before the GE and then sniped at the IOMG… the same IOMG in which he was formerly one of the key players. I wager he will try to do something similar the next time around i.e., resign before the GE and then diss the Government in order to re-establish his personal independent ‘voice’. We will have to wait and see. IMHO, our political edifice is no longer fit for purpose.

I thought @Chris Thomas was sacked for voting against Comin at the time on a housing policy, I think. You know a politician who actually does, what he says he will do, I think they call it having principles. 

[code99]

I accept your points. However, the reason CT got sacked was because he became critical of the administration in which he had played a crucial decision-making part. He must have presumed that, by becoming verbally mutinous, he would be sacked (this happened a year before the GE, where, because the government was so unpopular, about half of the then MHKs were not re-elected). What I am arguing is that if a Minister has to rigidly toe the line and never question the government, for fear of being sacked, then our political system is broken and flawed. Forcing Ministers to resign/ sacking Ministers every time they want to speak up on issues is no way to run a democratically elected government.

Next year’s UK DfT safety audit of Ronaldsway could potentially reveal some fundamental technical and safety issues. It seems to me that the £300m that Chris mentioned in Tynwald a couple of weeks ago may be necessary for the IOMG/ IOM taxpayers to stump up, depending on what the planned audit reveals. Could the UK conceivably shut down our airport?

Edited May 21, 2023 by code99
typo

[asitis]

1 hour ago, code99 said:

Next year’s UK DfT safety audit of Ronaldsway could potentially reveal some fundamental technical and safety issues. It seems to me that the £300m that Chris mentioned in Tynwald a couple of weeks ago may be necessary for the IOMG/ IOM taxpayers to stump up, depending on what the planned audit reveals. Could the UK conceivably shut down our airport?

But hang on, we've been paying consummate professionals to run it haven't we, for the past 15 to 20 years ?

[GreyWolf]

The whole process is just another in the long list of the iom government premier league shit shows in wasting money it’s become a national disgrace, how they overspend our taxes and then all keep there heads down in Tynwald not asking or looking for real answers. Also part of any chief executive job spec should include being accountable to serious questioning from the public or media.

 

[Beelzebub3]

On 5/19/2023 at 11:19 AM, Happier diner said:

Its not reasonable to expect him to be able to explain a complex civil engineering/ matter is it? his expertise is financial analysis which hardly qualifies him to make statements on such technicalities. 

I don't see how he can be held accountable with him only being minister at the (well nearly) end of the project.

He is of course accountable for things that have happened since his appointment but he might find it difficult to understand then and even more difficult to explain them.

That should make Mr Thomas even more determined to get answers as his back up could be it did not happen during his term as minister and I am only looking to right the wrongs or mistakes either with finance or construction of my predecessors, therefore he would come out of this as the hero and not the sanctimonious twat that tries to baffle us with bullshit on every opportunity he gets to be on the news. Maybe he doesn't want to bring up the past errors and it may well put scorn on current high up members of the c/s who let this happen from cost £0 to £100 million is something that needs investigating without a doubt.

[doc.fixit]

Investigating by a neutral body and the results acting on in a vigorous fashion.

[Happier diner]

24 minutes ago, doc.fixit said:

Investigating by a neutral body and the results acting on in a vigorous fashion.

But what would it tell us? And what could be done to act? The politicians who made stupid ill thought decisions and mqde us stupid promises and then led us into this mess.........are gone.

The civil servants that got landed with a nightmare and only managed to make it worse.....are gone 

What is to be gained by spending more money telling us......err......well............what we already know?

[Gladys]

19 hours ago, Two-lane said:

I looked, but I did not find.... Is there a document which describes this obligation (to defend the department no matter what)?

https://www.gov.im/about-the-government/council-of-ministers/the-council-of-ministers/

This has a link to the Ministerial Code. 

[code99]

1 hour ago, doc.fixit said:

Investigating by a neutral body and the results acting on in a vigorous fashion.

I agree. I am sick and tired of hearing that politicians have no say in anything, and of their 'lessons will be learned'. If they can’t do any better, why don’t we just hand the administration of the Island over to a bunch of nameless technocrats/ bureaucrats…just kidding. Personally, I hope that such an investigation would shed some light not only on the Liverpool ferry terminal project, but also on how the Island’s other large capital projects are executed. The Prom is another project that expanded endlessly, both in terms of duration and money (even now there are no estimates of what the final cost of the project will be).

This investigation needs to look at everything from the conception of the idea all the way through to completion/delivery of the project. E.g., were the risks of things going wrong considered in the original plan? Were contingency plans created, or were things simply allowed to stumble from one ‘unforeseeable set-back’ to the next? The public needs to understand what caused the project(s) to get out of control, what the critical pressure points were and who was accountable for what. We need to know if there were penalties for poor performance, etc, etc.