House of Keys July 23rd

[Dirty Buggane]

I suppose the farmers will be looking for an increase in their country care scheme ? payments to cover the extra cost, you know the one where they get's wads of cash not to grow anything and just mow the grass now and then. And the more land you don't grow anything on the more you get, its even worth renting land to grow you acreage portfolio. 

[Roger Mexico]

1 minute ago, Gladys said:

Is it possibly to create an opposition in the back benchers?  The difficulty with that is that without a set of opposition policies, what you end up with is pointless questions from those who want to be noticed and little challenge from those who aspire to be (back) in the tent. 

That's sort of what Christian, Edge and Thomas say they are doing.  Thomas in particular tends to persist in asking a series of questions about particular topics (as does Edge now) and trying to get details out of them.  Unfortunately Ministers too commonly play the Dim Tim (especially if they are a Dim Tim) and claim not to know anything or even understand what they are asked.  Written Questions and promised follow-ups to Oral ones often fail to give the information that was specifically asked for.

There's always a certain amount of grandstanding (they are politicians after all) and Ashford is especially prone to this and using it as an opportunity to show why he is so brilliant that he should be made a Minister again.  Obviously this just reminds every other MHK what a pompous ignoramus he is and that they would refuse to serve in CoMin with him.  Moorhouse's questions are often way too vague and he's not good at pinning people down in the follow-ups.  But all can ask useful things - especially when it's on behalf of people outside Tynwald who know what they are talking about.

[Fred the shred]

Grandstanding is exactly what Thomas, Edge and Christian are doing Edge and Thomas are bitter after being rejected and Christian is joining the pity party.   None of these have achieved anything of note and are just trying to keep their names in the public’s eye.

[Roger Mexico]

As I said above, there were a number of questions that didn't get asked (despite there being loads of time) because MHKs wanted to get away on their hols consider more important business.  Unusually all of CoMin voted to stop the questions continuing (usually it's a genuine free vote).  The convention is that these are treated as written questions[1] and because the Ministers already have their immediate response written out to be read, that is put up more or less straight away as the response[2].

This happened with most of the ones at the last Keys, but two remain oddly unanswered.  One is from Ashford[3]:  What action is being taken to tackle drug dealing on the streets of housing estates; and if she will make a statement.  Which is a typically silly question because Poole-Wilson isn't going to give details in anything except the most general way for obvious operational reasons.  But as often with Ashford it's about drawing attention to himself.

The second silence is more interesting.  Christian had asked:  If he will release the updated Housing Board Action Plan.  And answer came there none.

 

[1]  Normally the President/Speaker will ask the questioner if they want this or for the question to be transferred to the next sitting, but there won't be another for nearly three months.

[2]  They're actually really difficult to find because the Question page is in reverse Question Reference order and all the transferred ones have QRs starting with O (for oral) rather than W (for written) and so get sorted to the bottom of the display.

[3]  Who voted for the questions not to be asked even though there were two of his own included,  He really is the most dreadful little suck-up.