Poverty of Theory, Neglect by Government

According to this (see http://www.manx.net/isle-of-man-news/3649/poverty-and-neglect-conference-aims-to-start-debate-on-social-issues) (which will now have reached the ‘proper’ local press) the Children’s Centre are putting on a conference, chaired by the Pretzel of Tynwald and a government ‘consultant’ on children, to determine if there is poverty and neglect in the Isle of Man.
If these overpaid parasites have to ask they are more useless than we already knew, and we really need to ask in return why they have claimed so much public money for decades.
They really should know how much poverty and neglect there is. Most of the Children’s Centre committee are married into the business and political dynasties which caused the island to become two distinct nations in the first place, and from talking to some of their kids I also know how dysfunctional some upper middle class Manx families are compared to, say, the average sink estate family doomed to a second generation of lifetime unemployment.
Then there is the odd selection of speakers.
We are told, for example that: “Mr McCann is a motivational speaker who encourages people to look at life differently, helping them to take a leap that will change their lives for good and make a real difference in the world.”
So he will be talking to ......who exactly at this pseudo-conference, and encouraging them to...... do what? The permanently excluded perhaps, suggesting that as local business interests have no use for them, and also have no intention of taking (even as individuals) their fair share of the local tax burden, they might as well get used to it?
But of course not. He’s just another stooge brought in, like the canting priests who harangue us from another direction, to parrot the lie that we are equally and individually responsible for our plight, and that social or economic forces have absolutely no bearing on the matter.
I hope they’re paying this pathetic, two-faced twerp good money to push that lie: I also hope it isn’t public money.
And if you really must legitimate political inability to tackle poverty and social problems with an ‘academic’ overview, why would you pick a lecturer from an establishment about which the Daily Telegraph once asked: "Is this the worst university in Britain?"
That question was asked in 2004, when Luton had an unusually high course drop-out rate, and was additionally proposing to relax consequences of students failing second year exams. Luton answered back that as it existed specifically to give chances to the kind of folk who cannot normally consider higher education the drop-out rate was be expected and extra attempts to keep students studying needed, which is fair enough in my book. But then I read elsewhere that: “The QAA conducted a thorough institutional audit of the University as a whole in 2005 (prior to the merger of the University), which resulted in the audit team’s questioning of the academic standards of its awards and its lack of confidence in the university's quality standards.”
It seems that after the audit was taken the QAA got further information showing some appropriate action in response, but it was only in July 2007 that the audit was finally signed off. Again, to be fair, University of Bedfordshire constantly polls somewhere around 70th in most ‘league tables’ of British academic excellence, which puts it just above the lowest third, but potential employers wouldn’t dismiss a 'Beds' degree nearly as quickly as, say, an MBA from the Isle of Man Business School.
Then there is the strange link with an outfit called the Institute for Optimum Nutrition. The ION is regarded by more scientifically-based nutritionists as a “controversial” organisation, and that would be putting it mildly. For example, founder Patrick Holford's apparent advocacy of vitamin C as better than conventional drugs to treat AIDS was once described as “very scary” by the British Dietetic Association.
This has not stopped the ION offering a Home Study Course and a three-year Diploma in Nutritional Therapy (DipION). Another perturbing thing is that the University of Bedfordshire previously validated the DipION as a foundation degree, and only withdrew this validation in 2010.
So, with a wealth of British academic knowledge in the social sciences to choose from – much of it cutting edge – those responsible in Manx government chose a minor academic with no peer reviewed work from a university with no teaching pedigree in the field (and who just happens to have a book to flog) to kick off a major important social debate?
Yeah, that would be about par for the course.

A communion of twits

Jonathan Wynn-Jones, one of the numerous Torygraph religious commentators, has a piece this morning on a tweeted (twittered, twitted? I know not and have better things to do with my thumbs) communion service being offered by an earnest Methodist minister (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/7908263/Church-minister-to-tweet-Holy-Communion-to-the-faithful.html ).
Rev. Tim Ross, instead of bothering to turn up and communicate face-to-face with the faithful, will send out a prayer in a series of Tweets. Then those who, in turn, can’t be bothered to join him (or any other priest or congregant) read each tweet out loud before typing Amen in reply.
The service hasn’t gone live yet, but Ross says hundreds have signed up already. He claims Twitter is "….. a community that's as real and tangible as any local neighbourhood and we should be looking to minister to it”, and further that "The perception of church is often that it is rusting away in antiquated buildings and not in touch with the world around us, but this is a statement that we're prepared to embrace the technological revolution."
Actually I’d say it was more evidence that the god business is in such deep dooh-doohs that now the practitioners can’t even offer the one decent service (excuse the pun) it formerly provided, i.e. a place for the socially isolated to see another friendly face on a Sunday morning.
Curious that almost everywhere else in the press church leaders grumble that individualism has caused a decline in religion, yet quietly they’re trying to tap into technology that enables ersatz ecumenicism for spiritual geeks. Or perhaps the real target is just all the sad middle managers who go to every pretentious marketing conference and love psychobabble, not to mention taking a Blackberry on holiday and texting the office every 30 minutes to prove how ‘committed’ and ‘indispensable’ they are.
At the other end of the scale is one of Living Hell’s regular shindigs (see http://www.livinghope.im/Articles/205245/LHCC/Events/Special_Events/Unite.aspx ), based on Nuremburg rallies and the kind of torchlit mass screamfests their mentor, Ian Paisley Senior, used to tell the world (or at least any passing TV camera) that ‘Ulster Says No To…….’, well, just about anything that involved being human or exercising more than two braincells really.
Although on the surface this is about ‘community’, beneath that it is quite exploitative. An office colleague comes under extreme pressure to attend from a housebound relative who got the Living Hell plague via Southern Befrienders. In theory SB is a social outreach scheme heavily subsidised by government for the elderly, housebound and otherwise socially isolated in the South of the island. In practice it’s another scam run by Living Hell, where wild-eyed Baptists get access to the vulnerable at home , then, rather like the Krays, ‘suggest’ that if they don’t come to church or join in their various protection schemes, life could get very, very lonely. Suggestions on the lines of ‘If, for example (and we really hope this will never happen) you should fall over in the bathroom one day nobody will hear you scream’ have been made, so I gather. In turn, because the SB team are so “busy”, the victims are given the suggestion that they could, say, ask a younger relative to take them along to the rally.......oh, and they could bring the family, it would be a nice day out……
I think you see how it works.
Not so much a growing Christian community, more of an evangelical pyramid scheme, made more practical because it has enough well placed members to ensure government never puts money or resources into real community building.

Missing, inaction

In all the excitement of Tynwald Day and other Manx events during July, an important change at two of our government’s pet ‘social service providers’ has gone un-noticed. Hard to know why, as the individual at the heart of the changes spent so much time in the office of the Director of Social Services it’s rumoured he kept a mug there (who the public pays a £100K+ salary).
It was known for months beforehand that Nigel Collins was leaving the island this summer. See http://www.douglas.gov.im/Mayoralty.asp?Action=ShowFunction&ID=3418 for example.
The thing is, Nigel and Lynne ran the local branch of the Salvation Army, which has had a strict policy since the 19th century of rotating officers every few years to stop things getting too stale. They were sent here specifically because previously they’d run the SA’s largest UK homelessness shelter, and David Gray House (the island’s only bail hostel, and run by the Salvation Army) was - to be blunt - not working.
Incidentally, though both shared skills and duties equally (as is usual SA practice), because the island is in a sexist timewarp Nigel had to be the public face as the Rotary Club and other causes of social inequality still don’t know how to deal with girlies. For the same reason it was Nigel who was then ‘suggested’ by one of his employees at a regional Rotary club night where the management committee for Kemmyrk (the government run ‘independent’ homelessness charity) was decided – even before the steering committee which officially set things up had a chance to consider possible candidates.
So, DGH now lacks a Salvation Army officer to oversee things 'officially’ - thus distancing the DHA (Department of Home Affairs) staff who dictate policy decisions. And Kemmyrk lacks a chairman, with the possibility that the temporary replacement may lack even a basic grounding in either homelessness in general or the particular difficulties faced by the Manx homeless (some, it must be said, actually caused by those who control that charity). Additionally, the replacements for the Collins’s are not thought to have a social work background and by coincidence the Salvationists who aided them liasing between the worship activities and ‘Christian outreach’ activity such as DGH are also leaving the island.
Their departure leaves other difficulties too. For one thing, the real fate of DGH is now to be decided between the Salvation Army’s regional headquarters (who see the island as nothing but an offshore adjunct to their Cheshire and North Wales activity, and the hostel and other property as little more than potential capital to be realised if onshore business goes slack), the ‘independent’ trustees of Manx SA philanthropy (a group of non-Salvationist bigwigs whose past record – e.g. flogging a building earmarked as a youth centre to a brewery via a Guernsey trust – shows distinct ignorance of or respect for Salvationist values) and the DHA, who frankly never had a clue or gave a monkeys about the Manx dispossessed anyway.
Not, in short, good news for anyone local either with social difficulties or with good intentions for resolving them.

More misery for less money

On 18th December the Manx SS revealed how they plan to continue wrecking lives in a recession.
If you want, you can get it direct from the masters of disaster on the government website at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/dhss/socialservicesta.xml, where you find garbage like:
‘The Social Services Division is operating proactively and decisively in a well considered approach to ensure social care and support to those in greatest need can be sustained.
The Division has a multi-faceted comprehensive financial strategic approach to enable the Isle of Man to continue to deliver quality social care services when resources are reducing and need is increasing. Social Services have put this into action and will accelerate its implementation given the need for a swift response to the latest fiscal situation.’
Alternatively, I could sum it up for you in a sentence.
They’re going to continue abusing the vulnerable on a smaller budget, and rope in more superstitious amateurs to help them.

Read, note....then walk away fast

There's so much Horlicks going on over here at present, and so little time to unmask it, that it's hard to pick an issue.So, better take the biggest scam first.
According to an item on the Manx Radio website (see http://www.manxradio.com/readNEwsItem.aspx?id=29102 ) a new local charity guide has been published. Even if you're not as cynical about our poorly regulated charity register as I am, this is a joke.
First thing to note is that Connect2Charity is run by David Talbot, right hand man to the Stepford Central management, the Police Consultative Forum and Police Advisory Group (see As soon as this pub closes, the Revolution starts on 16th October for more on that), and many others. This crew have been flogging their dubious management skills around the voluntary sector for a while now, mostly trying to scare small charities into letting them 'help'. They are also a major component of the team behind the recent local Council of Voluntary Organisations, which seems intent on lobbying Tynwald to disband any half-decent social services left and replace them with predominantly faith-based amateurs.
All this kicked off when CARE came over about five years ago to 'advise' Manx fundamentalists on rebranding their businesses with a 'Christian ethos' in order to avoid anti-discrimination legislation - and taxes of course.
This set bigots counting on their fingers the potential profits to be made from loopholes in charitable and small business law if only the Manx government can be persuaded against fluffy liberal compassion, maintaining professional standards and stuff like that. About as hard as persuading the Pope to conduct a mass, then!
I'd give anyone who might be considering asking a Manx charity for help this advice. Take a look at this guide, note the names, and make damn sure to steer clear of all of them.