SNAFU!

This (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/52897/charity-plans-adult-drug-survey) gave me a few laughs this week.

So, let’s see now……

A pseudo-charity that failed to supply the basic service suggested by the old working name relaunches as a private enterprise (though actually totally dependent on government work that should be done by skilled professionals - but won’t be - and that also won’t be put up for tender from any genuine private sector qualified professional).

It got the last contract thanks to a pseudo-academic survey which, in theory, identified the drinking patterns of locals. In reality, it was based on the responses of a random group of adults who stepped in when the government sponsors of the project could not even round up an involuntary cross-sample for the researchers to ‘survey’. This is revealed in the original version of the survey, as published in a (presumably) peer reviewed academic journal and so required to outline the methodology in order that other academics could attempt to replicate it. Curiously, that is no longer available, and the version that briefly appeared on a Manx government website at the time had all such relevant details removed in favour of a simplistic ‘shock/horror’ format that could be spoon-fed to the obedient press.

Aforementioned pseudo-charity/private enterprise fails to secure funds to continue failing to provide the original service, so broadens the provision to include services it is equally unable to provide (one also handily underwritten by a ‘sin tax’ from the trade, another coincidentally depriving a fellow pseudo-charity (which used to be a vital ally) of guaranteed government funding).

In order to ‘prove’ the 3^rd service is needed it is calling on government to sponsor another pseudo-academic survey (I’ll take a wild guess that either University of Bath or University of Western England will have already been approached again), citing a Europe-wide survey of teenage drug habits which…….

Oh wait…….. wasn’t that the one which the Chief Minister’s Task Farce on Drugs & Alcohol said was inaccurate when the UK press got hold of Manx results? And wasn’t that also the survey which that very Task Farce actually underwrites again every five years in order to validate policies, committees and QUANGOs which have never, ever, worked and are never, ever, supposed to do anything except perpetuate pseudo-responses by faith-frazzled prodnoses and the public employment of their ineffectual amateur churchmates?

Sorry, laughing too hard by now to continue poking fun, but I think you get the general picture.

SNAFU!

(Bless you)

Christmas spirit? What Christmas spirit? (Service? What service?)

I write this while under house arrest. More exactly, while waiting to see if whatever random skunkhead some cowboy courier service employs can be bothered to turn up with our friends’ Xmas presents. We don’t “do” extravagant Yuletide nonsense in this house, but we do like to give those we like a bit of something exotic to nibble on, just to say thanks for another year of moral support against the growing tide of Manx general ignorance.
“Ah, serves you right for not shopping local”, you say.
“Oh, sod that for a game of soldiers, you sad Calvinist half-lives”, says I, though it’s not as if we haven’t tried. The problem is, they don’t stock anything edible – or even anything you’d feed to a freeloading relative you don’t want back, if it comes to that.
Until last Christmas it was simple enough. The fabulous Moughtin Brothers ran a great little deli just five minute’s walk away where quality mattered, the customer was royalty and nothing was too much trouble. For years they have been trying to bow out gracefully and hand over to some enterprising young grocer. The trouble is, there aren’t any.
Sure, there are any number of pretentious little upstarts who want to regurgitate slop they saw on some ex-Etonian’s culinary TV show. What there are not are straightforward small town shopkeepers willing to provide honest food which originated from animals which led relatively happy (if short )lives on something we would recognise as a farm or things resembling fruit and vegetables which grew on actual trees and bushes, the above ingredients lovingly assembled and processed by people with a modicum of culinary expertise (whether acquired from relatives or apprenticeship in something resembling a restaurant or hotel kitchen).
Is this really too much to ask?
On the Isle of Man the answer is “Yes, really”.
So we were reduced to ordering online from what advertises itself as a Lake District emporium of traditional foodstuffs - which we now suspect is run by an anonymous corporation maintaining a head office, on paper, at a desirable rural mail-forwarding address, with the actual call centre and packing carried out by desperate Mancunians and Scousers who can no longer avoid the DSS on some identikit industrial estate – probably in Runcorn or somewhere equally dreadful. The order was placed on 10th December and, according to the blurb, picked up and delivery promised within 48 hours. On 18th December a mysterious e-mail arrived thanking us for an order received just that day and promised, more vaguely, within five working days. When we replied, trying to establish who would deliver and so who to chase if it didn’t turn up it emerged that said emporium, rather than an identifiable courier service, give delivery contracts via a murky intermediary to any John Wayne with a 20 year old Transit (or even Nova) who can be enticed away from the local skunk dealer for 20 minutes.
Oh well, Merry Christmas.
And if you are a dear friend, hope you enjoyed this, because thanks to the general indolence and incompetence of the 21st century retail industry it may be all you get from us this festering season.