No sense, no taste

We were at the Isle of Man Festival of Food and Drink yesterday. 

I have to say, it’s good to see the Manx government do something right. In this case, assemble some of the worst things about the island in one place, fence it off, and then make the public pay to go in. At £5 a pop that puts off all but the hardened masochists.

Seriously though, much of the food was, frankly, a bit naff, though as I had to drive the family home afterwards to shop for real food I never visited the beer tent. For no charge (if you really wanted to) you could find the same vendors at any local event with stalls, or for a quid or so towards fixing the church roof or providing wells to African kids find a better selection of homemade produce at any charity fayre.

Yes, seriously, I would rather pay a token amount to a church whose beliefs I don’t share than hand over yet more money to the government for them to try and interest us yet again in publicly subsidised local produce that few of us really like and many of us cannot afford. As someone who is, of necessity, on a healthy diet I also have to point out that even moderate regular amounts of most of the food on offer would, far from improving your health, kill you quicker than smoking,  most of the illegal substances government health workers tell us to avoid and any of the currently legal ones they would like to be illegal in future.

Funny old world, isn't it?

Another thing that worries me – why did Living Hell seem to get a free pass to abuse small kids under the pretence of providing a crèche? When organisations like the Children’s Centre are also getting heavy public subsidies why weren’t they there instead? 
Another case of parents who can (and must) do, non-parents who can’t (or just shouldn’t) get paid by government to preach?