Hooper has resigned

[Shake me up Judy]

Hooper went rogue a couple of years ago in the wake of the Ranson tribunal when he refused to accept the findings. Alf should have sacked him then, but inexplicably didn't. Bet he regrets that now. It's best that Hooper has finally gone. You can't keep taking the bucket to the well and expect the taxpayer to fill it. After a promising start in politics, Hooper needs to start brushing up on the old accountancy books again. It would be a Manx miracle if he got back in.

[WTF]

sadly manx miracles are fairly common.

[Banker]

John Wannenburgh has posted a detailed analysis of what needs doing on Facebook either we pay more taxes, we accept reduced services or we charge for things like A& E like Guernsey. 
more taxes is not palatable but the alternative is a worse service 

[GreyWolf]

Did he say that the no1 saving should be to cut the size of government, I don’t mind paying a little extra on certain things but not to subsidise a bloated government. 

[Banker]

4 minutes ago, GreyWolf said:

Did he say that the no1 saving should be to cut the size of government, I don’t mind paying a little extra on certain things but not to subsidise a bloated government. 

Yes he also said that 

[Banker]

For those interested here’s Bernie moffets take on this topic 

I CAN’T SEE ALF THROWING HIMSELF OFF ORRISDALE HEAD!

I know Alf Cannan is a capricious individual but I just can’t see him doing the political equivalent of throwing himself off Orrisdale Head at high tide. Let's face it advocating privatisation of the IOM Health Service would be the political equivalent of that. I mean folk just love the Health Services and its frontline staff!

Hooper and Co are suggesting that Alf when it comes to the NHS is ‘the big bad wolf’. However something doesn’t add up and it seems strange that it's taken Lawrie and Joney a couple of years to realise that Alf had these fiendish designs. 

I would suggest that despite all this rhetoric no actual tangible evidence of Alf’s grand privatisation designs exists and I would challenge Hooper (or his consort) to produce evidence in the form of written minutes where Cannan advances the suggestion if we are to believe it. 

I also find it strange that when Cannan was hatching this alleged plot to snatch our health service Hooper was preoccupied with the Bishop rather than matters temporal and Faragher was off saving Palestine!

Let's be honest politicians are self serving individuals driven only by the idea of re-election and even Cannan knows that promoting NHS privatisation is the equivalent of going ten rounds in the Ginger car park!

Cannan for his part suggests that all he wants to do is stop Manx Care spending money that it doesn't have. He seems to suggest that the Island if it wants to splash out on improved health would also have to endure increased taxes. Cannan thinks folk will not wear this.  He’s probably right. Let's be blunt, a lot of commentators, not least my good self, have been saying the Island fiscally has been living beyond its means for some time.

Of course we can have health, public housing and education services which will be the envy of the world if we want to pay for them with increased taxes, Anyone game?

I think that Cannan’s goose is cooked. He can cave in and allocate more money to Manx Care in which case Hooper and the rest of the usual suspects will berate him when he and Allinson raise taxation to fund it.

Bernard Moffatt

[Roger Mexico]

1 hour ago, cissolt said:

Interesting piece from Alf Cannan.  Was he suggesting that Manxcare and lawrie were withholding information from comin? 

There were a number of interesting things raised - I'm not sure if Cannan realised they weren't always to his credit (even ignoring the general tone of playground bitchiness).  I'll pick a a few bits from Sam Turton's report on Manx News - though Adrian Darbyshire's iomtoday piece is also informative:

In an stunningly critical speech, he added: “I’m sorry that the former minister decided it’s more important to go to Jersey than stay and debate the delivery of healthcare to the people of the Isle of Man.

But this trip must have been planned before Hooper's resignation.  So why was it OK for him to go when he was the Minister?  (Indeed why organise any trip in the middle of what is always a very busy Tynwald as the first in three months.

He said that the claims were misrepresented and came after, the Chief Minister said was Mr Hooper “contriving last Thursday, a council paper asking for unequivocal support for healthcare free at the point of delivery, knowing full well that council would reject his advances with a £16m overspend forecast and no solutions in front of us other than cuts to service”.

This suggests that Hooper suddenly produced the paper, but such things have to be submitted in advance.  So there was an opportunity for genuine discussion.  Instead it sounds like it was Cannan who was determined to push his 'solution' through.

The Chief Minister said: “He [Mr Hooper] knew in April that an external body had told him that budget holders were in the dark and that operational activities were not being costed, and neither was there a long term financial plan.

“He knew back in April that an external body had told him that finances were not even a major risk identified for board appraisal, instead of telling us this, instead of releasing that report, instead of taking direct action to get resolution, he decided that gaslighting the public that the service was underfunded was the best way forward to cover inaction.”

But who is this 'external body' and will Cannan publish this report he claims he was kept in the dark about?  Though that in itself seems unlikely as others have pointed out.

But in any case, anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with how Manx Care and the DHSC before it operated, will know that  "budget holders [being] in the dark", "operational activities were not being costed" and the absence of "a long term financial plan" were all characteristics that even the most casual glance would reveal.  These are things you find throughout IOM Government and numerous reports have complained about (and numerous poster on here). 

Manx Care are just carrying on in the 'approved' manner.  Indeed their current Finance Director is ex-Treasury and previous ones were actually employed directly by that Department.  So pretending shock about this is simply dishonest - especially from someone who was Treasury Minister for five years - and did nothing about it.

[Vaaish]

1 hour ago, CATHYJAY said:

Anyone thinking Cannan wasn't pp'd in to recieve a copy of this report, needs to give their head a wobble.

Whether or not Cannan knew of this in April, and I share your view that he must certainly have done, it doesn’t dilute the fact that, several years on from its inception, Manx Care had but the slenderest grasp of financial management. Intolerable. 

[Non-Believer]

1 hour ago, Vaaish said:

Skelly…useless..?? How very dare you. Far too kind. He’s a witless incompetent who doubtless needs a daily reminder to unzip before he pees.

I doubt he could do that without assistance. If ever there was an example of a post of convenience being created (for Kerruish) which has since descended into comedy it's the President occupied by Skelly. A non-entity in a non-job.

At £70k+ per year, from us.

[Gladys]

Sadly, there aren't enough drivers for the number of buses required under which former colleagues are to be thrown. 

[Roger Mexico]

5 minutes ago, Gladys said:

Sadly, there aren't enough drivers for the number of buses required under which former colleagues are to be thrown. 

Maybe at last they've found a use for all those minibuses.

[Vaaish]

The remarks of Bernard Moffat include this observation:

Let's be honest politicians are self serving individuals driven only by the idea of re-election…

He’s right. Including local politicians. And when it suits, they’re liars too. Including local politicians. 

[Ringy Rose]

2 hours ago, Utah 01 said:

The time is due for party politics here.

No, we need a directly elected Chief Minister.

My two MHKs in Douglas South didn’t vote for Cannan, but only one was clear beforehand that they wouldn’t. Cannan is behaving exactly how I thought the arrogant halfwit would behave, but I had absolutely no say in his election. And if the MHK had voted the other way, despite her confirmation about Cannan, I’d have had no comeback.

[Ringy Rose]

1 hour ago, Vaaish said:

If Cannan is to be believed, and this info. (from April!) about external identification of major financial planning/governance defects at Manx Care is accurate, I’d argue that it’s game over for the Chair of the Manx Care Board, and the CEO. 

Why didn’t Cannan say this in April then?

And given Cannan was the one pushing for Manx Care from day one, why weren’t these controls put in place at the time? Surely the Treasury Minister pushing for Manx Care should have been front and centre of putting these controls in place.

Whether what he’s said accurate or not their positions are untenable. But I strongly suspect that what Cannan said is not accurate, but he knows that Manx Care staff don’t have the right of reply. Question is whether Cope will be quietly paid off so she won’t argue back or whether we’re going to get Ranson v2. Cannan was instrumental in Ranson v1 too, from what I heard.

The guy’s always been a rather stupid man. All that KWC and Sandhurst taught him was how to be a bombastic bully.

[Ham_N_Eggs]

1 hour ago, Banker said:

For those interested here’s Bernie moffets take on this topic 

I CAN’T SEE ALF THROWING HIMSELF OFF ORRISDALE HEAD!

I know Alf Cannan is a capricious individual but I just can’t see him doing the political equivalent of throwing himself off Orrisdale Head at high tide. Let's face it advocating privatisation of the IOM Health Service would be the political equivalent of that. I mean folk just love the Health Services and its frontline staff!

Hooper and Co are suggesting that Alf when it comes to the NHS is ‘the big bad wolf’. However something doesn’t add up and it seems strange that it's taken Lawrie and Joney a couple of years to realise that Alf had these fiendish designs. 

I would suggest that despite all this rhetoric no actual tangible evidence of Alf’s grand privatisation designs exists and I would challenge Hooper (or his consort) to produce evidence in the form of written minutes where Cannan advances the suggestion if we are to believe it. 

I also find it strange that when Cannan was hatching this alleged plot to snatch our health service Hooper was preoccupied with the Bishop rather than matters temporal and Faragher was off saving Palestine!

Let's be honest politicians are self serving individuals driven only by the idea of re-election and even Cannan knows that promoting NHS privatisation is the equivalent of going ten rounds in the Ginger car park!

Cannan for his part suggests that all he wants to do is stop Manx Care spending money that it doesn't have. He seems to suggest that the Island if it wants to splash out on improved health would also have to endure increased taxes. Cannan thinks folk will not wear this.  He’s probably right. Let's be blunt, a lot of commentators, not least my good self, have been saying the Island fiscally has been living beyond its means for some time.

Of course we can have health, public housing and education services which will be the envy of the world if we want to pay for them with increased taxes, Anyone game?

I think that Cannan’s goose is cooked. He can cave in and allocate more money to Manx Care in which case Hooper and the rest of the usual suspects will berate him when he and Allinson raise taxation to fund it.

Bernard Moffatt

Who is he saying Hooper's consort is? There's no way he can provide minutes because Comins minutes are secret.

Edited 1 hour ago by Ham_N_Eggs