The real public health menaces

I had the, um …... interesting(?) experience of meeting some people who either already are or shortly will be indirectly employed to tackle the island's so-called substance abuse problems last week.
Inevitably, I was not impressed, and rather than yet again hear fact-free drivel that's been printed uncut in the local media for years fell to musing what might be done to tackle one of the island's real social problems.
You know, some days I really worry about the Manx addiction to inventing social panics, linked to the ease with which intellectually challenged middle class deadwood can feed off a social network close to government which will find things for them to do. Frankly, I'd rather they stayed home and did something less socially damaging ..... drink a bottle of supermarket own brand sherry daily, read what Sunday supplement critics pass off as literature, weave baskets, make pots....anything really but engage with the real world and drag others down to their level.
Now this (see http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2391 ) is the kind of thing they should be reading, and to stay well ahead of their publically subsidised games you should too. Take a quick look and have most of your misconceptions about “public health” blown away ...... just like that.
And as Chris Snowden commented (see http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-conceit-of-public-health.html for more):
“Clive is too polite to mention one of the other reasons why 'public health' people are "surprised to find there are people who get up and do something, and do it for nothing", which is that they would never consider doing anything without being paid for it, preferably by the government. A grass roots, volunteer-run 'public health' group is an oxymoron.”
Over here, it is even worse. I suspect most morons would be offended to be associated with the kind of woo-woo merchants and research-free tactics all too common in Manx health scams.
And for another succint analysis of the way this stuff works, you really have to see http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2014/09/soda-sock-puppets.html
Local Government running an astroturf campaign to promote their own no-brainers and money-drainers to taxpayers? You just could not make this stuff up! Thank goodness that kind of stuff never happens on the Isle of Man...
..oh hang on a minute......

Another day, another Manx drug SNAFU

I see from the government website ( see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/55367/methoxetamine-mexxy-classified-as-a-class-b-illegal-drug) that the island is to extend a temporary ban on various quasi-legal chemical substances and is also – at least in theory – offering advice to those who might like to be surer what they’re taking.

Except, of course, that this is not what is happening

In a nutshell, the tabloid-addled know-nowts up in the Wedding Cake who ‘advise’ on drug policy are trying to pretend their paranoid fantasies have been verified by UK government ‘expertise’. But as anyone who followed the David Nutt affair knows, the UK government does not actually have an expert panel of objective, independent drug advisors.

The chief advisor was sacked for giving evidence based advice rather than being prepared to rubber-stamp baseless nonsense and the principled members of the council resigned in protest. They now offer the objective research the UK government doesn’t want direct to interested members of the public instead (see http://www.drugscience.org.uk/ ) while a ragbag collection of pseudo-independent scientists, professionals and academics produce what reports and findings they’re told, when they’re told, and which fool nobody.

Except, of course, for a class of politicians and civil servants who are even less educated or honest - such as ours.

Meanwhile, a Manx drug advisory service which used to - at least - be guided by information from dependable (if sometimes self-serving) sources in the drug-control cottage industry lost government funding because it did not have enough religious friends there.
‘Advice’ now comes from a clueless consortium which does, and which having absolutely failed to give advice on its core area of inexpertise, ‘alcohol abuse’, now fails to give advice on topics it knows even less about while living off ‘sin taxes’ extracted from the industries which sell such products.

Some days I wonder what would happen if the Manx government sought advice on potential social problems from objective, knowledgeable professionals and tried to put in place coherent and realistic policies to deal with them (if they exist, which is sometimes also debateable). It would be a waste of time, because it has never happened, and will never happen.

Manx government culture just does not work like that, and its policies and ‘solutions’ just do not work. Period.

Feeding the therapy addicts

I was intrigued by the annual report of the Gambling Supervision Commission (see

http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/gambling//20112012annualreportfinal.pdf).

Most of it is pretty dull and inoffensive – at least for a pointless QUANGO like this, though considering that a large percentage of what we used to call the Finance Sector is now devoted to online gambling it is frankly hilarious that it is as badly run as the FSC was before the OECD demanded better.

However, page 27 IS quite revealing.

Here we learn that:

“All online licence holders are required, by a condition of their licence, to make a contribution to the Island’s problem gambling fund. Contributions are collected annually and the funds are distributed between the Isle of Man Social Services and the GREaT Foundation, a UK based charity.

Isle of Man Social Services use these contributions to fund third sector addiction support agencies which provide local service and support to those individuals for whom gambling is becoming or has become a problem. The GREaT Foundation is a UK based organisation that provides help, support, research and education in the area of problem gambling. The Commission’s support of this cause has been recognised with the Silver GREaTer donor award, which stands as testament to the contributions and support provided by the Island’s industry to this highly valued service.”

In other words, as those dependent on  alcohol-dependency charities for employment could not pay themselves, and were the object of open derision even amongst those who recognise they need professional help (but could not find it because the Manx government closed down the facilities rather than pay the staff), it was necessary for their chums in government to find a new scam to subsidise them.

The answer, yet again, came from the UK government, who had set up Gamcare, a bogus ‘gambling dependency’ operation which creamed off income from the gambling industry as a condition of licensing and passed it to ‘therapists’ and ‘counsellors’ who (in theory) help anyone who thinks they might be getting in too deep to stop gambling. 

In practice, it keeps the new puritans off government backs, which is pretty funny considering that the puritans are the ones who spread the scare stories in order to set their churchgoing mates up as ‘third sector therapeutic charities’ in the first place. Which is exactly what the puritans did in the Isle of Man, with alcohol, drugs... and other issues of which they lack any practical, professional or academic knowledge.

If you like, you can see the latest local Gamcare scam at http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_235878.html , and to find out more about how the UK is wasting both British money and the money it now creams off us, take a look at http://www.responsiblegamblingtrust.org.uk/index.html .

So do we have a gambling problem? Probably no more than anywhere less; in fact we have more chance of winning the lottery than finding evidence of addiction that would stand up.

But do we have a problem with underemployed parasites needing to justify their public subsidy? Yes.

The money currently creamed off by government from gambling companies to feed the therapy-giving addiction of a few disturbed people could equally well go to, say, schools or health. 

At most, only a one-off payment should be used to break their habit. After that, they really should seek private therapy and pay for it themselves. 

We can’t go subsidising these wasters from the public purse. If gambling really is annoying the over-sensitive sector of the populace - which I am not convinced is a large one – then let the gambling industry make some token annual donations to schools and hospitals and let us be done with the lecturing.

Sick Note

According to a government press release this week (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/health/volunteersneeded.xml ) ordinary members of the public are being invited to apply for six voluntary positions as Members of the newly-restructured and independent Health Services Consultative Committee (HSCC).

At this point, any Manx resident who has ever turned up for a routine hospital check or procedure only to be told that  the doctor didn’t, or the appointment was changed weeks ago but nobody bothered to tell you, or even that the clinic or service itself has been axed (i.e. pretty much anyone who uses the health service but isn’t related to a doctor or politician) will be thinking ‘Oh good, about time they got some feedback from ordinary punters.’

Except that they won’t.

Because: “To ensure that members are independent of the Health Service the members will be appointed by the Appointments Commission and will be appointed for a period of three years. Applicants do not need any formal qualifications, but a positive interest in the performance and delivery of Health Services would be very advantageous. Applicants should not be clinically qualified or be currently, or previously have been, employed in the Health Service.”

In plain English, that’s thickos with no knowledge or interest in the work only, appointed by a government puppet show remarkable only for each puppet’s ability to obey orders without question and be incapable of thought, which itself was chosen by a Sunday lunch sweep of the same desperate dives government ministers and civil servants hang out in.

The real question, then, is: ‘Where will the Appointments Commission find six individuals of such low intelligence and with such a small social circle that they don’t realise how badly the Health Department is being run, and by such  faith-addled throwbacks?’

Just a wild guess here, but how about in the same church pews they found the Appointments Commission and the health mismanagers?

Art attacks

 I was struck by  the news (see http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_222843.html) that local artists are being invited to submit ideas for ‘public art’ in Laxey and Ramsey. In particular, I was amused by the time at which the government culture muppet planned to introduce the scheme.

Who but the usual gaggle of pensioners and dossers have time to meet some Arts Council bigwig mid-day? And who else would want to anyway?

Really?

Seriously?

Back in the 1980’s, I knew the few vaguely competent Manx art pros who still lived here, and they all had day jobs. That wasn’t because the general populace failed to appreciate the arts (not any more than the general populace anywhere else, anyway), but because the only commissions on offer were to produce ambient tat for yuppies or oil paintings of and for the same wealthy inbreeds who run this gaff today. If you were serious, or just had any self-respect, you produced if and when you could for patrons elsewhere and held down some rubbish job to feed your family. Most eventually moved away, leaving the field wide open for the idiot spawn of bankers who now hoover up contemporary art commissions (as none of them can even hold down a cleaning job in Daddy’s office, never mind take over the firm).

 So, looks like the Kulchur dumsters are about as serious as they ever were about tarting up the town. And…. oh Lawdy Lawdy…. we do got public art in Ramsey already!

For a start we have the infamous ‘Two crusties playing chess’ sculpture inside our dull if functional Town Hall (though if the sculptor had really been paying attention those fictional figures so finely rendered in stone from some quarry clearance sale would be doing the 10^th century equivalent of grumbling about their benefits amongst discarded Special Brew tins, just like their descendants).

Then we have that odd and ugly ‘millennium’ slab outside Shoprite which nobody can figure out or find a use for. Presumably it is meant to signify something Christian (and could only have been approved by an entire committee of godbothering rednecks), but is more like a logo for a dodgy fascist cult - as conceived by the architect of a brutalist 1960’s multi-storey car park or council housing complex.

Oh, and never forget (if only we could!) ‘The Muriel’ in the picnic area by the Swing Bridge, which serves the same purpose as one of those ultrasonic devices meant to deter kids from gathering in public areas. It seems to work. You certainly never see anyone there under the age of 60 and mentally competent enough to dress themselves.

So, what do we make of this latest breathless announcement then?

Can either the talent of today’s generation of artists or the taste of today’s generation of culture bores bring something new and exciting to this town?

That would be a ‘No’.

Little white li(n)es

Ever since the story broke on Energy FM (see http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_221814.html &http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_221807.html) I’ve been laughing at the mess the local semi-pro temperance industry has got itself into.  Now, those whose very income derives from a scam pulled by a few evangelical panhandlers a decade ago are joining in the ‘condemnation’ (seehttp://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/un-s-drug-slur-on-the-island-1-4712555), which has me rolling round the floor one again.

I particularly loved: “The spokesman added: ‘If the Isle of Man had the highest level of cocaine use in the world per head of population, as suggested by the World Drug Report, drug-related crime would be extremely high to enable addicts to feed their habits.”

Why? Because the cocaine cult hit the island in the early 1980’s as a fashion brought here by young financiers and those in related trades. I even remember the wife of one up and coming legal professional sporting a cute little gold plated fingernail – which baffled her elders but was considered very amusing amongst her peers. By comparison, over-the-hill rockers came here to get away from such temptations.

 Coke just isn’t a housing estate kiddiewink sort of drug – even when international prices started tumbling. The only Class A which ever caught on locally outside wealthier circles was Ecstasy (which serious drug prevention professionals agree should never have been a Class A anyway) and even that only for a short period.

So, just to fill in the missing links here …..

Early in the last decade Manx evangelical klingons (who depend on government for handouts) were looking for a new scam at about the same time UK tabloids were kicking off about underage drinking, as well as dredging up that ‘silly season’ staple, D-R-U-U-U-G-G-S-S-S! “Bingo”, said aforementioned klingons (thought they couldn’t say that now, of course, as their latest scam is gambling addiction). Out of this came that panhandling pantechnicon we know and laugh at, the Chief Minister’s Task Farce on Alcohol and Drugs.

Almost every local professional directly involved with young people or health couldn’t keep a straight face around these wowsers, so they needed hard ‘evidence’ to justify their continued existence – not to mention the public subsidy of their church buddies. The answer was for the island to join ESPAD (European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs), which sets a Europe-wide questionnaire every five years, carried out by ‘proper academics’ according to the same format in every participant country, then publishes the results.

 As I’ve mentioned before on here, for numerous reasons known to social science researchers ESPAD surveys have to be taken with  a large pinch of salt, and certainly cannot be taken as a ‘stand alone’ statement on youth drug use. For years, as it did not suit their purposes, neither the Manx temperance industry nor their civil service friends have acknowledged this. They still will not on other moral panics (alcohol, gambling…), and still deliberately choose badly structured ‘surveys’ by bargain basement academics well past their sell-by date to justify their continued, totally pointless, existence and claims on the public purse.

But I do not include David Quirk in my dismissal of total drivel produced by hardcore parasites. He came to his role well after all this dishonesty, and played no part in setting the original scam up. I’ve had a few dealings with him, and know him as an old school Labourite – a working man who went into politics to do the right thing for his community, and to my certain knowledge in his own time, unpaid, he still puts the skills of his old trade to use for old dears in emergencies.

David takes people at their word unless given hard evidence not to do so, and will be taking the word of government advisors - people who are supposed to be professionals - as true here. But as the ESPAD survey which the ‘new, improved’ DHA takes issue with is actually the second in which the island took part, and has been the basis of government expenditure on drug and alcohol ‘education’ and prevention for a decade, it is interesting that the DHA (without whose participation neither survey could have taken place) now dismisses the findings. On that basis, shouldn’t DHA executives – for example –offer to pay back the money given to the Drug Squad during those years?

I wait with amusement to see what ‘alternative’ survey the Manx amateur ‘substance-abuse-prevention’ industry will come up with now that they’ve shot their own golden goose. It has to (a) sound impressive (b) be comprised of statistics nobody can check and (c) according to parameters which can only conclude that we need a handful of clueless, god-bothering wasters who would be otherwise unemployable to run the ‘prevention industry’(rather than, say, qualified professionals with a background in medicine, nursing or pharmacy) . It also has to be produced in such a way that the findings can never reach academic researchers who might take an informed interest in comparative drug use in communities around the UK or world and the reasons behind that, who would immediately pull the methodology and stats to pieces and cause the Manx government further embarrassment.

Tough job, but I’m sure some bible-touting chancer can be found to do it.

Of government and its sock puppets

People still ask why I take a dim view of charities and the ‘Third Sector’, especially on the Isle of Man. I would have thought that by now it was obvious - especially if you ever had the painful experience of sitting in a room while those behind the worst examples try to beg money, or excuse derailing the democratic process and delaying the introduction of open, transparent government to the Isle of Man (I know, open, transparent, democracy….or even government….pigs might fly first).

Luckily the excellent Chris Snowdon of Velvet Glove Iron Fist (see right) has just produced a paper for the Institute of Economic Affairs which pretty much sums up the problem. The paper is called Sock Puppets: How the government lobbies itself and why (Chris Snowdon, IEA Discussion Paper No. 39) – probably the funniest, but most accurate, title for a serious survey on a growing social problem you will see in a long time.

The paper begins: “In the last fifteen years, state funding of charities in Britain has increased significantly while restrictions on political lobbying by charities have been relaxed. 27,000 charities are now dependent on the government for more than 75 per cent of their income and the ‘voluntary sector’ receives more money from the state than it receives in voluntary donations.”

Staggering stuff (unless, perchance, you have taken note of all the local examples of such chicanery I have banged on about, and are already worried about it). 

While, as more of a left libertarian, I do not share all the ‘areas of concern’ identified by the IEA and other free market ‘think tanks’ (and would add a problem they don’t identify – links between religious groups and the state and their effect when, for example, the ‘charity’ economic framework is abused by religious bigots for their own nasty theo-fascist ends), I do share their concern about the principles. I certainly share their conclusion, that instead of government-run pseudo-charities “….it would be better to restore the independence of the voluntary sector, safeguard taxpayers’ money and rebalance civil society in favour of grass-roots activism.”

 There’s a brief summary of the paper at http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/how-the-government-uses-charities-to-lobby-itself, or if you prefer to just go straight to the paper itself you can find it at http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/Sock%20Puppets.pdf .

In the comments after the IEA summary, I was particularly taken by Phil Taylor, who says: “Could I suggest a rule of thirds? The Charity Commission should insist on the use of some designation such as "Government sponsored body" for any organization that accepts more than one third of its income from government sources of all kinds but still wishes to be treated as a charity. Once a body exceeds two thirds of its income from government sources it should cease to be a charity and should formally become an agency of the relevant department. It could then be monitored by the NAO and use a .gov.uk web address, etc. Then we would all know what we are dealing with. To re-iterate: - You could call yourself a charity as long as less than one third of your income came from the state. - Above one third you could still be regulated as a charity but you would not be allowed to use the word charity when describing yourself and would have to use a designation such as “Government sponsored body”. - Above two thirds just call yourself what you are – a part of the government.”

Now, consider the devastating (for them) but liberating (for the rest of us) effect on the Manx pseudo-charity racket if Tynwald looked at that idea.

Oh, of course, they can’t. That would involve identifying which black holes they’ve been throwing public money down, explaining why they thought it was a good idea, and then taking back responsibility for the public services we thought we were paying them to provide.

Saving for the nation - or depriving it?

This attempt by Manx Nasty Heretics (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=44826 ) to grab a £1.2M legacy left to the community by a well meaning local made me laugh.

It is not just the pathetic attempt to pretend the general public will have a say. It is not even the way a hick judge can be trusted to pass somebody else’s entire life work over to the biggest drain on national and natural resources.

What made me laugh is remembering that some years ago I saw the will of a local collector who knows and despises this racket even more than I do. And, to be fair, he had good reason.

Three times, to my knowledge, their pettiness, ignorance and incestuous protection rackets deprived him or his family of an income, and in the process deprived the island of one of its most important historical buildings and the two finest monthly records of true cultural life it has ever had. As none of the national treasures in question actually passed to either Manx National Heritage or a competent party, all three are simply gone for ever.

Knowing this, and also knowing that the heritage mafia have ways of persuading people to hand over their property, with recourse to quite thuggish legal action if necessary, he set out to make an absolutely bullet-proof will. This ensures that when he finally pops his clogs the island’s least competent guardians of antiquities cannot get their grubby mitts on a substantial hoard of Manx archive material which has been freely offered to genuine researchers, but never has, and never will be, available to heavily government subsidised vandals who would probably flog it for a few crates of Special Brew (or whatever Manx culture-sepulchral throwbacks drink).

Some of the island’s finest legal minds (and there are not many) worked on a document which ensures that valuable treasures are only ever passed down to trustworthy genuine local historians and groups, and that before receiving them they sign binding legal documentation which ensures that should they ever work or accept assistance from MNH (or any individual who, in turn, does so) then the trustees seize back the goods and pass them on to a more deserving recipient.

As well as being legally watertight, it is also quite a funny and scathing document, and even the rumours of it set other local historians and collectors to thinking about similar action. In the process valuable, totally irreplaceable items of Manx cultural heritage (including books, audio tapes and film of the last Manx language speakers, artworks, original manuscripts by Victorian and Edwardian folk archivists and many other fine things) have been preserved for the Manx people, by ensuring that they can never – ever – pass to the government’s appointed trustees. In many cases the keepers of such treasures will never even let MNH or the Manx government know that they exist – at least until such time as the island is run by saner folk who would know what to do with them.

I want a refund

“What we have seen in Britain over the last fifteen years is a politicisation of 'civil society' and the rise of state-funded astro-turfing. Under the leadership of Suzi Leather, the Charities Commission has actively encouraged NGOs to campaign while the government has encouraged them to take statutory funding. It should be no surprise that this subverts and undermines democracy. That was surely the intention. When businesses do this, we call them what they are: front groups.”
So says Chris Snowdon, who could almost be talking about the Isle of Man, except that we don’t have a Charities Commission - or indeed any recognisable professional or governmental oversight of the island’s biggest licence to subsidise incompetence with public funds, spread superstition and peddle extremist claptrap.
For a glimpse of the model for taxpayer funded behavioural change that we are increasingly seeing over here too, see
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-are-we-paying-for-this-part-1.html which deals with the admission that the UK government is, after all, underwriting a bogus anti-smoking ’charity’ and using it as a means to push through behavioural change that taxpayers have not signed up to.
And there’s more on a similar theme at
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-are-we-paying-for-this-part-2.html, where the links between various local authorities, the NHS and a ‘grassroots’ website, asking people to sign up to a campaign to introduce a minimum alcohol pricing law, are clearly outlined.
“Why”, asks Snowdon “…. is the government—which has supposedly not made its mind up about minimum pricing—allowing taxpayers' money to be spent on an astro-turfing project designed to get people to sign up to a "movement"?
Happens all the time in the Isle of Man, Chris, except here they’re called ‘government consultations’, and run by people who just happen to be employed by the bogus health charities which benefit most, having been chosen to do so by people who just happen to be paid-up members of extreme pro-life groups in their spare time (some would say in our time, and certainly with our money, which makes us unwilling sponsors of such faith-led fascism too).
Snowdon concludes: ”Regular readers will be familiar with fake charities and state-funded NGOs masquerading as 'civil society'. It might take a little homework to find out that ASH, Alcohol Concern, Friends of the Earth, Brake, Sustain et al. are largely dependent on statutory funding for their existence, but it can be done. This website is not unusual in using government money to lobby for policy, but it is unusual in that it is doing so anonymously and without disclosing the source of the campaign. If this is not against the rules then the rules are worthless.”
In the Isle of Man it is worse. Here the rules are made by the worthless.

Of Cultures and Vultures

The announcement (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/mnh/guardiansofislan.xml) that: “Applications are currently being invited from members of the public who are interested in becoming Trustees of Manx National Heritage (Manx Museum and National Trust)” made me laugh out loud.
Why? Well, partly because a former Trustee used to tell me that MNH board meetings are like a wet Friday in a small town morgue. He seriously wondered if some of the superannuated fossils in the room were still alive, and used to joke that one executive deliberately dulled proceedings and used their failure to respond as a sign of assent when trying to push through dodgy business.
But mostly because any serious analysis of ‘Manx Heritage’ (there hasn’t been much) would worry about the McDonaldisation of ‘heritage’ to suit the tourist trade, and in particular the whimsies of potential upper middle class visitors with a drippy hippy past and more money and spare time than sense.
Related to that is the more serious problem that the public cash and effort thrown at ‘culture’ is based on a (frankly) racist definition of ‘culture’ that even some Nazis would have problems with. It is propagated by folk who simply don’t understand the basics of sociology, anthropology and cultural (and more particularly subcultural) theory – or anything else which actually studies how societies tick and individuals interact within those societies. They completely fail to recognise the contributions and lives of the vast majority of Manx residents, past or present.
The few serious studies which do are all by off-island academics who consider the matter in contrast to developments in heritage, tourism and cultural policy elsewhere and end up falling about laughing. I know about them because some 20 years ago I was headhunted to do a Ph.D. as part of a massive project by professors at two once great universities who were being funded to make the only significant analysis, then or since, of regional development and the late 20th century ‘heritage industry’.
The disinterest of the Manx government in either current affairs or serious cultural analysis meant I never got a grant, so the project went on without me. But I stayed in touch with the professors and we still swap jokes (disguised as examples of political and bureaucratic cretinism), or commiserate with each other about declining standards in academia and the state of the world. Ironically, the completed project featured prominently in the readings for my Cultural Studies M.A. through the Open University, which I also funded myself due to continued Manx government disinterest in such topics a decade later.
One of the few interesting, though not encouraging, snippets of information to come from the latest futile exercise is the information pack (see http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/cso/mnhtrusteesinformationpack.pdf) which chunters on ad nauseum to excuse the project, but also mentions that any loser considered brainless enough to join the Trustees will get £78 a time (plus around 50p a mile ‘travelling expenses’) to snooze or pick their noses while 3rd division marketing morons lay out the strategies by which the great Manx public will subsidise our regression back to the Bronze Age.
I keep hearing about retired executive types who are trying to flog the poor judgement that ended their careers to Manx government ‘advisory bodies’. Jobs like this should keep them in claret for another day without a free business lunch - and never were two dimwitted interests better matched.

Bogus charity bingo night goes ballistic

Last November ( see http://clingingtoarock.blogspot.com/2011/11/another-day-another-parasitic-quango.html ) I prophesied that a Manx bogus charity was running out of government funds and would launch a new moral panic to stay in business. To recap, I said that Isle of Man Alcohol Advisory Service had “struggled for a year or two now to justify further direct government funding, or to use their relationship with government to demand ‘charitable donations’ from local retailers in return for not further infantalising the whole process of buying alcohol.” I then outlined how they would join forces with a similar British government puppet charity to talk up the ‘dangers’ of gambling until someone threw enough money at them.
Not only have I been proved right, but a report today (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/study_to_provide_insight_into_gambling_1_4133011 )suggests that (1) they’ll split the loot with their Brit ally and (2) in the process open up a process of back door taxation of Manx businesses to subsidise a Brit government ‘third sector’ initiative.
Funnily enough, this means the Brits get to tackle an entirely imaginary ‘social problem’ without having to spend a penny or employ a single public sector ‘professional’ or ‘expert’. Sadly, that doesn’t mean the problem of the imaginary social problem will go away too.
This all began when in 2007 GamCare received 80% of a £3.5 million budget set aside on government mandate by the UK gambling industry to ‘promote responsible gambling’. They were hoping to bump that up to £5.34 million in 2010 and 2011, but the latest accounts they’ve submitted to the Charity Commission suggest that the gambling industry told them where to get off, also that the ‘charity’ still gets no other income apart from their gambling industry hush money.
And on today's 'news', I should also say that the pseudo-survey is a classic marketing scam, and now a bog standard tool for the moral panic industry.
As I’ve explained elsewhere, the trick is to decide what answers you need, then set the questions and participant parameters so that you can get no others. It is ridiculously easy, as the full results and methodology will not be in the public domain, old fashioned rigorously neutral academics able or willing to find the time to take such nonsense apart are thin on the ground, and even cynical lay people tend to take such surveys at face value if they’re for a ‘good cause’ or concern a matter which decades of biased reporting lead us to falsely believe is a ’social problem’.
A classic example is the infamous regular ESPAD 'surveys' of ‘’under-age drinking’ which, here and elsewhere, have kept an entire bogus therapy industry in funds for over a decade now. But even right wing amateurs like the Mothers Union are getting in on the scam (I mentioned their scare tactics over ‘parenting’ some while back, and now it seems they have David Cameron’s ear, so keeping tweedy geriatrics with one foot in ga-ga-land off the backs of decent parents is going to be an increasing problem in the coming year).
If only such imaginary problems and the proponents of their equally imaginary solutions could go away or be forgotten as quickly as bad dreams.
Sadly, I would not bet on that any time soon. Not considering the amount of public money wasted dreaming them up, along with ever more pointless employment opportunities for the bogus therapists involved.

Another day, another parasitic QUANGO

And as if to reinforce the message from the item below on the drug & alcohol dependency racket, a new scam to ‘protect’ gamblers was announced yesterday at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/socialcare/thelaunchofgamca.xml.
No surprise to see the Isle of Man Alcohol Advisory Service is behind it. They have struggled for a year or two now to justify further direct government funding, or to use their relationship with government to demand ‘charitable donations’ from local retailers in return for not further infantalising the whole process of buying alcohol. Those who have had compulsory interaction with such ‘advisers’ tell me the service quality, by any professional standard, is so laughable that anyone who thought they had a problem and could afford treatment would be better off throwing money at a passing drunk than employing these bozos. They live off government money because nobody else is dumb enough to give it to them.
Even before checking further into this racket, I could predict that the set-up would be similar to that which has given several prodnoses a steady income from other ‘vices’. The trick is, start a moral panic, lobby for a government advisory body, get invited to be on it and then use it to get (1) a regular payoff from the industry in return for your silence and (2) the perpetuation of the advisory body by offering the odd feelgood, but practically pointless, ‘policy’.
Take, for example, the ridiculous one whereby the employees of supermarkets (many teenage or if older desperate for regular employment) dare not sell alcohol to anyone under 25 (even though they are merely required to challenge anyone who looks under 25 and legally are actually obliged to sell to any sober person of 18 or more who requests alcohol rather than demanding it with menaces). I know of cases where management has sacked employees who sold to 18-25 year-olds in order to scare the rest and impress government watchdogs. Those former employees (even though they have done nothing illegal or immoral) then cannot get other work for months.
Sure enough, when I check out Gamcare (or to give their full and misleading name, the National Association for Gambling Care, Educational Resources and Training) on the England and Wales Charity Register and elsewhere, the scam follows that practiced by various UK alcohol and substance ‘advisory’ charitable bodies.
For example, in 2007 GamCare received 80% of a £3.5 million budget set aside on government mandate by the UK gambling industry to promote responsible gambling. Neither the UK government nor the gambling industry are open about what happened after that, but back in 2008 it was expected £4.76 million in funding would be demanded for 2009, with that number jumping to £5.34 million in 2010 and 2011.
Sure enough, the last accounts submitted by Gamcare reveal that £2.7 million was coughed up, that the ‘charity’ got no other income apart from their gambling industry hush money and that it did not expect to tap anyone else for the cash for the foreseeable future.
In return for what?
Well, companies who carry the GamCare logo at their establishments or on their websites ‘voluntarily comply with a set of guidelines towards the promotion of responsible gaming’, according to the official line. And that’s about it really.
Yes, there’s a website, a gambling helpline, a chance for one–to-one advice (though not necessarily from anyone required to be trained to any obvious standard that I can spot)..blah, blah, blah…bit like the new IOM set-up for this racket, and the established ones for others, in fact.
And like the IOM racket(s), only one trustee for Gamcare has any obvious professional and relevant background. The other names look like the kind of privileged layabouts you see in any average New Years Honours list for…..well, probably for being privileged and getting out of bed long enough to wander into a few government advisory bodies and pick up an OBE in return, to be honest.
Actually, that would be better than the Manx industry standard, which is for an increasingly smaller and smaller, more self-selecting gang of unskilled busybodies to elect themselves onto ever more ‘advisory bodies’ and so avoid having to actually seek employment or pay their own way for yet another year or two.
It strikes me that, compared to that, the average smack dealer is a responsible member of the community. Probably pays more taxes and provides a more useful public service too.

Government 'advice' from the thick and the dead

I had to laugh at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/cso/playapartinpubli.xml. I know by now you’ve read this in what passes for a local press, but I feel obliged to quote from the original, as presented to the press to regurgitate whole. Because, unlike certain public notices (see (Oh ‘L’) someone in the Chief Sickbag’s office WILL check closely, and if ‘independent’ reports are cut, so future government advertising may be.
This kind offer, on the surface at least, invites mere plebs to become public representatives on advisory bodies. Except, as anyone who’s ever encountered either the drawn-out, secretive and (frankly) dishonest application procedure or the kind of freaks who end up on these committees can tell you, it does not.
The thing is, the Chief Sickbag’s office draws up a list of ‘suitable’ candidates (generally over-the-hill figures from the ‘special interest’ groups who civil servants have accepted ‘free lunches’ from over the years) and the current one was agreed with the last Council of Ministers. This is only vaguely hinted at in any COMIN minutes, because the Chief Sickbag writes them.
Procedure requires that there is then a’public invitation’, unwelcome responses to which inevitably get ‘lost’ before the Chief Sickbag presents the names of those appointed to a future COMIN meeting to rubberstamp. In the case of the public bodies in theory considered later, the process is even more opaque. Frankly, if you can count to ten, haven’t subsidised a ski holiday for a senior government figure and/or aren’t gaga already, don’t waste a stamp or rack up a phone bill.
For example, I remember talking to one MNH member with enough self-respect to step down before his short term memory was completely shot (unlike, for example, an old biddy on another cultural advisory body who was marked present at meetings for around two years even as staff in her nursing home tied her into her chair to prevent her wandering off). He swore that, at one point, some members were so sedated and the need to rush new policy through so urgent that their silence was recorded as votes for the motion. I even wonder if, like Jeremy Bentham, the stuffed bodies of deceased members are wheeled in to make up a quorum, though I doubt if they’d be marked “present but not voting” as Bentham famously is at UCL meetings marking major anniversaries.
There was also the day that a senior figure in the heritage racket was rescued in Strand Street by a concerned bypasser, having not set foot there since the first mid-80’s redevelopment. Even as he was escorted onto the nearest bus back to Arcadia, he was still muttering ‘I’m sure you just turn left at the Dog’s Home…..’
(For those not old enough to remember, the Dog’s Home was a legendary 1980’s pub - one of the few where individualists of all ages could feel secure and rednecks never came to drink. It was the key building in a block of small businesses which was knocked down under a secretive planning deal involving compulsory purchase, eventually providing the site for the current Marks & Sparks. Few, if any, of the owners got enough compensation to continue elsewhere.)

DHA, more danger than strangers to kids

If I haven't blogged for a while, it's because I'm trying hard to stick to my post-holiday policy of only spreading positive vibes - poking fun at a few local windbags and drains on the rates along the way but in general trying to cheer up decent folk just trying to get by on the Rock rather than add to their woes.
But this (see http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_170178.html) is worrying news.
It isn’t just that a government department is wasting public time, money and resources indulging the prejudices of some of the island’s least responsible, self-pitying bigots. It is also the bigots who government will use or employ to ‘look into’ the matter.
Given that the Manx government already wastes far too many public facilities to tittle-tattle about the rest of us and screw up our personal and family lives, I would also be surprised if they choose to share their toys with any unskilled, tabloid-reading (and believing) inappropriate morons who don’t already draw a government salary.
I definitely don’t think the government wants anyone with an ounce of sense knowing the ill-informed ‘intelligence’ they share freely about the rest of us, and I doubt if the worst offenders are on their radar anyway, given that Manx ‘childcare professionals’ never look at unpleasant stuff involving fellow fundamentalists when reported by concerned relatives and neighbours.
But what really worries me is that if it has got as far as this, then someone in either Social Services or the DHA has already formulated a policy and a way of pushing it through a bogus ‘public consultation’, just as they did with homelessness.
Having once wasted an extremely unpleasant evening with some civil servants from the DHA, DSS and various puppet charities, I’ve been through something similar to what is (in theory) supposed to happen here but (in practice) will not.
The official agenda at that meeting was to decide the format for an information-gathering exercise into the scale, nature and causes of Manx homelessness, in order to help government develop strategies to need it. Amongst the things I quickly discovered were:
(1) It doesn’t matter what it says on the agenda of such a meeting or who drew it up in theory. In practice both the agenda and the decisions the meeting will rubberstamp are set in advance by a DSS executive on a £100K+ salary, who will not actually bother to turn up to the meeting.
(2) I, the token ‘member of the public’, had more facts and figures at my fingertips, and knew more about the issue in general, than a group of people who, collectively, cost the public about £500,000 in salaries each year.
(3) Government employees don’t bother researching for meetings like this, and may even turn up not knowing what the meeting topic is, but happily put in claims for overtime anyway.
(4) Slum landlords and the DSS get along just fine, and the DSS are not about to allow any evidence to appear in a government document which would break up that cosy relationship.
(5) Nobody with dark skin or a foreign accent is safe in the care of the DHA, but if the DHA can find a way to blame all Manx social problems on such folk they will.
(6) Some key government staff not only go to the same fundamentalist churches which produce the homophobia, sexism, racism, physical, mental (and in some cases sexual) abuse which in turn is the primary cause of Manx teenage kids leaving home, they are also involved in the fundamentalist bogus charities which the DHA and DSS proposes to use to counsel and rehouse them.
So, in brief, nothing will emerge from this mess but more trouble for ordinary parents. If you really want a list of people who are a danger to children, you should start with the staff lists of any government department, bogus charity or government advisory body which gets involved in such a pointless exercise.

Oh, 'L'!

Me and the Mrs are still giggling at a glaring error in a government advert prominently featured in last week’s Isle of Man Courier.
Well, we thought it was a typo, but it could be genuine.
After all, nobody with more than two working braincells gets to work in the Chimp Secretary’s office (for fear of upstaging the Chimp himself), and some of the folk who have ‘advised’ the Chimp’s Tea Party in the past have more than a passing knowledge of the adult entertainment industry. It’s an open secret too that internet porn takes up way more browsing time in certain government departments than, say, human rights, international law or the websites of the Economist or Financial Times.
Which might explain why, in the third paragraph of a quarter page public notice placed on behalf of the Chief Secretary's Office on page 48 and meant to invite expressions of interest for ‘Public Art Coordinator for Regeneration’, we read that: “In order to meet the public's responses for vibrant and interesting regenerated areas, the government is seeking Expressions of Interest to undertake the coordination of Pubic Art within some of the Island’s planned regeneration areas.”
But even that won’t be as funny as the tasteless tat chosen for production at public expense which results if this is nothing more than an unfortunate typo.

Big Mother is watching you - or the battle between 'nudgers' and 'nannies'

For a while now I’ve been looking for a way to introduce the subject of ‘nudging’ to this blog.
The term ‘nudging’ was popularised by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Wealth, Health, and Happiness. It refers to the political use of behaviourist techniques, rather than outright bans and law changes, to get the general public to stop doing stuff politicians, civil servants and other busybodies have decided we should not do.
In the UK Cameron established BIT (the Behavioural Insight Team) to formalise the nudging of what ex-Etonians obviously see as the fat and feckless masses into slimmer, duller lives. This replaced an old Brown/Blair approach which wanted to achieve the same aims, but by outright bullying from prim and proper nanny figures.
To get a useful introduction into this quiet further intrusion into our lives and freedoms, and the current behind-the-scenes battle between ‘nudgers’ and ‘nannies’ take a look at http://reason.com/archives/2011/03/30/nudgers-vs-nannies by Brendan O’Neill. It’s from an American site – hence the odd spellings – but if you want to know more on the topic from a UK perspective, it’s one that crops up regularly on Spiked, so check out the link to the right of the page.
Over here, it might be a while before the Manx great and gormless can lose their ignoble tradition of nannying the rest of us to death. But even a brief look at this article reveals the pseudo-therapeutic methodology increasingly being adopted by Manx civil servants, ‘government advisors’ and other unelected, publically unaccountable busybodies – often superstitious, semi-literate or plain stupid, by the way.
Take a look, then check out Spiked for more. The similarities between the UK examples and some of the ‘health conscious’ psychobabble being spouted in recent months by Manx government departments may alarm you. Maybe it will also help you spot the signs when these anti-democratic village idiots try to slip more past us in the future.
(hat tip to Dick Puddlecote for the link)

Public Health Warning for St. Johns

If there is a deity, he is celebrating his birthday with a sly joke on his thickest local disciples.
Because smack bang under a warning that a virulent new strain of MRSA may have hit the island I found http://www.manx.net/news/1037/christmas-on-the-hill-st-johns-christmas-eve on the Manxnet news page.
Well, that saves me having to warn Manx people that St. Johns is again becoming a Yuletide Disaster Area. But as the police have mentioned it, I’d recommend the rest of us just avoid the area altogether for a few days. Leave it to the fundie throwbacks, the BNP and similar Manx rednecks no decent person should be seen around or risk catching something nasty off.
One other question. If the local police are doing advertising for publically subsidised flat-earth gatherings like this, doesn’t that suggest that it is high time for a new Police Liason Committee?
The two key figures of that unelected committee (whose new members are selected by the current committee, not the police, the DHA or Tynwald) are not only fundamentalists but run the shopping centre next to St. Johns Hill which will reap any financial benefit from this event.
That, I would have to suggest, is another joke. Much sicker, if very indicative of the real way in which Tynwald goes through the motions of ‘consulting’ the public on government policy.

Abuse, misuse and statistics

I’ve just been watching a sad example of the current state of British academia.
More precisely, I’ve been watching what happens when the subsidy from one major industry pays for not only the ‘right’ research results, but a pseudo-professorship at a former minor technical college upgraded to university status to enforce the ‘rightness’.
The sad example appeared on my favourite Sunday morning comedy show to argue that ‘we should all pay the price of alcohol abuse’. What’s even sadder, I once spoke to this ‘professor’ and her more principled research partner about the misuse of their work by the Manx government, so know that they have grave reservations about the way in which the tip of the research iceberg – articles in properly peer-reviewed social science journals – is quoted totally out of context when used by advocacy groups and the major drinks companies to forward their agenda (i.e. no more cheap alcohol in supermarkets and artificially inflated prices in pubs and licenced premises which have no choice but to pay them, then pass them on to the punter).
One of the show panellists – a liberal rabbi whose name I didn’t catch and who looks like Jonathan Pryce’s stunt double - put his finger on the problem. If we’re serious about reducing alcohol intake, why does a pint cost £2.20 and a soft drink cost £2.40 in an average pub?
The answer, though no-one said it, might be obvious to anyone who can be bothered to do the research and join the dots. It is because the same company owns both the beer and the soft drink and has a virtual monopoly over supply of both, at prices artificially inflated by a moral panic over ‘binge drinking’ based only on the misquoting of ‘research’ which (like the academics and academic departments who produced it) those drinks companies also own.
Notes From The Borderlands, an excellent print and online mag which provides the UK’s best research on far right and secret state activity, uses the term ‘state compromised journalism’ to describe when ‘investigative journalists’, incapable of or reluctant to do proper research, have their stories written and agendas set by state agencies. Such stories then appear in documentaries or left of centre papers like the Guardian and so help the state to keep smallish reform groups at each others throats, while dismally failing to end racism or any of the other tools of government. A clever tactic, as us liberals automatically discount anything in rightish broadsheets; especially as we know, thanks to folk like Nick Davies, that MI5 are on good terms with editors and key staff.
Similarly, isn’t it time we ask which academics are ‘state compromised’ or ‘commercially compromised’ – not always simply by career choice (though it definitely happens), but in many more cases because research parameters - and sometimes the existences of whole university departments - are set by the sponsors? Not only that, but there is no longer a true academic commitment to fearlessly independent research and making results available for public scrutiny -due to the high price anyone outside academic networks has to pay to see academic articles, and the way the sponsors also control publication and use of ‘their’ research.
Certainly we should still pay attention to the ‘freedom of speech’ arguments we sometimes hear when one major interest group tries to gag the research of a more independent writer, e.g. the Simon Singh case. But we should recognise such independent research is now the brave exception, not the rule it is held up to be.
And there are also those who ask why I am obsessed with the ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ end of civil liberties, not more mainstream concerns like poverty. To which I would reply thus.
The police say they practice ‘zero tolerance’ of petty crime, using the rationale that it prevents it escalating into major crime, though the reality might be that they can’t go after major criminals anyway – especially when they are in government or running the civil service!
Similarly, I have zero tolerance of PR misdemeanours, like greenwashing , advocacy research and the deliberate twisting of results which (far too often) aren't available for proper independent scrutiny: because their drip, drip drip of misinformation dominates and sets ‘common sense’ understandings of society and morality.
We cannot, overnight, change the effect of decades (sometimes centuries) of bigotry and lies. But we can chip away at the newer, smaller lies before they take root, in the hope that they make more people question the bigger ones. And at the very least, people will then refuse to cooperate with the state, the churches and other major anti-democratic interests on newer infringements on civil liberties.

Noddy goes to Tesco

The latest example of blatant Manx government human rights violation can be found at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/dha/alcoholcodeofpra.xml, where you find that all island retailers have now – voluntarily – signed up to a ‘code’ on alcohol sales that makes it impossible for anyone under 25 to buy alcohol in a shop, and herds adults through the wine and spirits aisle like special needs kids at Disneyland.
Sad, stupid and sickening.
People who know me might be puzzled. Why would someone who has little or no interest in alcohol, and did enough of the rock-and-roll lifestyle to ‘retire’ here before the age at which I could now buy alcohol in the local Tesco, even care about this stuff?
To them, I can only suggest this. Instead of reading it with religious morality blinkers on, look at it like a responsible adult who, at some time in their life, has read something about the UNCHR and, preferably, some John Stuart Mill.
I know. Isle of Man, so fat chance when anyone arrogant enough to think they should have a hand in government cannot spell their own name.
But I don’t know why our misgovernors can’t just go the whole hog. Hand control over every aspect of our private lives to the Isle of Man Methodist Circuit and employ bounty killers to shoot anyone under the age of 30.
Because they really should be honest about this. The superstitious misanthropes who impose this nonsense on the rest of us don’t just despise people who enjoy life. They absolutely, absolutely live in terror of the idea that anyone not yet middle-aged should develop a taste for it.
And another thing. People who are unfit to legislate the way we buy a bottle of wine for the weekend are absolutely unfit to legislate for more serious aspects of our lives. For example, work, health and education.
On the other hand, by now I would hope that most Manx people know that too.

Headless Chicken Syndrome

If you know me personally you may also know why I’m not blogging much at present. For the benefit of anyone else, can’t go into that here or now, but hopefully things will be back to normal in another week or two.
But I just had to draw your attention to a snippet on our new, pointless and totally, totally clueless emergency ‘legal high’ legislation tucked away in the Council of Ministers proceedings for January. It typifies the problem with local drug & alcohol policy, and absolutely illustrates how we are being misgoverned by headless chickens.
And, yes, that’s January, and not because I only just discovered it, but because it took until now for them to put the minutes on the record.
Take a peek at http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/government/COMIN_Proceedings/2010/januaryforbriefing.doc and go to item 3.
Bear in mind that the ‘advice’ came, not from doctors or even scientists (none are involved in the D &A strategy group), but ultimately from faith-based amateur ‘therapists’ who have conned their way into DHA, Education and Social Services advisory groups because no-one there is a qualified professional either.
Note also that “no public consultation exercise should be conducted to allow for the Bill to be progressed urgently, in the public interest”.
WHAT?!
Let’s get this quite clear. Our government, having been startled by shouty, illiterate MHKs misreading tabloid headlines, has introduced new and restrictive legislation based on absolutely no evidence, and without consulting the public, who it considers too thick to have an opinion. So when we need an opinion it will be given to us by lame-brained superstitious throwbacks, who will be given public money to spout nonsense regurgitated from particularly poor sermons.
When added to the problems being imposed on responsible parents by the new, faith-bigoted Kinderstasi now running the SS, this really should be worrying us. Maybe we should just erect ‘Welcome to the Third World’ signs at the airport and ferry terminal, and have done with all the pretence.
Sometimes these muppets wonder why we hold them in absolute contempt, and wouldn’t trust them to go to the shops for a Mars bar and come back with the right change – never mind run the country.
I couldn’t possibly tell them; at least, not in words that would be short enough for them to understand.