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Isle of Man Budget 2024


Maugholdmafia

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10 hours ago, 2112 said:

The Green Party have added their two pennerths worth to the debate, complain that the budget didn’t do enough to tackle climate change, inequality and specific health issues. 
 

Didnt £10 million get given, is that too little? Lots of people aren’t equal. The rise in income tax and the proceeds given to Manx Care to waste is helping specific health issues and funding the salaries of highly paid civil servants. 

The Green Party need to justify their existence by making noise now and again

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14 minutes ago, Banker said:

Why’s Daphne not a member?

Because she doesn't want to be?

I am no fan of Mrs Caine's political views, but she is perfectly entitled to hold them without being a fully signed up looney.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4njlzqq7njo

The man doth protest too much methinks. You know you are over the target when he puts out this much defensive flak.

It is not the front line people are objecting to it's the middle and upper management who not only seem to be raking it in but through mismanagement are costing us a fortune too.

The ones who come up with lethal roadmarkings, red zebra crossings, will they/won't they close the pool, pump shit uphill, run everyhting at arms length and push it off to charities to deal with and still keep the headcount and wages bill increasing as if it's the holy grail of efficiency.

Even though things are getting worse not better. 

 

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The problem is the productivity levels of the vast majority of the Govt employees.

Although it differs between departments and roles the blue collar elements don't even hide from view resting on their shovels and in their huts and vans.

The office based workers hide between and behind each other and browse the internet all day.

As for the upper management don't get me started!

A proper review is a necessity - some of the things I have witnessed on a daily basis make my blood boil.

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1 hour ago, SuffolkNGoode said:

The problem is the productivity levels of the vast majority of the Govt employees.

That's because they are employed to be employed. Plus terms are observed rigidly in respect of downtime, H&S etc, this is actually more important than actually producing anything. I've been in it, I know.

The private sector has to be far more proactive in balancing terms with output in order to be competitive and survive.

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23 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

That's because they are employed to be employed. Plus terms are observed rigidly in respect of downtime, H&S etc, this is actually more important than actually producing anything. I've been in it, I know.

The basic marker I’d say is the tax office. They used to be great very proactive and switched on and very focussed and professional to deal with. None of them even seem to give a toss now either. I think it’s been the last public service to fall. Nobody in IOMG actually cares about anything now but their next pay rise or how big their pension payout will be. 

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4 hours ago, Two-lane said:

Allinson does not mention that he only wrote to the Minister because last week I wrote to him asking why he had done nothing about this.

You do begin to wonder from the IOMN piece whether the real reason that Chris Thomas was sacked was because he threatened to make Alfie pay for his parking.  Presumably when Cannan took over the DoI temporarily, the order magically disappeared.

The interesting thing here though is that Allinson was so open about saying he had asked Crookall to act (even if it took your prompting).  He could have blustered or tried to drown things in jargon or whatever or got a civil servant to do that for him.  But he's clearly trying to distance himself from this business and maybe from Cannan.

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15 minutes ago, Interested Reader said:

The basic marker I’d say is the tax office. They used to be great very proactive and switched on and very focussed and professional to deal with. None of them even seem to give a toss now either. I think it’s been the last public service to fall. Nobody in IOMG actually cares about anything now but their next pay rise or how big their pension payout will be. 

I'll go along with the tax office bit. I know a lady in the accountancy business whose work puts her in regular contact with the office, she has absolutely no faith in any of them, bar one long server who she makes a point of insisting that all her business goes through as she reckons he's the only one who knows what he's talking about. 

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9 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

I'll go along with the tax office bit. I know a lady in the accountancy business whose work puts her in regular contact with the office, she has absolutely no faith in any of them, bar one long server who she makes a point of insisting that all her business goes through as she reckons he's the only one who knows what he's talking about. 

The tax office is the last bastion of common sense. When that goes it’s over. 

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Am impressed with the Chamber of Commerce succinct and clear marker to Alex and Alf on behalf of the Business community and based upon obvious common sense and business survey results in response to the budget.

I would not mind the 2p tax rise IF I had any confidence in the Government department's ability to manage effciciently.

They don't need a 2p income tax increase. as the Chamber said "the size, cost and scope of government needs tackling urgently.........." ".....Government has become overly large and financially burdensome.........."

As a Tynwald scrutiny committee asked this week "what was being done to reduce the Government headcount, which has grown by almost 740 since 2016.."

And then the insulting asinine excuse from Allinson that means you know they'll not seriously consider doing anything about it that "while it can be tempting sometimes to say we should cut the headcount, the results of that can be quite devastating to individual services deliveries." blah de blah - argh!

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A good example of the increase in IoM Government costs is the IoM FSA. The FSA are part of Government that is in my view out of control as they set the rules, interpret the rules, inspect & investigate on implementation and then are the party that levy penalties. They seem to View their role now to investigate and prosecute to keep Moneyval happy and when investigating they are not doing so impartially they are doing so on the basis that they are only looking for evidence that assumes guilt. Whilst nowhere in the same league as the UK Post Office they effectively act the same way that the UK Post Office investigators did, even down to suggesting you admit to offences to reduce penalties etc going forward.     

Anyway back back to profligacy.  If you review page 39 of the latest annual report for the FSAhttps://www.iomfsa.im/media/3202/iomfsa-annual-report-2022-23.pdf in twp years salaries have increased from £5.093m to £6.517. That is nearly a 28% increase! Nearly a £million of the increase was in the year ended 31 March 2023 when there was only a net change of 3 in number of employees. 

A 28% increase in salary costs  over 2 years with a 17.76% increase in the last year does not seem to indicate that IoM Government really have a handle of their costs.  

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I see on Manx radios news site a guy has set up a petition (change.org)  re no confidence in Alfy and his team of comin boot lickers. I can see a fair few signatures once people spread the word.

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I have a certain amount of sympathy for our government, they are caught up in the profligate ways of all governments over the past 40 years as they all hail from the experiences of people of that era. Now they either don't have the slightest clue what to do, or if they do, they haven't the testicular fortitude to do it!

I think this budget actually shows that they have given up, there's a serious problem for low to average earners as prices are flying out of control and the ability to earn more is dwindling, unless you are one of the lucky ones in the CS. 

To be fair, we are just in the same boat as the UK, we are a finance and service economy, little industrial productivity, the workforce is becoming poorly trained as a lot of the jobs available are for drones. Our biggest costs are Health, Education and Infrastructure, any savings anywhere else are just frittering around the edges, but the serious problems in these three areas are not being addressed. 

The whole thing needs a serious overhaul and reinvestment, but we have wasted our resources and are working to keep the CS in the lap of luxury.    

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