IOM Covid removing restrictions

[Nellie]

I thought that the over-arching picture was how Greenhow and his cronies had framed the rules to be totally rigid and inflexible, giving them no wriggle room when a set of circumstances which they hadn't foreseen arose. Also he had tutored his underlings to show zero sympathy, empathy or common sense.

[Gladys]

38 minutes ago, Paulos The Great said:

Yes I agree with that, But maybe he elected to be honest rather than lie? It looks like he was waiting for a divorce payment in 2007 from the clip you linked. So looks like his daughter born in 2001 was born here, the (ex) family home was here, and he works tax free in Saudi Arabia. If he doesn’t own any other properly in the world and he pays Manx tax withheld at source on his rental income surely it is still his main residence and tax base whether he’s selling it or not? 

I’d hope for some leniency if I’d had a place here I had family ties to for 20 years, I was stuck living in a hotel for 5 months, and my personal stuff was going to end up in a skip.

Very simply, if he has no residence then how can he be a resident? And does he have another property here now?

Even so, he was intending to come for only  48 hours during which time he would meet with his advocate to sign the sale documents -  no thought about the 14 day isolation requirement at the time.

The issue is that the option of returning to live in the house was not considered or explained by the CS even though it was a possibility raised by him. 

However, when involved in financial services doing client due diligence on a prospective client, if they said "If I said to you X,Y, Z to explain something would you accept that?' the reply was, generally, 'no ta buddy'. 

 

[Happier diner]

7 minutes ago, Gladys said:

Very simply, if he has no residence then how can he be a resident? And does he have another property here now?

Even so, he was intending to come for only  48 hours during which time he would meet with his advocate to sign the sale documents -  no thought about the 14 day isolation requirement at the time.

The issue is that the option of returning to live in the house was not considered or explained by the CS even though it was a possibility raised by him. 

However, when involved in financial services doing client due diligence on a prospective client, if they said "If I said to you X,Y, Z to explain something would you accept that?' the reply was, generally, 'no ta buddy'. 

 

To be fair to the system, I found them quite reasonable.  

Residency is a bit subjective. 

My stepson was working in London on a graduate scheme at the time. We were worried he wouldn't be considered resident ( he wasn't really in the strictest sense). We spoke to a nice lady in the travel team and she listened and said yes, he was a resident and he was allowed back. 

Edited December 28, 2021 by Happier diner

[Paulos The Great]

12 minutes ago, Gladys said:

Even so, he was intending to come for only  48 hours during which time he would meet with his advocate to sign the sale documents -  no thought about the 14 day isolation requirement at the time.

I know a few people who came here for a few days. The 14 days only applied if you stayed here but was diluted by the year end I think. If you came and went (say for a funeral etc) you didn’t have to do the 14 days as I recall. Sounds like the guy was a fiscal nomad like many who work in Saudi etc who likely only paid tax here and had his main residence here. If he’d bought the house recently I’d agree with you. But 20 years and your children were born here. It does sort of show how over zealous they’ve been in interpreting the rules in some instances.

Edited December 28, 2021 by Paulos The Great
Added by year end.

[Gladys]

3 minutes ago, Paulos The Great said:

I know a few people who came here for a few days. The 14 days only applied if you stayed here but was diluted by the year end I think. If you came and went (say for a funeral etc) you didn’t have to do the 14 days as I recall. Sounds like the guy was a fiscal nomad like many who work in Saudi etc who likely only paid tax here and had his main residence here. If he’d bought the house recently I’d agree with you. But 20 years and your children were born here. It does sort of show how over zealous they’ve been in interpreting the rules in some instances.

Funerals were a compassionate exemption which he did not qualify for.  That was explained to him in the email exchange.

Who knows how long the house had been let out for?  It is also not clear why not being able to come over resulted in him having to sell the house.  

[Ramseyboi]

I see “record cases” in England today.

Whether people see that as a result of mixing over Christmas, or a result of people who wouldn’t normally do an LFT doing one in the hope of a longer break will depends which side of the fence you sit on.  
 

Either way I expect we will see a similar peak tomorrow.

[Ramseyboi]

I see “record cases” in England today.

Whether people see that as a result of mixing over Christmas, or a result of people who wouldn’t normally do an LFT doing one in the hope of a longer break will depends which side of the fence you sit on.  
 

Either way I expect we will see a similar peak tomorrow.

[GD4ELI]

10 minutes ago, Ramseyboi said:

I see “record cases” in England today.

Whether people see that as a result of mixing over Christmas, or a result of people who wouldn’t normally do an LFT doing one in the hope of a longer break will depends which side of the fence you sit on.  
 

Either way I expect we will see a similar peak tomorrow.

Down here many younger people are just grade-A* idiots. Grade-A* in spades with sprinkles on top.

My spaniel has more brains.

[Ramseyboi]

6 minutes ago, GD4ELI said:

Down here many younger people are just grade-A* idiots. Grade-A* in spades with sprinkles on top.

My spaniel has more brains.

Thanks for the informative update 🤷‍♂️

[emesde]

35 minutes ago, Ramseyboi said:

Either way I expect we will see a similar peak tomorrow.

The government’s latest daily Covid figures show a total of 1,294 active cases in the island.

This is up from yesterday’s total of 1,126.

[The Voice of Reason]

10 minutes ago, emesde said:

The government’s latest daily Covid figures show a total of 1,294 active cases in the island.

This is up from yesterday’s total of 1,126.

Indeed it is

[Lost Login]

4 hours ago, Paulos The Great said:

Thanks that’s really interesting. That email trail seems to document how generally unhelpful they were to lots of people. So he’s owned the house since 2001 and doesn’t seem to own a property anywhere else and was stuck in a hotel in Egypt unable to go anywhere. But as there’s a tenant in it, it can’t be his main residence. Despite him saying it’s the only property he owns and him presumably paying IOM rates and IOM tax on the rental income. 

Whilst the property may be the only property the claimant owned in para 4 on page 2 it states "He was based in Saudi Arabia, living in a house provided by his employers". He therefore had a property, which I presume is where he normally resided but he was unable to return to that property as Saudi Arabia closed the borders whilst he was on "a short business trip to Egypt"

The property in the IoM was let so during the period it was let it could obviously not be the claimants residence. I think that all parties accepted that as it was only when not allowed to visit to sell the property that the claimant said he would evict the tenants on the expiry of the lease and move back in himself, whilst seemingly leaving the wife and child elsewhere. Effectively the claimant was therefore not resident but seeking to re-establish residency. 

I think if I was the individually who was required to make a judgement at the time I would have refused the application as it does look like the guy was resident elsewhere, Saudi Arabia, and really only wanted to come back to sell his house and collect his belongings and when this was refused he came up with the idea that he would claim he would evict the tenant and move back to the IoM. As he had a property provided for him in Saudi Arabia and it appears that he had worked and lived overseas for many years  it does not look like the IoM was really his home.

As ever the judgement leaves more questions than it answers as it seems to be, as John Wright says, a case about the claimant not being given a detailed explanation on one point. 

As from the judgement the claimant had a property provided to him in Saudi Arabia which he could not travel to at the border was closed I wonder if he has a claim against the authorities in Saudi Arabia as well? 

Finally one of praise for the staff at Government who dealt with the guy as they do seem to have responded promptly and politely. In my eyes the claimant come across as a bit of a knob and it must have been very tempting to have just told him where to get off.

 

 

[Ramseyboi]

10 minutes ago, Lost Login said:

like the guy was resident elsewhere, Saudi Arabia, and really only wanted to come back to sell his house and collect his belongings

Sounds fair enough to me.  Especially since we have no idea what else was going on in his life.

If you had a load of your things and a valuable asset somewhere and you wanted to collect some and sell the other and were refused for some totally illogical reason I expect you would be a bit miffed?

I imagine we will see more cases like this as the way the rules were invented and then enforced was insane.

There are STILL people who can’t come here to conduct perfectly normal business.  Bonkers

[Lost Login]

8 minutes ago, Ramseyboi said:

Sounds fair enough to me.  Especially since we have no idea what else was going on in his life.

If you had a load of your things and a valuable asset somewhere and you wanted to collect some and sell the other and were refused for some totally illogical reason I expect you would be a bit miffed?

I imagine we will see more cases like this as the way the rules were invented and then enforced was insane.

There are STILL people who can’t come here to conduct perfectly normal business.  Bonkers

Elements of rules and laws are often bonkers, especially where they tip across from what is legal to illegal but so is claiming this was a breach of human rights as far as I am concerned. 

I was pretty miffed about certain restrictions and I am sure there are cases where I would have sympathy e.g. if an individual wanted to have moved back to the IoM to be close to or lack after an elderly relative. Taking the hump over not being able to sign documents in the IoM when they could easily be couriered and not being able to collect some possessions which appear to have been left in the IoM for a fair period of time is not something causes me much concern. The story about then evicting the tenants and moving back in I don't believe for a second. Reading the judgement it appears he just thought that would get around the regulations in place. 

[Paulos The Great]

50 minutes ago, Lost Login said:

i think if I was the individually who was required to make a judgement at the time I would have refused the application as it does look like the guy was resident elsewhere, Saudi Arabia, and really only wanted to come back to sell his house and collect his belongings.

And what would be so terrible about allowing someone to do that? It seems to me the decisions made by civil servants were purely arbitrary and there was no sense checking or oversight process. And probably because his emails got a bit arsey questioning the logic they simply blew him out which is why he took it to court.