Meat Plant Slaughtered

[Harry Lamb]

7 hours ago, Albert Tatlock said:

It's piss poor leadership and low quality management. Inexperienced and often untrained people, incapable or unwilling to make the difficult choices often required when running large entities. They manage £millions of public monies with no accountability and no penalties for failure - and when they do screw up, they are simply moved to another area to do the same again. When money gets tight they simply reduce services rather than reduce staff.

The whole model needs to change. If we paid more for leadership and contracted in experienced people (with rewards for success and penalties for target failure) - and privatised the likes of the Post Office and the buses (albeit sometimes with subsidies) we'd get far more value for money IMO.

The private sector here are sick to the back teeth of funding the imbecilic wastrels in this overbloated, over-pensioned and overpaid government.

 

You're right about it being poorly run, but privatisation - really? Have you seen what a success it made of the UK water companies, railways etc ? You just get crap services with the public being ripped off and the money funnelled to (often foreign) investors. It just needs better people running it. 

[Omobono]

2 hours ago, Jarndyce said:

Who are we, in the statement above?   Presumably not IOMG/taxpayers - I might be wrong (and stand to be corrected, of course) but my understanding was the IOM Creamery was a private entity, owned by a conglomerate of dairy farmers, NOT a government operation.   So who’s chucking the millions in?

 

47 minutes ago, WTF said:

we don't over produce as far as i can tell , we just don't sell stuff at a reasonable price , it come comes down to 400 farmers trying to make a living off enough land that would only support a handful of farmers using modern farming methods , farming on the island is a  living museum 

WE as the taxpayers every so often  that receive money from government , who do you think paid for them to dispose of their waste product Whey  and routing it to Douglas bay , and they have had numerous support grants from the DOE 

[Jarndyce]

16 minutes ago, Omobono said:

they have had numerous support grants from the DOE

Fair enough.   How many millions have they had in grants?

Also, my understanding was that MU leased the waste pipe to the Creamery - would that not imply that the Creamery are paying for the use of the pipe?   Still not a good way to dispose of the stuff, but disposal is not paid for by the taxpayer, surely?

Edited November 10, 2022 by Jarndyce
Addition

[Boris Johnson]

This is really shocking

Everyone kicks off about Manx Radios' £1 mill subvention and this shit fest is getting twice that a year and they don't even broadcast the sounds of the animals waiting to be slaughtered*.......

*I have been there, the noise from the animals waiting to be killed would put you off meat for life, it did me and I did love a good steak.

[Omobono]

49 minutes ago, Jarndyce said:

Fair enough.   How many millions have they had in grants?

Also, my understanding was that MU leased the waste pipe to the Creamery - would that not imply that the Creamery are paying for the use of the pipe?   Still not a good way to dispose of the stuff, but disposal is not paid for by the taxpayer, surely?

problem is you never get to see the books , all smoke and mirrors ,  with hidden grants and intervention , the creamery do produce  some excellent products  and seem to be much better organised than the meat plant  or the flour mill  ,government should produce  a list of where all grant funding has gone and for what purpose ,  the Welsh development agency  or whatever they call themselves  these days  produce figures ,  we need more  openness  with public money , and support to industry , 

[quilp]

20 minutes ago, Omobono said:

Problem is, you never get to see the books. All smoke and mirrors, with hidden grants and intervention. The creamery do produce some excellent products, and seem to be much better organised than the meat plant, or the flour mill. Government should produce a list of where all grant-funding has gone, and for what purpose. The Welsh Development Agency, or whatever they call themselve's these days, produce figures. We need more openness with public money, and support to industry.

Spot on, but you could go right back to the start of this whole debacle and find that people were saying much the same things all that time ago and throughout.

It's yet another administration-failure without consequence.

Edited November 10, 2022 by quilp

[Jarndyce]

17 minutes ago, Omobono said:

problem is you never get to see the books , all smoke and mirrors ,  with hidden grants and intervention

Again, fair enough, that wouldn’t really shock me.   But do you have any actual evidence whatsoever for your earlier comment that the Creamery have had millions of pounds of taxpayer money?

[ptarmigan]

The details of the government money given to the meat plant are https://www.tynwald.org.im/business/opqp/sittings/20182021/PP-2021-0150.pdf

[Roger Mexico]

On 11/9/2022 at 8:09 PM, Moghrey Mie said:

If you read the full report there is a long list of recommendations. Presumably she will set these in motion.

But as a Member of Tynwald she should not be chair. DEFA is the regulatory body.

She's said she sees her appointment as temporary.  They couldn't leave Crowe in place as he's been there so long when things were going badly and they need a new team, with at least a new Plant Manager, new Directors and a Sales person, which will start to put things together.  Claire Christian also appears to be (or have been) a member of the Board, but that may be from before her election.

[mollag]

On 11/10/2022 at 1:02 PM, mollag said:

I thought the abattoir was built with public funds to serve private businesses [farmers] who control the supply of meat , setting the buy in and sell out values,  do we still provide export subsidies and  pay for the waste disposal for them?

Why would anyone with that monopoly worry about financial matters, tis just another snouting trough.  Sod it, give them some more money for this upcoming unusually wet/dry winter, why change ingrained habits?

 

And as if by magic, the Farmers winter handout appears, see you in summer for the next one. What mugs we are.

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/farmers-need-more-support-through-winter-says-mhk/

[Andy Onchan]

On 11/10/2022 at 8:59 AM, Nellie said:

That's a very good point.

You have to wonder whether seconding Findlay McLeod for (say) 12 months, or even putting the Meat Plant under the control of The Creamery management team might be a way to tackle this problem.

There must be a lot of synergies, and potential efficiencies, in areas like Finance, Purchasing, Sales, Marketing, HR. 

 

The Creamery is a privately run company owned by dairy farmers. It's nowt to do with IOM Government.

[Nellie]

30 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

The Creamery is a privately run company owned by dairy farmers. It's nowt to do with IOM Government.

But the original point still stands, that in a place as small as the Island, these could, and should, be complementary businesses with many potential synergies and opportunities. The current Government ownership model, for the Meat Plant, has totally failed, so maybe now is the time to look at something different. 

[Non-Believer]

6 minutes ago, Nellie said:

The current Government ownership model, for the Meat Plant, has totally failed, so maybe now is the time to look at something different. 

It's totally failed for the last ten years, why start now? 😂 It's been regularly highlighted in past annual reports and still nothing meaningful or effective has been put in place to address. Why?

Because you can guarantee that some people will have been doing very well out of it, thank you very much.

[John Wright]

2 hours ago, Andy Onchan said:

The Creamery is a privately run company owned by dairy farmers. It's nowt to do with IOM Government.

IoM meats was the same until 2017.

The meat market, both production and market are very different.

Who owns and pays for the the actual plant where the product is “processed” in each case?

[Andy Onchan]

14 hours ago, Nellie said:

But the original point still stands, that in a place as small as the Island, these could, and should, be complementary businesses with many potential synergies and opportunities. The current Government ownership model, for the Meat Plant, has totally failed, so maybe now is the time to look at something different. 

In which case the livestock farmers should pool their financial resources and run it for their own benefit. The same as the dairy farmers have and at no direct cost to the taxpayer.