You can tell there is an election coming when our dimmest politicians, having gone through the other horse-frighteners in the pack, play the race card.
So see
http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/education/places_at_nurseries_1_3276571 to spot an MHK who is desperate.
Knowing Malarkey’s history, you can see why. He piggybacked on the new Liberal Vannin party network to get into the Keys. Once in there, he immediately jumped ship. The whole point of Liberal Vannin was to stay on the back benches and hold government to account. Peter Karran, the party’s leader, has done this for years by (a)not signing up as the ‘political member’ in any government departments, where his sole role would have been to plant Tynwald questions which make ministers look good on knee-jerk topics, and (b) not getting sidetracked into pointless ‘committees’ which, like the government departments themselves, simply rubberstamp policies pre-decided by career civil servants with little or no knowledge of the public sector area they run down or hand over to even less qualified private and ‘third sector’ companies and faith based charities.
I saw exactly where Malarkey was going when I saw him huddled with semi-pro temperance nazis at a conference they held at Nobles to try and validate folk myths about ‘rising’ drink statistics. That, in turn, got them government grants for another two years, and Malarkey a seat on the
Chief Minister’s Task Farce on Drugs and Alcohol. He is well qualified for that, having not only no professional or academic knowledge of the subject matter – which puts him on a par with his fellow committee members – but also a total reluctance to ask questions about the source or validity of the folk myths passed off as ‘academic research’ or ‘expert opinion’ which keep them all in a job.
By now, there is no excuse for such pig-ignorance. Check
http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2011/04/more-binge-drinking-fiction.html for a recent example of the prolific debunking of myths peddled to excuse government interference into everyday life and keep self-appointed alcohol ‘experts’ in business. Or you could look at
http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2011/04/another-day-another-lie.html to defuse a new myth which will soon be expounded to the financial advantage of not one but two classes of parasite on the Manx public sector host.
So why is Malarkey now playing the race card? I suggest because a couple of years ago the BNP paid a well publicized visit to the island to leaflet his constituents. Any politician of principle would take on the racists, but in my time on the island I have yet to see one candidate in any of the constituencies where I have lived who has not groveled to racist scum on an election manifesto. And until one does, is there any point in voting?
But the funniest thing about his question is that newcomers to the island are more, not less, likely to use private nurseries. For one thing because places in education department schemes go first to families registered by social services as ‘problem families’ (i.e. the work-shy or those rendered unemployable by past education and social policies) and not kids with working parents, for another because we have a public sector culture where professing bigotry or general ignorance, rather than education or social commitment, remains a valid career choice.
Both our civil service and our politicians are living proof of that.
