Shimmins' comments an 'insult to residents of the Isle of Man'

[TheTeapot]

11 minutes ago, The Dog's Dangly Bits said:

Who was that?  It looked like the biggest beneficiary of the industry was the tax payer ultimately.

The biggest beneficiary of the industry was Steve Christian, and part of the reluctance to adequately investigate the whole scam is because he's dead.

[The Dog's Dangly Bits]

Just now, TheTeapot said:

The biggest beneficiary of the industry was Steve Christian, and part of the reluctance to adequately investigate the whole scam is because he's dead.

He wasn't though was he?  We were.  He did well out of it.  Having said that it isn't a crime to be smart.  Which he definitely was.  But without him WE would have been a LOT worse off.  

[finlo]

5 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

The biggest beneficiary of the industry was Steve Christian, and part of the reluctance to adequately investigate the whole scam is because he's dead.

Steady on, I got roundly criticized for daring to suggest such a thing a while back.

[TheTeapot]

Criticised by what? Dickheads like Notwell? Nothing to criticise, entirely correct.

[Non-Believer]

Depending on how you look at it, how it's calculated and the duration, some quoted Govt losses to the film industry dalliance are as high as £100M. Either way, the IoM has never had a place in film making history's annals. Anals maybe.

[thesultanofsheight]

9 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

The biggest beneficiary of the industry was Steve Christian, and part of the reluctance to adequately investigate the whole scam is because he's dead.

I agree and not being too cruel but I’m sure it’s a bit handy that he’s now dead as I’d guess a lot of the knowledge trail died with him. 

[TheTeapot]

1 minute ago, Non-Believer said:

Depending on how you look at it, how it's calculated and the duration, some quoted Govt losses to the film industry dalliance are as high as £100M. Either way, the IoM has never had a place in film making history's annals. Anals maybe.

Manx porn? Didn't know there was such a thing. Still, rule 34...

[Roger Mexico]

2 hours ago, The Dog's Dangly Bits said:

What about the hundreds of millions the island benefitted from due to the film industry?

But we don't really know it that was true.  When I was a kid you couldn't just just announce the result to a maths problem, you had to 'show your workings'.  Maybe nowadays students simply tell the teacher "It's zillions and zillions and zillions, now shut up!", but I rather doubt it.  (Or maybe if they do they get fast-tracked into the Manx Civil Service).  Certainly we've never seen any real accounting of how much the Island benefited from the VAT arrangements in place at the time and more important how much of the benefit can be attributed to different sectors of the economy.  Instead there was a sort of 'fairy gold' attitude to whole topic - that we shouldn't examine things too closely in case the money magically disappeared.  

But even if the film industry did help create those benefits. that isn't really what we are discussing here.  These funds were set up after the VAT arrangements were changed and so needed to stand up on their own as investments.  Or not, as appears to be the case.

[Mr Helmut Fromage]

18 minutes ago, The Dog's Dangly Bits said:

He wasn't though was he?  We were.  He did well out of it.  Having said that it isn't a crime to be smart.  Which he definitely was.  But without him WE would have been a LOT worse off.  

What an incredibly naive statement - Steve Christian may have been smart but often successful criminals are.

[P.K.]

Just now, Roger Mexico said:

But we don't really know it that was true.  When I was a kid you couldn't just just announce the result to a maths problem, you had to 'show your workings'.  Maybe nowadays students simply tell the teacher "It's zillions and zillions and zillions, now shut up!", but I rather doubt it.  (Or maybe if they do they get fast-tracked into the Manx Civil Service).  Certainly we've never seen any real accounting of how much the Island benefited from the VAT arrangements in place at the time and more important how much of the benefit can be attributed to different sectors of the economy.  Instead there was a sort of 'fairy gold' attitude to whole topic - that we shouldn't examine things too closely in case the money magically disappeared.  

But even if the film industry did help create those benefits. that isn't really what we are discussing here.  These funds were set up after the VAT arrangements were changed and so needed to stand up on their own as investments.  Or not, as appears to be the case.

Sounds to me like the same sort of "accounting" that's been applied to the cruise ship "opportunity"....

[Donald Trumps]

I can't help - in my mind's eye - associating the dreadful Fast Eddie with this disaster

Hope I'm not doing the man down

Edited September 28, 2019 by Donald Trumps

[Non-Believer]

It may have been financially beneficial to the Island. But the reticence and mendacity peddled by Bell and Teare in respect of information and responses to questions about the whole thing did it no favours and have left it wide open to further interpretation and questioning.

You have to remember, it wasn't "actually taxpayer's money" we were dealing with. "Dealing", literally. 

[The Dog's Dangly Bits]

12 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

But we don't really know it that was true.  When I was a kid you couldn't just just announce the result to a maths problem, you had to 'show your workings'.  Maybe nowadays students simply tell the teacher "It's zillions and zillions and zillions, now shut up!", but I rather doubt it.  (Or maybe if they do they get fast-tracked into the Manx Civil Service).  Certainly we've never seen any real accounting of how much the Island benefited from the VAT arrangements in place at the time and more important how much of the benefit can be attributed to different sectors of the economy.  Instead there was a sort of 'fairy gold' attitude to whole topic - that we shouldn't examine things too closely in case the money magically disappeared.  

But even if the film industry did help create those benefits. that isn't really what we are discussing here.  These funds were set up after the VAT arrangements were changed and so needed to stand up on their own as investments.  Or not, as appears to be the case.

Well the VAT had risen to over 460m mainly off the  back of films and then dropped by 200m a year.    That suggests to me that we must have saw a material benefit.

No one would dispute SC did well out of the film industry.   But alleging a dead man was a criminal ( as some are intimidating)just because he was smart enough to do well seems a little strong to me.  

Beecroft seems to have a bee in her very average  bonnet about the film fund losing some money on films.  The worlswide film and tv industry loses money on the majority of what is produced.  It's the 20% of the stellar stuff that will subsidise and keep the industry going and make profits overall.  No doubt some losers were backed (like Orson Wells) and that is poor decision making.  

It's just difficult to see how it can be forgotten how well we did overall. SC was the main driver behind that.

[asitis]

3 hours ago, The Dog's Dangly Bits said:

What about the hundreds of millions the island benefitted from due to the film industry?

Allegedly !   remind me again how much VAT we lost ?

I have said many times as this saga unfolded that however good or bad this "investment" was, no one has ever answered a straight question about it when anything has been asked. That alone should be jumped on at the outset of this enquiry and the smoke and mirrors obfuscation not permitted, I hope the chair is up to the job ! If not get someone in who is !

Edited September 28, 2019 by asitis

[Roger Mexico]

16 minutes ago, The Dog's Dangly Bits said:

Well the VAT had risen to over 460m mainly off the  back of films and then dropped by 200m a year.    That suggests to me that we must have saw a material benefit.

No one would dispute SC did well out of the film industry.   But alleging a dead man was a criminal ( as some are intimidating)just because he was smart enough to do well seems a little strong to me.  

Beecroft seems to have a bee in her very average  bonnet about the film fund losing some money on films.  The worlswide film and tv industry loses money on the majority of what is produced.  It's the 20% of the stellar stuff that will subsidise and keep the industry going and make profits overall.  No doubt some losers were backed (like Orson Wells) and that is poor decision making.  

It's just difficult to see how it can be forgotten how well we did overall. SC was the main driver behind that.

You're not really answering my points.  The VAT regime could be used by a number of industries (and was) just how much of the benefits could be attributed to the film industry is unproven - it may be that the very fact it was so visible means that we are overestimating its contribution, money moving around in less high profile sectors may have been more significant.  And indeed it's possible that the high profile of the film industry may have been as responsible for the re-examination of the VAT arrangements as any Mansion House dinner.  After all there were various film scams going on in the UK as well that brought a lot of attention to the financial set-ups around the industry.

But none of this addresses the actual topic of this inquiry which relates to the Media Development Fund, which came after the end of the great VAT bonanza.  Even if the film sector had been responsible for all the extra revenue from that, to decide to put more money in after things had changed would be like pumping all your money into a slot machine because you had won the jackpot on it.  You point out that most films lose loads of money or succeed spectacularly[1], in that case don't invest in them unless you really know what you are doing and can afford to lose the money.  Public servants tend to lack such skills and public money isn't really for gambling with.

And you're doing the usual Manx thing of deciding whether someone is a hero (Christian) or villain (Beecroft) and letting that skew what you think about anything they are involved in.  Their actions are opinions are what needs to be examined. 

 

[1]  In actual fact this has never really been quite as people think and the growth of different sorts of media made it even less so.  But it's true that financial involvement in films has always been a risky business in an industry where often the largest creative input goes into the accountancy.