Douglas Sh@hole!

[Non-Believer]

16 minutes ago, cissolt said:

Who used to be responsible?  Lots of issues raised by Charles.

What ever happened to the DOIs plan to ban cars from marine drive?

Have they spent all their money on active travel schemes and substandard road contractors?

It has been born of elected politicians failing to show leadership over and control a PS hierachy that has developed its own culture of self service, arrogance and laziness.

Of a culture of doing as little as possible for the reward and of reactivity rather than proactivity.

Of petty politics taking precedence over practicality in public matters.

Too many fat arses in jobs for the wrong reasons and not doing those jobs or discharging the attendant responsibilities. And above all, being allowed to get away with it.

If a journalist and members of the general public can walk around and pick up on any number of areas of fault (and they're not few and far-between, are they?), where are the people who are employed and paid to do it? The situation speaks for itself. We are reaping what we have allowed to be sowed.

[doc.fixit]

11 hours ago, Annoymouse said:

Its not as simple as that, from a Government perspective which department would any required prom works fall under? they haven’t taken anything out of the Tourism/Economic budget to give to health, nor has DOI shared any of their budget with health. The issue will be the continual muddied waters of what falls under D.B.C, what falls under tourism/economics and what falls under DOI, none of those will work together to find a solution because they like to spend their time blaming each for their failings instead and we all suffer as a result.

To use the railings as an example, who pays for any replacements? Who’s responsibility is it to maintain them?, if they haven’t been maintained properly and have failed early as a result, who’s responsible for replacement now? the sections that are missing/damaged, who does that fall under? The original railings/the maintenance looked like the responsibility of DBC, but when damaged the temporary fencing to replace them looks like DOI, so who is actually responsible?

 

 

Doesn't this indicate over governance?

Smaller government, fewer departments, smaller and fewer local authorities and clearly defined areas of responsibility............simples.

[0bserver]

12 hours ago, The Bastard said:

Things have moved on. The days are past when Douglas was a tourist metropolis, when the golden sands were full of paying guests. Now the beach is just rocks covered in dogshit that fills the bathing waters with E. Coli twice daily. Tourism today is a nice-to-have but we're not going to see the beach full of deckchairs, the sunken gardens full of walkers, the horsetrams loaded with people off to see the great and the good at the Lido. There's no winter works programme full of off-season tourist workers to paint and maintain. You have to ask who all this pickled Victoriana is for, now that nobody is here to see it, it just seems like a huge ever-increasing millstone around the neck of Douglas ratepayers. Photograph it for posterity. Fill in the sunken gardens and use them for parking, or for event space, pave the twee flowerbeds, ditch the horsetrams, shut down the MER (leave the Snaefell line) and replace it with an cycle / EV track to the North, take down the cast iron railings and replace them with swap-out metal panels that don't need constant maintenance. Stop pretending that Douglas is some sort of Victorian theme park that needs multiple consultations with the Victorian Fetish Society every time some poor flat dweller wants to replace a couple of windows. Drag the dreary place into the modern world by its muttonchops.

A million times this! 

Until we drop the Victorian Fetishists we cannot move on.

[Non-Believer]

15 minutes ago, doc.fixit said:

Doesn't this indicate over governance?

Smaller government, fewer departments, smaller and fewer local authorities and clearly defined areas of responsibility............simples.

And politicians who can remember that the democratic will of the electorate is what they are there to serve and enforce. That the good reputation and appearance of the Island is paramount. Who aren't afraid to stand up and question the public servants, rather than the tail wagging the dog.

Where is the questioning and accountability as to what has gone on on the Promenade? The Liverpool Terminal? The unusable gas-powered fleet? The Airport? The ludicrous visitor projections? The LoveIoM card scheme? The TT scoreboard?

[2112]

2 hours ago, cissolt said:

Who used to be responsible?  Lots of issues raised by Charles.

What ever happened to the DOIs plan to ban cars from marine drive?

Have they spent all their money on active travel schemes and substandard road contractors?

Like all IOMG pronouncements, diktats and spinning press releases they amount to nothing, except costing the taxpayers and not actually delivering. Still it keeps Daffy quiet for a couple of minutes.

[2112]

4 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

And politicians who can remember that the democratic will of the electorate is what they are there to serve and enforce. That the good reputation and appearance of the Island is paramount. Who aren't afraid to stand up and question the public servants, rather than the tail wagging the dog.

Where is the questioning and accountability as to what has gone on on the Promenade? The Liverpool Terminal? The unusable gas-powered fleet? The Airport? The ludicrous visitor projections? The LoveIoM card scheme? The TT scoreboard?

That’s what happens when politicos are given iPads and tablets and are allowed to use them in the chamber - they don’t listen as messing around dealing with Mrs Quirks feet issues or the dog shit on a certain estate. In all honesty most of the politicians are nodding dogs, and basically do as they are told by their Ministers or the civil servants. Accountability went out of the window long ago, their is no pride with those who fcuk up, no honourable intent to resign both minister role and seat to create bye election - no wonder the public treat them with contempt. If there were honourable intentions and an effort to address accountability then Manx Forums wouldn’t be in existence.

[2112]

15 minutes ago, 0bserver said:

A million times this! 

Until we drop the Victorian Fetishists we cannot move on.

I’m all for keeping cultural element, and not destroying the past, but these elements need maintenance to survive. If this can’t be done then it needs taken away, but either way, money has to be spent for the upkeep of the surrounding environment, or it looks like a bigger shithole. 

[Non-Believer]

The horse trams have been ruined, simple as and I'm not a devout worshipper of them either. They're no longer an authentic layout nor even recently or now currently operational.

Fooked in good style by people with zero qualifications in the undertaken project and with an uncertain future at all now.

Questions need to be asked and somebody (we know who) made to answer them, fully and properly. Then decisions need to be made about their futures. Not to include pushing wheelbarrows full of lump sums and superannuation away with nothing said.

[AOR]

On 5/2/2022 at 5:30 PM, Max Power said:

As if on cue, a whole video by Charles Guard of interesting sites to ponder, well done to him for being so honest and wake up DTC and IoMG...

 

It does rather look like Charles is extracting himself from the rose-tinted, head-in-the-sand, backslappers club (actually I don't think he ever was, he has always been factually well-researched).

The Youtube view count was unusually high yesterday (first day up) but now it is over 11,000.

12,500 views, 220 likes (13:20 3/5)

14,700 views, 263 likes (16:15 3/5)

 

71,254 views, 1200 likes  2 May 2022

I don't think Mr Guard will win the We can all be island tourism ambassadors award for 2022. But an award for well made and presented video he should receive.

Good one.

Edited June 2, 2022 by AOR

[The Bastard]

30 minutes ago, AOR said:

 But an award for well made and presented video he should receive.

[Roger Mexico]

5 hours ago, 2112 said:

I’m all for keeping cultural element, and not destroying the past, but these elements need maintenance to survive. If this can’t be done then it needs taken away, but either way, money has to be spent for the upkeep of the surrounding environment, or it looks like a bigger shithole. 

But that's part of the problem.  Because if things aren't maintained properly, we allow those running them to spend vast amounts on capital projects to replace them.  So if you say "it needs taken away" if a facility has been allowed to deteriorate, then they are encouraged to let stuff fall to pieces (at least as far as some tame professional will claim it is 'beyond repair').  So they're actually rewarded for lack of maintenance by being allowed to indulge their fantasies to 'fix' the problem they have created.

[The Bastard]

57 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

But that's part of the problem.  Because if things aren't maintained properly, we allow those running them to spend vast amounts on capital projects to replace them.  So if you say "it needs taken away" if a facility has been allowed to deteriorate, then they are encouraged to let stuff fall to pieces (at least as far as some tame professional will claim it is 'beyond repair').  So they're actually rewarded for lack of maintenance by being allowed to indulge their fantasies to 'fix' the problem they have created.

Capital projects are precisely for these kind of projects - by your argument, you can't replace any assets that are past their best for fear of spending capital. If you want to fill in the sunken (very sunken, possibly wrecked at times) gardens, replace the MER with an EV/cycle track,  or replace the cast iron with some modular marine-grade steel, I don't think that's a fantasy for anyone involved. It's just natural progression - things deteriorate over time and have to be replaced.

[The Bastard]

Rhyl - Apparently the "worst resort in the UK" according to the commentator. Clearly there's a lot of mistakes been made there, but it looks pretty interesting in comparison. It's not tried to maintain itself as a Victorian theme park, and some of the design decisions are what you'd call "brave", but this is what we're competing with as a holiday destination. If this is the UK's worst, I wonder how we'd rate. 

[joebean]

The video says two fundamental things about the IOM. First, that politicians and civil servants love talking and planning big initiatives but often don’t have the attention or competence to get the basics right. Secondly, and as has been said already, the Island is over-governed by authorities that often compete with each other for attention and incompetence.

In the case of Douglas, we have DBC and DoI, both of whom have tolerance levels of waste, ineffectiveness and misjudgement that would not be acceptable in any performance-driven organisation. Neither should exist in their current state but there is no will to tackle the obvious issues and reorganise how we are governed in a leaner, more efficient way.
Rusty railings, unfinished projects, weeds and grand schemes delivering very little are just symptoms of a bigger malaise that starts with the voters who demand little and get exactly what they vote for. 

[Derek Flint]

Too many times i heard from public servants as the climbed the pole and reached ‘bombproof’ status that they ‘don’t do detail’. It’s the biggest cop-out known to man. The problem was often compounded by them being ‘shit at strategy’ too.

This is why it is a race to the bottom. Too many people at the bar in the hospitality tent and nobody cleaning the bogs.