TT 2023

[Max Power]

18 minutes ago, BriT said:

No it’s gone past that. The police aren’t interested in policing it, nobody in government is interested in the overtime to manage it. Manx Care don’t want the job of providing costly hospital cover for it. They could be on holiday in Tenerife instead. This island is now only being run for the CS and what they’d prefer not for anyone else. And what they’d prefer is exactly the same money for doing less and more time off because we don’t have to generate revenue; it comes from the magic money tree and if we don’t have the TT we can just create more magic money to compensate for it. 

Unfortunately you are right, and it's this prevailing attitude which is seeing the island go down the social drain.

It's much easier to prevent anything from happening than to risk having to police it. Consequently we are left with a socialist tyranny where trying to organise anything has to be approved by ex coppers with an aversion to any risk whatsoever, a nightlife that your granny would approve of and a place which young people can't wait to leave behind.

Imagine our close neighbour, Liverpool having the same attitude to entertainment that we have in this god forsaken backwater. Tin pot officials with too much power, no idea what they are doing and no accountability!  

[Mysteron]

1 hour ago, wrighty said:

Number of marshals we have is n.

The formula for the number we need is

(n/2-5)x2+9

 

Bit like number of guitars needed to make one happy is n+1, where n is the number currently owned. 

That looks more like their formula for calculating road tax increases. 

What I can tell though, is it's definitely not DBC's formula for calculating the number of waste bin collections, because there's a plus sign in it.  

[Ghost Ship]

5 hours ago, wrighty said:

I’ve been here for almost 20, and in that time TT’s future has seemed to become less secure. Age profile of fans and racers, Marshals, Insurance, lack of tolerance of the inevitable deaths and injuries…

What hasn’t changed in my time here is the stuck in history local fans who believe it will go on for ever and no changes are required to try to secure its future. 

I'm a bit surprised if that's been your experience on the island.

20 years ago I was telling any of my friends and work colleagues in the UK that would listen that if they wanted to witness one of the world's greatest sporting spectacles before it got banned, then they needed to get over for the TT within the next few years.

I thought it might make it to 2007 for the centenary celebrations, but that it wouldn't continue much after that because of the death toll.  After the incident at the 26th I thought that that would be it.  And after the incident at the bottom of Bray Hill (2013?) I was convinced it would be banned before another spectator tragedy happened.

But contrary to what I thought then, I now think the TT has a much bigger profile in the UK (and wider afield) than it has at any time since I left the IoM in the mid-1980s.  Much of that improvement in awareness and popularity in the UK is because of the pretty good coverage available on terrestial TV over the last 25 years from first Men & Motors and then from ITV4(*).  I'm always surprised at TT time each year how many rather unlikely people I meet know about the TT because they've seen it on ITV4.  I'll be interested to see how the TT live TV coverage develops.

Regarding the changing demographic, I don't know if the situation is much different that it ever has been in the last 40 - 50 years?  I remember 50 and 60 year olds in the 70s talking about the good old days and Geoff Duke etc., then it was the good old days of Hailwood and Ago, then Joey and Phil McCallen, in ten years time it'll be McGuiness and in 20 years time Hickman etc.  There's always old codgers about talking about the good old days and younger people always seem to keep turning up.

Having said that... I maust admit I'm not sure how popular it is with younger people.  It seems to me that a lot of younger people would rather interact with a TT game on playstation (or whatever) rather than go to the trouble of witnessing the real thing.

I did think the TT made a bad error dropping TT Zero.  I was amazed they had the forward thinking to introduce it in the first place.  I'm no climate activist but I thought it was really impressive and progressive.  I know there were problems about race distances etc and the small number of entrants, but I think it was a pity it was just dropped.

I do agree that what is really likely to end the TT is insurance cost.  I know @Derek Flint mentioned £1 million and I'm surprised it's that cheap.

 

(*)  I complained to ITV4 about some aspect of their coverage several years ago.  I got a sensible response from then (unlike the BBC if you ever complain) and the following year they'd addressed the problem.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Ghost Ship

[BriT]

10 minutes ago, Max Power said:

Unfortunately you are right, and it's this prevailing attitude which is seeing the island go down the social drain.

Well let’s look at where this attitude has got us compared to 40 odd years ago

No hockey tournaments, no football tournaments, hardly any motocrosses or scrambles, or rallies any more. The MGP badly diluted and now it’s clear where the TT is heading. People simply cannot be arsed organizing anything that hinges around IOM Government sign offs they’ve been beaten down over the years. The only tourists we seem to get now are sad bastards who want to sit on a choo choo train or walkers or mountain bikers. Outside of that the traffic is all one way with well paid CS off two or three times a year to somewhere much nicer and then they come back and make our lives a misery again in their important jobs stopping any form of progress or fun. Even the pubs are empty. But for those inside the bubble the IOM is great - they get big inflationary pay rises, move up the ladder, do whatever they want to make their lives easy and then retire (and then often get another well paid job back on the grassy train) and a few trips of the IOM every year to spend that guaranteed pension for life. If the meantime this place gets shitter every year for anyone who actually has to rely on the internal trade of the IOM to make money. 

[Ghost Ship]

3 minutes ago, BriT said:

Well let’s look at where this attitude has got us compared to 40 odd years ago

No hockey tournaments, no football tournaments, hardly any motocrosses or scrambles, or rallies any more. The MGP badly diluted and now it’s clear where the TT is heading...

Although I'm not convinced the TT is on its last legs, I can't get over the absence of Easter and Whit sports tournaments that I used to take part in.  Also no rally?

Staggering.

[Max Power]

6 minutes ago, Ghost Ship said:

I'm a bit surprised if that's been your experience on the island.

20 years ago I was telling any of my friends and work colleagues in the UK that would listen that if they wanted to witness one of the world's greatest sporting spectacles before it got banned, then they needed to get over for the TT within the next few years.

I thought it might make it to 2007 for the centenary celebrations, but that it wouldn't continue much after that because of the death toll.  After the incident at the 26th I thought that that would be it.  And after the incident at the bottom of Bray Hill (2013?) I was convinced it would be banned before another spectator tragedy happened.

But contrary to what I thought, I think the TT now has a much bigger profile in the UK (and wider afield) than it has at any time since I left the IoM in the mid-1980s.  Much of that improvement in awareness and popularity in the UK is because of the pretty good coverage available on terrestial TV over the last 25 years from first Men & Motors and then from ITV4(*).  I'm always surprised at TT time each year how many rather unlikely people I meet know about the TV because they've seen it on ITV4.  I'll be interested to see how the TT live TV coverage develops.

Regarding the changing demographic, I don't know if the situation is much different that it ever has been in the last 40 - 50 years?  I remember 50 and 60 year olds in the 70s talking about the good old days and Geoff Duke etc., then it was the good old days of Hailwood and Ago, then Joey and Phil McCallen, in ten years time it'll be McGuiness and in 20 years time Hickman etc.  There's always old codgers about talking about the good old days and younger people always seem to keep turning up.

Having said that... I maust admit I'm not sure how popular it is with younger people.  It seems to me that a lot of younger people would rather interact with a TT game on playstation (or whatever) rather than go to the trouble of witnessing the real thing.

I did think the TT made a bad error dropping TT Zero.  I was amazed they had the forward thinking to introduce it in the first place.  I'm no climate activist but I thought it was really impressive and progressive.  I know there were problems about race distances etc and the small number of entrants, but I think it was a pity it was just dropped.

I do agree that what is really likely to end the TT is insurance cost.  I know @Derek Flint mentioned £1 million and I'm surprised it's that cheap.

 

(*)  I complained to ITV4 about some aspect of their coverage several years ago.  I got a sensible response from then (unlike the BBC if you ever complain) and the following year they'd addressed the problem.

I agree, I think the age profile is a bit of a red herring. At one time young people jumped on a bike as it was a cheap form of transport, it isn't anymore and getting your licence is a real test of endurance. Despite this, motorcycle racing has a good following, maybe the age profile has moved along to the 'male menopause' brigade, but the vast majority of visitors have always been in the older bracket. New fans are coming along, they are just older in general.  

[BriT]

5 minutes ago, Ghost Ship said:

Although I'm not convinced the TT is on its last legs, I can't get over the absence of Easter and Whit sports tournaments that I used to take part in.  Also no rally?

Staggering.

The DOI all but closed the rallies down a few years ago. Amateur organizers simply don’t have the bandwidth to deal with professional pendants who are literally looking to fill their days making up pointless shit to keep themselves busy with. 

[Roxanne]

14 minutes ago, Ghost Ship said:

20 years ago I was telling any of my friends and work colleagues in the UK that would listen that if they wanted to witness one of the world's greatest sporting spectacles before it got banned, then they needed to get over for the TT within the next few years.

Forty years ago I did the same when it lost its International status.

[HeliX]

57 minutes ago, Max Power said:

Unfortunately you are right, and it's this prevailing attitude which is seeing the island go down the social drain.

It's much easier to prevent anything from happening than to risk having to police it. Consequently we are left with a socialist tyranny where trying to organise anything has to be approved by ex coppers with an aversion to any risk whatsoever, a nightlife that your granny would approve of and a place which young people can't wait to leave behind.

Imagine our close neighbour, Liverpool having the same attitude to entertainment that we have in this god forsaken backwater. Tin pot officials with too much power, no idea what they are doing and no accountability!  

Oh to have such confidence to use words with such willfull disregard for their meanings.

[Roger Mexico]

1 hour ago, Non-Believer said:

The only "sabotage" (IMHO) is screwing the event for every penny in the name of Govt revenue and marketing it solely for the MTV generation who have the attention span and interest of a gnat. These will never be long term supporters and fans and as such will contribute to any demise.

It's a typical short-term grab for the cash with no thought as to what damage it may be doing to the event's long term future, because those who are doing it don't care...they'll be gone with their Govt pensions or having used it as a career leg-up which some are reputedly doing.

Actually the MTV generation is defined as "the children and adolescents of the 1980s to mid-1990s, primarily those born from 1970–1984", so they will now be between 39 and 50.  I suspect this is not what you meant. 

But actually I don't think the DfE are really marketing the event to this or any generation.  That would make them too deliberative and imply they had some sort of thought-through plan with actions mapped out over a long time[1].  Instead they are following the usual civil service system of mostly repeating what was done last year, but adding in some things copied from the English.

So any changes are designed to mimic what they see a successful events in the UK without actually considering if the changes will appeal those who come to the TT or would potentially come.  There's no consideration of practical difficulties or whether the changes will increase the real income the event provides for the Island.  No calculations are done, no market research carried out, just a cargo-cult-like ritual imitation.

 

[1]  The more people in government have "strategy" in their job title or description, the less this actually happens.

[hissingsid]

It is the Health and safety merchants that are blocking most amateur run events everywhere not just on our Island add to that the cost of travel .   The Dance Festival used to bring huge numbers over in the day now they go to Blackpool to Butlins or similar.   The rugby and football teams at Easter were a huge boost but the travel time and expense took its toll.   It is not just one thing and I don’t think we need to be concerned about Socialist tyranny atm🤣. 

[HeliX]

Perhaps the reason for a lot of volunteer-run events disappearing is the lack of volunteer time due to us all being crushed under the rising cost of living and stagnant wages, otherwise known as the wheels of capitalism.

[Albert Tatlock]

23 minutes ago, HeliX said:

Perhaps the reason for a lot of volunteer-run events disappearing is the lack of volunteer time due to us all being crushed under the rising cost of living and stagnant wages, otherwise known as the wheels of capitalism.

We work less hours than 20 years ago. I think the answer is simpler...less of a fan pool so less volunteers available plus elf and safety and the requirements for even more volunteers to keep things going.

Add to that full entertainment systems at home...and computer gaming etc. ...people are less interested in looking outside for their interests.

[HeliX]

12 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

We work less hours than 20 years ago.

It'd be fewer if it were true, but the ONS suggests it isn't. Not to mention the greater expectation of working late outside of contract, having a work phone on 24/7, being able to answer emails in evenings etc now.

 

Edited April 25, 2023 by HeliX

[WTF]

8 hours ago, Ringy Rose said:

I know, but that’s because the race was postponed from the Friday. If it’s actually scheduled to take place on the Saturday morning it’s different.

 

fair point, i'd forgotten that ,   however i know one marshal that always leaves friday evening so he can get home and rest up before he has to be back at work on monday ,  there may be a few others that need saturday and sunday to travel back home and get ready for work on monday.