2021 Douglas East Election Meeting: The full and unedited audio recording

I made a recording of the 2021 Douglas East Election Meeting which was held last night.

Forgive me if the audio is not very good: this was recorded on a small, handheld, audio recorder. No taxpayers funds were used in the recording of this meeting.

Transcript to come!

Rough Transcript

This is a very rough and unverified transcript of the Isle of Man Government’s Election Meeting for Douglas East held on Tuesday 14 September 2021. 

You should not rely heavily upon it — it is transcribed by an automated speech recognition service, and I cannot guarantee its accuracy, especially because the audio isn’t great. Any local Manx words (especially in Gaelic) are more likely to be inaccurate. Also, the automated speech recognition service often converts proper nouns incorrectly (especially the spoken words “Isle of Man” to “Ireland” or “all of man”).

Before relying or quoting anything contained here, you should verify it against the underlying audio recorded here. Time Stamps and automatically-generated speaker names should help in the verification.

I obviously do not own the copyright in the underlying words (eg, whatever has been said by the speakers) and I am providing these transcripts because they are of self-evident public interest. I think that I do own the copyright in the adaption/conversion into written text. I’m happy to license these transcripts publicly under a free and very open Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:03
My name is Janet Thomenny, I’ve been asked to chair this meating in my capacity as Deputy Mayor of Douglas, firstly before we started reading opma file and just to see if they saw the cause of the beaubier live activation, and people should exit calm and quickly give me a citation at the back either in this

Unknown Speaker 0:25
format of the meeting, or be as close as you often can to get up to 10 minutes to introduce themselves and the policies, then I shall take questions at 45. I wanted to ask each candidate once again, in two minutes to some of what they stand for. Before I post the main the main schedule, as essential in order to get through as many questions as we can, the responses are clear to speak as possible. And so let’s begin each time with the internal stimulus. And we start with the clip.

Unknown Speaker 1:00
Hopefully, some great news. Thank you all for coming here. And for those of you who are at the Jack’s hustings, hopefully, this will be a little bit of a smoother ride. And so I’m Claire. I’ve lived in Douglas since I moved to the island 14 and a half years ago, and I see myself very much stuck with residents I’m proud to be so I’m also a nurse by background and maintain my registration, motiva shifts a month, and it keeps my ear to the ground. I think that’s a really important thing that I’ve been able to do over the last five years. I’m a mom to two little boys and a wife. And I’ve got five years experience having served as NHK within the Douglas East area, in the last house of keys. During those five years, I’ve had the opportunity to focus heavily on scrutiny as charity environments infrastructure policy review committee, and then also as the member of the Public Accounts Committee. And during that time, we written numerous reports, some less well received by COVID. But certainly all I believe they’re challenging things, but certainly, they’re challenging. And we’ve done three reports around the prominent scheme, focusing on the need for capital projects unit and proper oversight of large capital project schemes, and also the impact on businesses and residents on the province. And the scheme of this scale. And we’re already seeing similar impacts. Now in the poor roads bridge scene. This isn’t unique to those from that, but there was a feeling of not recognising that early on in the scene. We’ve recently written a report on the meat plant, focusing on a worrying move by government to nationalise an industry when there appear to be perfectly viable other alternative options. And we’ve also scrutinised elements around the pandemic within the Public Accounts Committee. From a policy point I’ve set I’ve managed to bring an energy scenario plan to bring the start of the Development Corporation, which I hope will be a really positive move towards developing our brownfield sites to continue to buy tacos east. I sat on the libraries committee is supported funding of the family and mobile Library Service over the last four years. But we still need a sustainable solution. And our latest report has provided some recommendations around that. I’ve also focused on legislation with abortion reform, sex offences, domestic abuse and justice reform that will be a key part of what I’ve been involved with and what I see as being very important to navigate in the secondary legislation rights and checking that the implementation has worked. And in amongst all of that, I want to say for you to some physicians who work in as many people in many different areas that I’ve covered, and hope to walk with people in times that have been exceptionally hard for some people, working with them and trying to navigate through the challenges that government can often present identify whether it’s a policy change, or whether it’s signposting that’s needed. And it can often be different things. But the impact can be just as great on the person who’s contacted me. In terms of the things that I focus on highest focus on the next five years, should I be successful in reelection this area, I think the primary focus would be around economic recovery, those COVID. And in order to achieve that, we have to get other elements, right. So for me, affordable housing would be primary, a primary issue there, that’s something that’s come up very loud and clear on the doorstep, access to health care, and that needs to make sure the patient is at the forefront of health services. And that’s something we’ve started the journey on my life to see through to completion and also and also education. So thank you very much, and I’ll pass on to the next person. Thank you. Thank you. And next up journey.

Unknown Speaker 4:37
Yeah, and sorry about that. Good evening, everyone. So I’m Jamie Carragher. And just to quickly introduce myself, I was born and raised until I went to Buffalo, Fairfield and balcony private schools before going to do my first degree testing University and then a Master’s at Sheffield and in 2011, I then went on to complete teacher training and I currently work going across the islands primary schools with children who are bereaved. And by way of my background, I have primarily worked in education and social care settings. And those roles have really been influential in shaping my opinion and my policy direction. And by my principles and ethos, really. I’m also co founder of The Art of my climate change coalition. And I still currently sits on the steering committee for that group. And I, a leader of the Labour Party hadn’t been elected into that role last year, being the most leading party in the rolls up undertaken, and that has really given me a lot of insight into the way the government operates, and the direction that we’re heading in that point. And that’s been quite a powerful motivator in my decision to stand in this year’s election. So I’ve been spending quite a lot of my time since April this year walking around doors east, and talking to people on their doorsteps. And it seems clear to me that we really need to focus on some core strategic priorities. For our island to address what many people see is the falling quality of life and reduce opportunity. So people talk about the rising cost of living, stagnating wages, and the pressure on our infrastructure, such as schools, GPS, hospitals, and of course, housing. And I believe we can address this through a set of priorities to include target setting. And these priorities, I think would be so first off health and well being we are at the start of a transition progress process, sorry, after the Johnson Michael report. And that’s a positive thing. But we do need to pay careful attention to that. And I also think that mental health is a strong priority in this area, given the current condition of our mental health services, and housing. So most people should be able to buy houses, I think that supporting them to do that would have a hugely positive impact on our economy, and would have a positive knock on effect in many other areas as well. Transitioning to green economy, so you know, young man that it belongs to all of us, it’s our beautiful home. And we want to enhance that. And we want to make sure that future generations can enjoy that. We really need to be bold here and decisive and take control with the transition to clean energy, so that we can stop talking about cost and start talking about revenue, and find the education we need to get the best educational outcomes for our children and teenagers need to ensure all children’s needs are met. And we need to fund education appropriately ensure that staff want to stay here we can retain and attract them. And so etc, by to pay them certainly for a fresh approach. I’d like us to move towards listening leadership that puts people first I really want to see community and people at the heart of our policies so that we can fall back in love with our villages and towns and our violent people. And so that’s just a brief introduction to the future of the island that I’d like to work towards on your behalf. Thank you. We do the next up period. Hello,

Unknown Speaker 8:22
my name is Pete Gilmore, and I’m 59 years old And mine’s more four generations of our family with a nominal amount. So that gives the court a unique view of life from nursery costs all the way through to work pensions, and care for the elderly, to elderly parent parents. My background I did nine years in the Air Force. And I’ve spent 25 years now as a project management and IT professional. I’ve worked with some very large companies both on the on and off the island off the olive branch terrace placement, you will pick up on the island scan code. And I currently work for a company with a backlog of people on the island. So I spent a career joining up people processes information and systems, which is one of the main things I think that the government needs to do. My priorities are mainly the economy first, because without the economy being sorted, there’s no way that we can pay for some level of things that we’re looking to do. And the threats to our economy, we’ve got threats such as OECD threats and EU threats to our tax regime. Suddenly the EU again, threatening to blacklist zero tax companies and we have quite a few of those on the island. But the big priority for me is young people I mean I have two two sons and two grandchildren, and I’ve worked for them since 2011. If you analyse the censuses, we’ve had around 40% of volumes. There’s only 30 leaving now we’ve lost something like 3600 economically active people And the priorities we need to address to stop that from happening fourfold. We’ve asked these people many times over the last 1015 years, why are you leaving? And as the same answers all the time, it’s the cost of living here, the cost of housing here, the cost of travel, and more importantly, the can’t get the modern types of jobs and a lot of young people want these days. So it’s about diversification of the economy. So those are my major priorities. And diversification, we’ve got a unique opportunity at the moment, we need to move into the digital economy, the green economies. And I think we need people need that now. Because I don’t think Tim has got much expertise. And we need people with business, finance and technology experience, who who set companies off of work the companies that operate in these environments. And that’s why I think I want to be an agent for change, not a career politician. That’s what I think I’ll make a big difference. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. And couldn’t have made coming up next week, Michael Josem.

Michael Josem 11:14
Thank you very much, too. And thank you to each of you for coming along. And giving up your Tuesday evening, it is wonderful to see so many faces, who I’ve met on the campaign trail and while making various community groups and met through various sporting clubs on this island. And thank you to each of you for coming along. on a Tuesday night, we were much more exciting things that could be happening. But one of the things that I think is really impressive about each and every single person who has come along tonight, and that includes each of the candidates here tonight is that each one person in this room wants to build a better future for the old man. And this future to the man he selected that I envisage is to build the Isle of Man is a shining beacon, where the rest of the world faces stormy seas. We have so many challenges that are close to near and dear to us, we have the problem, we have the Liverpool landing site. And we have, you know, the waterslide that the NSC, and those challenges are big in the in the daytime. But the other day when I was I was walking down poplar road, and I’m speaking to a couple with their three children who are two, four and six. And those three children are probably going to be alive in the year 2100. Both three children are probably going to be alive at the end of this century. And so we need to build a better future we need to build an Isle of Man, which is a shining beacon based on solid foundations. But it’s all a foundation that I say first and foremost is to improve our government services by ensuring that we have high levels of accountability in our Civil Services. The second foundation is to is to bounce back from the from the pandemic to address the learning loss that children have lost in schools to address the mental health crisis that is spreading the shadow pandemic in our community. And it is also about easing the squeeze on the cost of living because the parents of those three children are finding it difficult to balance the competing baby to have high housing costs are on the prompt this afternoon. I’ll stop by Luke who complained to me that the Spirit she bought last week cost two pounds, the same thing but that the bag has been shipped she bought a three months ago cost one pound 50. And so there’s increasing increase in the cost of living metal able to do those three things to fold senior government officials accountable, to ease a squeeze on the cost of living and to build back and recover back better from a pandemic. Next, let’s stop Can we have a majority please? Thank you, Michael.

Unknown Speaker 13:57
Alright, so thank you, everybody, for coming this evening. Like I said, it’s nice to see a few people here again, a few rooms and houses around here looking at this room. So basically, I’ll go through my production receipts I did. For most people, I meet them on the doorstep. Joking, I’ve lived overseas, I’ve rented overseas. 30 years ago, my family opened overseas, and it’s been a very happy place for me to live the past 30 years. I’ve been postman for 35 years. During that time, I was involved with the postoffice Union, the CW in various guises from Treasurer to chairman and Secretary for 20 years. So obviously, I didn’t want to sit on the roles. I wanted to get involved in their court, no court no case forward for 20 years. Now my wife and I before the postdocs appeal. We run the post office appeal for 15 years. And then I went into politics. I joined Google Scholar Council. I’ve been a counsellor for eight years. And then I became had the pleasure of being the mayor of Douglas for the past three years the leading citizen, which was a fantastic opportunity for me. So now I’d like to move in a step higher, be your Mhk for duplessis. It’s a place I feel very passionate about, I feel sort of experience to bring to the table. I’ve dealt with all these people in the past and governments. Hopefully, I’ll be able to work with the weekend, and with the thing that I really want to concentrate, if I do, I am successfully elected. It’s a legacy. And the legacy would be that affordable pensions, state pension and workplace pensions would be our priority. And the environment and renewable energy has to be funded, where the funding comes from, that would be the priority. Then the other things that we have to do, the things that bounce back from, from this terrible pandemic that we’ve had the bat crisis, the Brexit crisis, we’ve just been fine Western stuff for the past 10 years, we need to concentrate on the Iron Man now, we need to concentrate on how we’re living over again, by the quality of life that we have over here. That’s the most important thing that we have to concentrate on. Now. There are other issues that we have the civil service that needs to be made more accountable. We have civil servants now are more notable for being civil servants than the politicians. When you mentioned the parliament stone, people aren’t mentioned the minister than mentioning the civil servants. And that is wrong. Thank you, john. And can we have Christina? Hi, Christina, kiss, Douglas girl,

Unknown Speaker 16:43
you my accent might fill you a little bit I grew up in Scotland for nine years of my life is trials. But as soon as I was almost come back to the Isle of Man, I did. Because this is my home. It’s always been my mother back here for 13 years now. Obviously, the dog this girl I’ve lived in Douglas central element of the central dogma says that, of course I’ve lived and Douglas seems to think everyone slept and dog was seized when it was beautiful. And hopefully very, very soon it will be visible again, once they’re sorted. And my main priorities and governments are about accountability and government. There’s not enough for business. And that’s within tables within senior government departments. And it’s about time these people settled over Council, the mayor Council for the errors that they make. And my other priorities or sorry, currently my ailments, health and social care put the care back into health and social care. Over the past five years, I have been campaigning and advocating for victims of sexual and domestic abuse, you may recognise that I have spoken at safeguarding conference in 2017 at the centre, and I spoke to tables on regard representing victims of not fields children. So over the past five years, I’ve noticed massive gaps in service provision when it comes to health care, social care, the legalities the place it goes on. And these gaps in service provision affect all of us, not just the people I’ve been helping and advocating for. I want to fix these gaps. I want to close these gaps. We so they talk about integrated services within that that silo mentality mentalities. We need to stop that happening. We can’t have an integrated service and the silo mentality you need to bring all these teams together, get them talking to each other getting communicated and look after the page, the clients. I want to organise, organise and losing words. And before affordable childcare. We have what’s it 42 schools on the islands that close for six weeks every summer, parents struggling for childcare, I struggled myself I’m divorced. I raised my son of my own. Expanding the Youth Services team. We could provide affordable childcare within the schools when the schools are close to some holiday study and vandalised because they’re empty, because it can support they’ve got nothing to do. Let’s Let’s occupy the skills and provide the childcare that everyone needs where the children are safe. We don’t have latchkey children growing up, accused of being federal because the parents are just trying to make a living to provide for them. Right. Oh, thank you. And last but not least, Liam and

Unknown Speaker 19:28
my name is Amanda Walker. I am a resident of the deceased and have been for over 20 years and on the politics graduate. So I also have a degree in modern history. I’m a teacher I was I’m now retired from teaching. I have taught at Castle Russian and adhering to that Consortium. I was initially appointed as the citizenship coordinator went into the the head of history. At QE two I’ve been directly Key Stage three directly in stage four directly studies and head of history departments during that time have obviously educated a lot of Young people on the island. The reason why I want to stand and why I stood in 2016. And why I said twice for the local council is because I think we have a pretty broken system in the Isle of Man, I think that we need to have major electoral reform. And I don’t think electronic voting is major electoral reform, I think that would be a piece of window dressing. And essentially, I would hope that if I am elected, I will be able to take some very decisive action and with a group of like minded individuals to be able to get some major reforms through because I think we have a very, very broken, disconnected system on either of two major issues. Number one, there is a popular opinion that the Isle of Man is largely run from Whitehall. And secondly, there is a popular opinion that the Isle of Man is largely run by senior civil servants who are paid enormous inflated salaries for what is basically a small town council, the size and scale of the Isle of Man does not remotely justify the amount of money that is being spent on this little service here. I think that the fact that I have a background in education, I have an extensive knowledge of health service, I will be able to get the basics right. I mean, what we want as an island is to actually make sure the quality of life for our people is sustained. There are really very few differences between what people say they want. Well, I think he would be doing if you voted for me, would be voting for somebody who would actually doggedly pursue a different path. Your

Unknown Speaker 21:30
mind. We’ve done had smaller candidates to come to questions, please ensure that any questions are answered.

Unknown Speaker 21:40
Especially if you’re asking each candidate in time to respond adequately to issues pertaining to this inspections and so much better. In order to avoid any one candidate unfairly having to go first every time I attempt to be revealed. remained or no, we need to keep it brief. And please avoid them and their options appear joining us for question number one to the left questions from the floor, please. Hi, and quite a few candidates adult about doing things about medical health. And I’m just wondering, what specifically would you do for the service?

Unknown Speaker 22:23
Because I’m a nursing student. And we are training up CBT specialists and we’re having people come over what else would you do after the pandemic to help people? Well, Julie,

Unknown Speaker 22:40
thank you. I’m actually really pleased that this issue has come up several times over these constituency debates and seemingly across the island, because it really does show the the level of awareness, it’s out there. And I told you about my role earlier on working with children and young people across the island to believe. And we have seen a very tragic spike in suicides over 2020. And we tend to use suicide rates and strategies of the success or failure of our mental health division. So that would indicate to to solve our mental health services, at least approaching crisis if not actually in crisis at this point. And so how do you address that? Well, firstly, global research tells us that a key feature of successful mental health provision is funding. So I think, in first instance, we do have quite a fundamental question to ask ourselves about how we view mental health because it’s never been seen as, as important as physical health, and that doesn’t need to change. So let’s just let’s just say that we have the funding in place, and how the question was how, what specifically would you do to improve the service. So with funding, we need to have, we need to set up a system that’s community based, so we have a team of trained professionals who go out to the community, rather than the inverse of that, which is what we currently have, which is that people who are feeling overwhelmed or feeling vulnerable, have to attend institutions that might be intimidating, and they have to negotiate with timetables, and that that can be very, very off putting somebody us in a quick crisis in their lives. So they need to be community based. And secondly, we need an affiliated promotion and postvention service. The idea of post h in case anybody doesn’t recognise a term is that suicide, like it’s contagious in the community economically, often have clusters of suicides as a ripple effect around them very sadly. We don’t really fully understand why that is. But we need to identify the people who are vulnerable around that initial suicide so that we can actually create support in place to lessen the effect of that, that contagious kind of impact of over suicide in community. So yeah, I think that’s that’s at the higher end. With regards to suicide rates. We need to target strategies to drill that down. So that’s my question, thank you. I don’t,

Unknown Speaker 25:10
I don’t think you’re going to hear. And he was arguing that we don’t need more support. I can’t really my family background reasons and like, my mom, as a nurse, my brother’s a nurse as an RN. And so it is why. So I’ve seen quite a lot of this. Also, in our own extended family, we went to a funeral for a suicide a couple of months ago, it’s actually affected. Many, many, many hundreds of people. You know, when it comes to funeral, whether you know, somebody, you know, or not an event, not seeing them for two years or whatever, there’s probably there’s probably goes into several 1000 people who are 22 suicides last year. There’s no figures out yet this year, but I suspect it’s probably going to be higher this year, or, you know, that’s my gut feeling. Or maybe that’s because we’ve been affected. But I don’t think anybody on the panel is going to disagree that we don’t do this, what I think we need to do is work out packages, how we can recruit people, because I think these people are going to be in watched demand, not just on the island, that this was a problem in the UK, there’s a problem in America as a problem all over the world really. And madscan already said they’re going to recruit others started to do that. And then they’re going to try and do more. But I think on that basis, we need to trust banks here. Get get those people in and help minds care on them. That’s the most important thing. So it goes back to the economy again, we need to make sure that we can provide the funding for Thank you, Peter. Michael, would you like to come up next?

Michael Josem 26:48
Thank you for the question. And it’s so powerful that that’s the first question because there are so many people in our community who are affected by this situation, especially after the the three lockdown, where there’s many people, especially now our local community who are isolated, and I’ve been alone and have been isolated, which is exaggerated the problem. People very close to me, my family has been affected by that blackdog mental illness. And that’s why I took the training to become a Mental Health First Aid because because I’m involved in so many community groups I was seeing in these community groups, people needing help people needing assistance. And that’s why we’ve got to equip each and every person in our community to combat this. But second of all, what we need is to is to is to listen to the advice from the men’s care. They’ve advice that the current Mental Health Act is dangerously out of date. And we are at risk upon a valid our reciprocal agreement for the cross if we don’t have data urgently. And so that’s why, you know, I’m just reading it from my manifesto view, the first budget of the new administration must including increased support for mental health, including introducing detox inpatient beds to Mexico, waiting times for acute treatment have been reported as being up to two years with similarly diet delays or long term training. And we must fix this. And john jokin.

Unknown Speaker 28:13
Well, I think everybody’s pretty much covered, it’s on the list and more heavier, and with the mental health, which I had to deal with, and pass in my union days, I mean, my own family, and it was so good about it. Now, I said, it’s the opposite. It’s nothing to be ashamed of now having some mental health problems breaking down. The jobs that we have today are not the jobs my parents have, they don’t have the stresses and strains of these people. Some of them have been attacked by the time the 40 with the stress and these are these jobs have them they may have these fantastic salaries, but it comes at a price and time pressure work that they’re doing, and then sometimes the peace of doubt, and prepares them to collapse. I say it’s a really good old fashioned sort of mental health disorders we have, what I like about that now is that we have houses in the community now. They’re not behind 12 foot high stone walls anymore, but nobody knew nobody can see them out of sight out of mind. They’re living in their communities now, which is nice to see. nicely. Quite a few of them. There’s one close by me. It’s nice to see them out or what have you. But they also the problem that they have is they have to isolate like the people’s homes, the rent the pains and the vowel thing causes such as obesity, small centres or small groups of people have been basically isolated for 18 months. So with with special needs as well. I do think things are a lot better for mental health funding is a big, big plus. And we have been funding has to be constantly economy and economy has to grow before we’ve got major projects to pay for a mental health is just one of them. Some are that’s what we need to get the money from. economy. Interesting.

Unknown Speaker 30:06
Hi, thank you for your question. And I first mentioned publicly about investment into mental health in 2017 when I spoke in the safeguarding conference in September, and then I mentioned that again, I requested investment rather than just mention it in 2018. When I was representing the Northfield victims, what we need, I would like to see mental health nurses in every GP surgery on the island, that would take the pressure off the GPS, and the mental health would be more accessible to public. And it would bring down waiting lists. Also, because not everybody is in Mickey’s state. Sometimes mental health is circumstantial, and mental failing mental health does affect physical health, I mean, physiologist and physiological effects. So that’s what I will be pushing for as mental health nurses in every GP surgery. I also want to see a proper therapy centre on the island when Anacortes fabulous for people who are in an acute state, but it’s getting them from there and then straight into the community. It’s not working. And that’s Lispector not suicide rates. They don’t feel supported. The crisis team only very recently hung up on someone who was so upset. The crisis team didn’t know what to do and hold the phone back and left that person bereft on the phone. That is to 12 year old girls that I’m aware of. And one of the schools have talked about suicide, because we need more awareness. You know, when my son is coming home and tell me, he’s worried about his friend. So he said 18. So that’s it now in his head. So Jody is right about the ripple effect 100%. So we need more awareness, we need to remove the stigmatisation that’s attached to it. And confidentiality needs to be assured for people to come forward, they will live in a small community. And people that are afraid of losing that confidentiality, because everybody works in healthcare, everybody works in social care, is that there’s a fear, and we need to remove that. So but yeah, that’s what I would do. I want mental health nurses in every GP surgery. And I want a proper treatment Centre for people who have come out of acute stage, but not so much ready for the community yet. So that’s what I would do. Thank you, Christy and Amanda.

Unknown Speaker 32:30
I think basically, everybody has mentioned most of the things that needs to be done. However, my personal experience in the 36 years that I’ve sent, the teacher has meant that I have gotten lots of background in children’s mental health. And although where there are an awful lot of issues around adult mental health, and there are many good things happening on the island, with regard to children’s mental health, and for my example of having worked in q2, that they have appointed staff specifically to deal with counselling issues, and we have staff who do not teach who work exclusively in counselling. And prior to extensive training, the last eight months, I’ve been working with children and young people in care and in our criminal justice system. And again, I think another very big aspect of the mental health crisis is the number of our children who are self medicating with drugs because of the abnormally long waiting list to see cams, and I’m having to wait Far, far too long. I don’t think necessarily having a huge number more of mental health nurses is necessarily going to help. I think what we need is earlier intervention that we need more education around mental health, the curriculum is already extremely crowded, but it is the priority issue that needs to be included in the curriculum. And what we also have this increasingly useful is peer support, and actually training young people to look out for each other and equipping them and giving them the skills and throughout the pandemic. I am very aware that educators we’re getting children access to online courses and online support. I do think a large part of the mental health crisis amongst our young people is to do with over use of online material so that they become isolated and atomized and do not have the social networks that they used to have. They don’t belong to things like scouts and the numbers that they used to do previously. So they don’t have those social networks that would give them the support during a mental health crisis. So obviously, I agree with much of what has been said by the other members of the panel. I think we largely are all on the same page. But I do think the big priority has to be our children, because I think they have been suffering a great deal joining panda.

Unknown Speaker 34:35
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 34:38
Thank you for an excellent question. And I think, as you said, a lot has been covered, but focus for me would be around mental health awareness being on the curriculum. I think it’s absolutely imperative that we talk about this there’s must be and it’s improved, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Around removing the stigma and addressing mental health the same way you do with physical health when people are struggling. Mental Health, or they are going through a personal life experience, whether it just be mental health, it’s come up without a trigger. I think people often feel that if they don’t have a trigger that define trigger, they can’t justify it. And therefore, it’s harder to talk about it. And I think that’s fundamental. So I think we need to talk about resilience in terms of our children, mindfulness, I think what’s really important is the understanding that social media is not real life. And there’s this huge impact of not getting likes on videos. And I’ve seen people of my age and younger who the damage that has done is absolutely incalculable. But we are going to see that coming down the line. Absolutely, we need to reform the Mental Health Act that’s in relation to programmes for the next five years within dhsc. And that is certainly a priority. And I think we will need to look further at partnerships. We’ve got some great partnerships with charities already around mental health provision in schools and listening services, and also police working with mental health nurses has been a real step forward. There’s, I know, there’s some challenges around the revalidation and some of the work that’s going on there. In terms of that being counted towards that practice, and but having mental health in the front of other services, such as police, such as our GPS, I think it is the right way it needs to be accessible. And it can’t be that you only access mental health services at the point where things have got so bad that the long term effect is is far more serious. And I think it actually ties in well with physical health often prevented chronic prevention, it seems expensive in the short term, but it’s far cheaper than funding the treatment and long term care. If we fail to put the support in at the first junction. It’s no different with mental health. So I think it’s absolutely imperative that we we look at mental health holistically and across all agencies, because it’s not just specific to the traditional health dialogue. Thank you. Can we have another question? Please?

Unknown Speaker 37:07
Hello, could you give me your thoughts on the model and the family support for children in education? And, you know, the children that are struggling with children that need more than a family support?

Unknown Speaker 37:30
evening, my support services for? Yes, yeah. My son’s involved in charity, okay. And he deals with a lot of problem solving equations system until the problem happens. So I think you got a good feel for this. I don’t think these people have a identified in schools properly, and certainly not being catered for. So once again, we definitely need to find the structure that that can be looked after. Again, to go back to the economy, there’s a lot of nice things to spend money on at the moment. But if we don’t start cutting some of the costs in government and start pushing the economy, we won’t, we won’t be able to pay for this wish list. But I think nobody’s going to argue that we don’t want that system in place. But it is immoral to let them suffer. I mean, I remember kids suffering. Because he mentioned a lot of times at school and those guys, you know, because this doesn’t get picked out, you know, they just got left to so yes, we definitely need to format. And it’s evolved slowly. But I speak to Michael, which was why,

Michael Josem 38:50
two weeks ago, I was speaking to a family in the centre of town, welcome terrorists. And he told me about how his family went through the experience of coming across from from from England and naively assuming that the standard of support they would receive here in the Isle of Man would be at least equal to what they will receive your crops. And that will be really disappointed. And the phrase that may describe us is that there was a lot of off roads for our education system, but not a lot of onramps. And so the situation lifestyle that they found was that the the, the if you’re if you if you fit into the expectation, if you’re 50, if you don’t have special needs, then the education system is pretty good. But if you do get from that, then there is a real fear of people, with those students and young people taking the offering. And so that’s why I listened to some of the lead teaching leaders, Baptist school leaders. And they made the point that we need to end and those again come straight out of my Manifesto, which should be robbing your mailbox in the next couple of days, if not already, is that we need to support a new education bill with the statute. additional education needs to set a level of service that families can explain. We need to have clear expectations that people can can live up to. And then we also need to support independent education tribunal to ensure parents can hold the education service to count, because new policies are not good enough women and children’s lives at stake.

Unknown Speaker 40:20
Thank you. Okay, thank you. I think what we have here is a inclusion and exclusion. We need

Unknown Speaker 40:37
family who lived next door to me, and they foster children, and almost 30 years, they’ve been there to foster children. And as soon as it gets ready to sell No, I have to leave the house. So she got to foster them from their seven years of age facility for 14 years of age of 18. or adults when they go. That’s it. There’s no support from the pointone, Head HMOs and multiple occupancies. And I think the school system does exactly the same. As soon as you finish your education, your event. And if you haven’t got a strong family behind you, then you’re going to you’re going to fall into oblivion and not fall into something. But that’s where the support needs to be. Not one of these people. I think we’ve got great support for other things besides doing the job I’ve done. I’ve seen all the fantastic organisations, from the scouts, to the sea cadets to take them to rugby, to football, to golf, to cricket and everything. There’s all these organisations that people could join. But if they’re feeling isolated, and they don’t join these organisations, this is where they fall under the net. And until the drugs, they tend to alcohol, and then find themselves in a room on their own. But they need to be identified and included or excluded. That’s what needs to happen. Thank you,

Unknown Speaker 41:59
Joe. Can I ask you what specific support? You mean educational, behavioural, mental, everything built in alcohol drugs,

Unknown Speaker 42:12
to my children has severe dyslexia. And they didn’t get the help they needed. They were excluded. They couldn’t handle the exam. procedures. Yeah. They had a terrible time. And but they turned around, and within a year,

Unknown Speaker 42:27
they did it. How did they get the data around themselves? So the support from the school with your help?

Unknown Speaker 42:34
Right, I hear this a lot. And I hear this a lot, an awful lot specifically, like john mentioned their children who have come in who are in care. That happens a lot vulnerable families, and who are stuck in the poverty trap. And they will feel forgotten. I my sister has not well, he’s on the scale of autism, Asperger’s. And they go through the motions, or what is important is the schools do have pastoral care within the school. And I think that’s massively important. Unfortunately, the children do feel embarrassed to access that because the friends might know. So it kind of holds them back a little bit. So that needs to be more access something that they can maintain their confidentiality. And that’s like, yeah, again, small community, the massive, massive issue. I’m aware of all the children who have been shipped to Ireland for education, because of educational and behavioural needs. And because they couldn’t support it, so that I paid for four or five years of educational support of the island. And that child came back and had no friendship connections, and had to rebuild family connections. It was horrendous time. And then job talking about children in foster care. He’s absolutely the right, you know, these foster parents, once a child turns 18, they need to go social services do support children up until the age of 24. And less and less people know about them, just like you know, and they will support children and young adults up to the age of 24 educationally with work with home with, you know, certain apartment things. What we need more to support families is when it comes to circle party social services to circle and that’s where it’s lacking, and that yet again comes down to funding. And that’s where the investment is required. And people keep saying, Well, where’s this money going to come from? Have you seen how much money government’s wasted at the moment, please plug that, let’s do that. But it’s there. It’s just being used incorrectly. And that’s where that’s where that’s where the funding comes from. So I hope that was good. Amanda,

Unknown Speaker 44:52
I think the issue within schools is extremely complex and the vast majority of staff in schools or teachers and education sports officers If you’re trying to teach what they find themselves being as teachers slash social workers slash entertainment officer, there’s a whole range of different things that you have to do. What am I most concerned about is that we have an over reliance very often on the selector, and we’re expecting charities to step in and kind of Listen, for example, unplug the gaps, which has been created by own funding, and having worked on Toby as a teacher also in social care. And I think that one of the major issues that we have is lack of continuity with the people working with our young people, even once they have been identified. And I certainly wouldn’t identify with this problem children, I would say there were children with problems. And once they have been identified, they’re often linked to a specific work. Could you please stop heckling me. I know what your personal agenda is, and I really don’t think it’s appropriate for you to bring it here. The the issue of continuity is a very big concern, because we have a very high staff turnover and a lot of use of locums, which means the children once they have been identified, often don’t see the same adult. So that is the problem. So I think we need to actually ensure that we have funding in place to ensure that this is an attractive place for people to work. So we do get better continuity, and we get better outcomes for the children. Because that’s who really needs to be at the central that each individual’s child’s needs will be very different. There isn’t a one size fits all approach. We need to have the flexibility of service so that we’re able to cater for specific children. The person who asked the question referred specifically to QE two and her own children, and the fact that she fails, they didn’t get support with dyslexia.

Unknown Speaker 46:41
He didn’t mention k two. She did. She did. Sorry. I missed that. But but that’s a generalised question.

Unknown Speaker 46:49
Right.

Unknown Speaker 46:50
But it wasn’t specific. Thank you, john.

Unknown Speaker 46:56
I think it raises an important point. But it’s also you know, there’s there’s a number of different areas that can be relevant. And I think the adverse childhood experiences is something that I would like to draw attention to, you know, there are indicators that we can see where Sheldon has gone through a particular experience or a number of different experiences that have a significant impact on their young life, we will often see the outcomes in later life if the support networks aren’t put in there. So I think identification early is really important. And in terms of things such as dyslexia, and additional educational needs, I think, what’s actually inherited if we do get the additional education needs code embedded in the new education bill, when that comes through. And that’s something that I’m very keen to see brought through. And I will say that one of the experiences that I’ve personally had in terms of my my two boys, and my two boys certainly lost their mom. And they were very, very early on, we cannot fault the service we’ve had. And I would say that that’s been a was a watching brief. It’s not stepped in when it hasn’t needed to. But it’s been there just to make sure that should there be any concerns? there? Absolutely. Is that support available? And they know about that, and I know of other parents who have differently have different needs. And where they felt the same saying that I’m not pretending everything’s perfect. That’s my personal experience, and it was very positive. But why do you think there’s a need for is when there are children that you’ve got additional needs, often when they’re going into the unit, which will support them within a form, if they can’t be within mainstream education, their needs aren’t the same as other children within that unit. And it can be very challenging for the staff to deliver an education service that works for everyone within that. And I think that can be used where that additional educational use code come in, not just to support the children, but to support the staff to be able to support the children. I think that’s really important. That’s great. Julie.

Unknown Speaker 48:51
Thanks for the question. And so the situation in schools at the moment is that there is a heavy dependence upon third sector upon charitable organisations who will work around the around the schools. And in the other case by case basis, I’m uncomfortable with this as a service model. Because the educational payment on paying these these charities in order to provide a service, it’s completely free service to the point of use, and it’s free to the department as well. And that worries me purely because third sector is very vulnerable when it comes to hard times. And we’ve all seen that over the pandemic that a lot of third sector organisations suddenly know where they need to continue providing their provision. So I do think that moving forwards if government do want to so heavily rely on third sector that they do need to advance some sort of remuneration for that the services being rendered there. One of the other issues as well with the sector providing these services is that there isn’t a centralised way the communication, which means that information about children who might be being worked with by multiple ages Disease isn’t being shared, which can be effective in terms of capturing issues and identify things that might lead to come out. So one of the one of the key things that we that we need to look at in terms of phones for children education is early intervention. And there’s so much research and evidence to show us that early intervention schemes save us money in the long term. So if we do put that money in, we identify the issues. First off that we haven’t, we do have ways to do that we do have lots of assessment tools to work to find these issues early. And then we put the intervention in place. And that needs to be bespoke, it can’t be a one size fits all, because this sort of problem practitioners face is that you’re getting six weeks to work with a child. And each child is different, you know, each child has different needs. And each child will respond to different levels. Sometimes it takes six weeks to even get them to open up. That’s just the way that some children are let’s just wait some adults are. And so we do need a bespoke service provided and we do need it to be more centralised. So yeah, but the one good thing I did want to say that we get invited in over which is that children with additional needs of children with complex needs are supported additional modes of education at school, which allows them to provide further enrichment activities and programmes. And that’s something that I fully support was actually expanded upon in schools and keep thanks, Jeremy. And coming up. Another question was,

Unknown Speaker 51:32
thank you very much. We’ve got a massive economy for our size, the sixth richest economy on earth and economic growth is absolutely massive. But if you leave the Soviet ego 300 metres down the road, you’ve got people living in absolute slum like conditions, public services have been slashed over the past 10 years. wages have absolutely stagnated. And housing is absolutely unaffordable for most people, this want to talk about growth, but how do we ensure that growth goes to one of those and not just the top 1%? Michael, would you like to do that?

Michael Josem 52:10
Yeah, that’s a great question. And, and that’s, I guess, really fundamentally why I’m running the selection process in that we need to build a community that embraces and encompasses everyone in our community. And so many of you will have received that in your bigger letterbox. Last week, you would have a very clear plan here to eat a squeeze on the cost of living, which is very much about reducing the tax burden that is faced by by people who are earning below the living wage. It is, in the long run, the best way to improve income and to improve wealth of any any person is to increase the productivity, which primarily comes from education, and through allowing such people to use more and better tools as the economy grows. And so that’s why our electric policy is very much clearly about increasing the the tax threshold to be equal to a max living wage, and an increase in wages in general, by supporting people to become more productive, so they can earn higher wages over the

Michael Josem 53:19
years always have to make

Unknown Speaker 53:23
the last time so that you talk about time. And the people that you talk about, think I know pretty well, because they’ve been in my constituency for the past 30 years. Some of them are quite transient, some of them will come over spec to see if they can find deployments over here. Some of them are successful, and some of them aren’t successful. They come from all over the world. like yourself, we come from all over the world. So that’s a starting place for people to come. I know the combination isn’t acceptable. And in the time is frivolous cooperation, we tried to do something about it, under this previous government didn’t do anything about it with the landlord Standards Act, which hopefully we can do something about that. Now for me now. I do think that it’s been the last speculation of that market by a couple of very well known landlords. And I think it should, we should come down on the basis. That’s what we should do. And that’s for our Capita wealth. We should be proud that we have that sort of capital wealth. I mean, there’s opportunities for these people to come over here to make money. And we have a we have vacancies for jobs for people that need to be trained up now. I have a prosperous life where we, that’s where opportunities are here. That’s where they put me in the first place. And then we have some of the people that have been there. Sorry, about like a drug or alcohol problems. I mean, there’s some of it’s something that social academies be looking at. And some of them houses, especially some of the highly densely populated HMOs. They are they are particularly bad in that area. But I do I can I agree with you that some of that accommodation needs to be addressed needs to be addressed by tenable. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 55:28
Thank you for the question read first and foremost government financial waste. That’s, that’s a priority for me that needs to be looked into, we have so many tiers of management within government really do we need all those tiers, that needs to be looked into, to claw money back into government. And we need to keep things cost of living in line with inflation. We have seen you speak about yourself, rent increases that go above inflation all the time, they’re taken such percentage from people’s wage, that they’re struggling to just go to Tesco becomes a frightening experience. shoprite becomes a frightened experience just to feed their families. And there is a government grant for these slogans, as you say, that the government have initiated to for people who want to go with the climate change, and they will offer up to 6000 pounds for people to modernise their homes. So there is a there is one option that government already offering, we also need to look at the benefit system, we have employed persons on loans. But that does not stretch as far as to disabled people. I know people who are living in domestic abuse relationships and cannot afford to leave their partner, because they’re on minimum wage and zero hours contracts. And EPA will not support them. Because they don’t have children and they don’t have a disability, it’s discrimination and my eyes To be honest, and I want that fix. We also need to look at the regulation of the landlords bill that must be implemented on these so called slums. And people need to start understanding the drug culture and putting quality of life at the forefront of efforts. And really, and that comes down to health and social care again, so hold on to your question.

Unknown Speaker 57:21
I think this is similar to the previous questions in some ways, and that it actually means a joined up approach, because I think that I would take exception to your phrasing of the question, because I don’t think it’s the case that most people can’t afford to buy a house here. I think it’s the case that some people can’t afford to buy a house here. There’s an awful lot of homeowners across the island and in Douglas, these two particular but I think actually issues and social deprivation, a very wealthy country can be seen in many other countries as long your own home country, they did business disparity between the very wealthy and very poor in South Africa is absolutely outrageous. So, you know, I don’t think it’s a specifically man’s problem. I don’t think the solution is to give people a handout, I think the solution is to give people a hand up and to actually invest in education and training and teams around these people to ensure that they are given the support to to get them off dependency, whether it’s on alcohol or drugs, or to give them this the education and skills development that they need. It isn’t true to say that there’s no education for people over the age of 18. There are a number of agencies that work with particularly young people who’ve led care to ensure that they are given opportunities that they help to write CVS that they can work experience placements, and that they will work with them to liaise with agencies to give people a hand up not a handout, I would be very opposed to the idea of a basic income being given to everybody. Because I think that’s an extremely retrograde step. The countries where it does work tend to be countries that have had vast amounts of revenue in the short term, they’ve been able to implement it as a short term strategy, whether it’s sustainable in the long term remains to be seen. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 59:03
Thank you. And I think that there’s a number of areas so I mean, I suppose students who want to boost the living wage and absolutely support us bringing the the baseline allowance for income tax to be to move to the equivalent food and a wage, and we’re saying that’s the living wage, why wouldn’t we? But I also think there’s elements around flexible working to allow people to go back into employment at the minute I’m coming across a lot of people who just can’t go back into employment because of childcare because of other issues that they have. That means that they can’t fit into the employment market we have. So I think we really need to look at how we can use those fevers in terms of flexible working. And I think the landlord registration bill has actually been very positive. I was happy to support that. My one concern which is something that I spoke strongly about and Tim Ward is that some of the landlords who perhaps needed that push in the right direction to bring the standards up to where they should be, will then push the cost associated with doing that onto the tenant. So I nervous that we will Converse, he creates a problem where there potentially wasn’t, wasn’t one. And I’ve been very supportive of work with poverty community, there’s a number of outstanding points that they’ve raised that we will need to pick up in the new house. And but one thing I want to touch on, many of the people that I know who live in the poor quality houses in darkness are not people who aren’t on reasonable incomes. But they’re people who are now choosing to live in properties that are not good for their health, so that they can save money to be able to get onto the housing ladder. And I’m coming across a very diverse group of people with who are in that situation. My concern is to people who can’t advocate for themselves. Within that situation, there are some people who just put up in terrible conditions, because they don’t feel able to take on the landlord that they have, whereas other people feel that they can because they’ve been empowered to by by virtue of their situation. So I think it’s a, although it’s just one problem, actually, the the way we support people will differ depending on their circumstances, it’s important that I think we recognise that I think there’s a number of things that will need to change in order for us to pay our right place on the global stage.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:14
Thanks. So yeah, you’re right, there’s a there’s a huge inequality issue. The state we’re in at the moment really one in six workers in less than a living wage, one in seven households sort of poverty, one in six families around the school meals, we have a very busy Food Bank, we have no homelessness issue with people. So certainly, that’s this, that’s the stage that we’re at now. And we need policies that uplift those hardest hit by the current economy. Most of these actually pay for themselves. So in terms of it put more puts more putting more taxes into into our economy. And so what I’m talking about there is if we, if we target those hit by the hit hardest by the coordinate economy, such as universal daycare, and puts more people into the workforce, which means more taxes paid more revenue from families, and policies, such as improved access to lifelong education with people integrate their skills, and that addresses the shortage of critical skills. So lots of these policies actually paid themselves. However, in terms of funding, as well, I am in favour of a more progressive taxation system. And I do think that, that we do need to move ourselves into more of a fair, a higher level of quality, which actually, the levels of inequality that we’re at right now are harmful for people they affect our criminality rates and affect our mental health is harmful for society. We know it is it’s been proven by research repeatedly. So if we, if we can address that balance through progressive taxation system, I think that would go a long way towards helping our social outcomes. One of the thing that I would like to mention, in my, in my Manifesto, I do advocate for a green New Deal, which is a good way of tackling our inequality, as well as being our economy. And I know that I’m not gonna have time to explain how the green New Deal, it’s a very, it’s quite a complex. programme, really, but it is a very detailed and researched programme to do both of those things, to tackle inequality and to lead our economy. So I really do think that that would go a long way towards answering your question. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:33
Yeah, I think a whole economy is based on tax avoidance. And a lot of us, including myself, we wouldn’t have jobs. If I couldn’t get the job I do at the moment. You know, I’d have to go to the big company. You can’t have that. And, but in terms of I think what that was talking about that is the developers underclass that we’re developing. And I think the government’s responsibility is to lower inflation. Because if you keep having to deploy as to you have to throw more money every year to provide for a living wage. We’ll never catch up with that. You’ll always have people who will be low will be below what they need. So I think there’s some good starts happening that regulates up regulated gas prices we need to regulate all utility prices, government hide, government, heating in buildings, etc. subsidise at the moment that needs to be on hidden and they need to identify that to cost that cost is put on, subsidised and put onto walls. I think we have overstayed packet. We’ve got Brexit and flaking out at the moment we’ll see delays on borders, increasing traffic costs. If we if we can do one thing here, let’s keep the freight costs Like, you know, that’s a major impact on inflation here, what we bring in food, all that kind of stuff. I also think we need to do action on controlling accommodation costs. You know, we haven’t got the luxury of a runoff area. On the other hand, if you, if you’re in Manchester in a new cycle, the house price has gone up, I’ll move an hour and a half away, he can’t do that falling out, man. So we do need to take some action on controlling costs. So I think it’s really about stopping the costs of people who are on lower amounts of money getting out of control. And that’s not happening at the moment, the government have a bigger responsibility, and an ability to tap like inflation, especially if they travel routes, etc. So that’s what I put out.

Michael Josem 1:05:43
Thanks. And can we have any more questions? No.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:55
Okay. like to ask all the candidates, especially those that have already been elected, what do they do to hold the government accountable? For the one was in the prom, it’s been almost three years, there has been no major improvement. The Department of infrastructure is throwing away millions of that. And during the pandemic, and especially with the lock downs with the government, sucking down roads all over the place for the world’s people we’re getting fired from the tropic waters, have been one of them repeatedly. And when I tried to challenge a goddess that a black man was, he broke the law. So the one words are still going three years roughly on an estimate. And it’s not just a poem, it’s all over the island on a very bad road network. The other one is that on top of the pandemic, and people not be able to have a salary that we’re getting fined, which I think is absurd from the government. So my question is, what will be done about this, because it’s a day to day thing. it degrades our lives. And apart from me, because I’m just an individual that in my minds about myself, after a lot of businesses on the prom, we have been severely harmed by the world worlds and the loss of revenue. So it is good to speak out about the economy open up and why. But if the government’s actually harming businesses, it’s just with the contract if that is what we’re supposed to think and believe. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:43
You have a business on the problem, not just the guys. Okay, around the Christmas. Okay. Well, it’s no secret class not going to say much, but I’ve discussed it with what happened with the problem. And absolutely disgusted with our eight to seven inch case. Eight, we got too many stories, and not one of them was involved in that problem. I mean, the biggest thing that happened in 100 years it took us about a single builders Mhk involved in a hotel. Okay. And I’ve said that publicly, I’ve said it in the manifestos.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:20
haven’t read the newspapers, the Department of infrastructure requires more money. So why spend it? I can’t quite catch up on infrastructure requires more money. So why spend it? Okay, well,

Unknown Speaker 1:08:35
it’s got to be finished. Okay. So let’s leave it as it is. So, however, I mean, I do have some sympathy with the people that are doing it. We did a COVID pandemic all the time. So we had to shut down for almost a year, only 18 months, they did say it was going to take two and a half years. That’s taken three years, and all but they haven’t finished the end of it. But as for the consultation with businesses, and people who live in the area, that was terrible. I’ve got friends of mine that got businesses down on the area, people in the hospitality sector, people in the hotel industry, it was a nightmare for absolute nightmare. And as you say about the parking problems that are all around people that live open their drives, or when they’re resized and by terrorists or their I mean, there’s no way for the number of cars ever to mature shut down. And what did they built, they built over 1000 apartments on the programme. But no parking spaces for very general parking spaces for them. Some of them are purpose built apartments, but not many of them. You know, and they’re they’re adamant about this election. Well, they thought I’d get the manifestos they call flat one the primer on the address. And we go on to 1000 classes on the proper NACA certainly addressed in our festivals. And that’s the government for you know, well arranged, you know, but anyway, getting back to your thing, the fines, I mean, I think when the worst You shouldn’t shouldn’t get your money back, he should have come to me today and said, This isn’t right, this, I’m living here trying to run a business, you shouldn’t just go one day you open the door the next day. And there was no joint thing with the DLR doing these major schemes, but it’s the Richmond Hill to pull those branch, the proper nouns as well, all at the same time, it was fairly, very badly handled, I have to say, I’ll say it again, if successful, successfully elected, some of these civil servants is going to have to be held to account because they have to be made accountable. And that’s what I have to say. That’s why we’re never going to let these civil servants roam this island again, because they’ve made a mess of it. Hi,

Unknown Speaker 1:10:43
thank you for your question. I am all about accountability and transparency and government something that’s been lacking. For so long, I’ve met Douglas, prominent constituents who have been wrecked and the COVID situation I am fed up with a being used as an excuse to be honest, then, I’m sorry that you’ve you’ve had to go through what you’ve went through. And I would like to see your parking tickets be. Okay, go back. Explain your situation. And all I’ve got to sit in Mhk. Right now, I’m trying to be Coleman NHK, to provide you with the honesty and the transparency that you all require. And John’s rights. If I am elected in I also we’ll be making the civil servants accountable the amount of high salaries, they need to common out into the public explaining their reasoning. Why did they come up with that project? Why is it costing so much money, I want to see everything I want you to see ever than and that’s what I will do if I get elected. And Bottoms up. So sorry for the circumstance you’re in. And nobody considered quality of lifetime now, which is something that should be picked up before everything. And especially in such a major project. I I drove along the promenade today and it was nice to see children back on the promenade was something we haven’t seen for three years. You know, this this talk was that I learned to walk on that promenade, my son’s learned to walk on that prolinnova for three years to see children that have done this families that have missed out. And it was nice to see people back down there today, that it’s slow progress, but it is progress and it is coming to an end. I’m just sorry that it took so long. And I am looking forward to being elected and pushing that forward and making these people accountable for you.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:37
And I spoke about the problem when I stood in 2016. And at the time I said that we needed to get a major UK contractor over that we need to have it mapped properly, that there needed to be some proper civil engineering investigation of it before the ground is cut. Because we’ve had multiple repeated dealings that we’ve had all kinds of errors and failures. And as you’re aware on was previously a teacher, as a teacher, every year, we had a performance review, we had to jump through an enormous number of hoops with absolutely no hope whatsoever of an increase in pain because it didn’t exist. We have senior civil servants who have made absolutely horrendous errors. And there is no accountability currently, that has to be addressed. I think with the prom, one of the things that most concerns two things that most concerning number one, the cappuccinos or chaos or the roundels, as they prefer to call them that cause an intense amount of disruption, that seeing the poor confused UK number plate drivers. as they approach these answered bizarre structures that we’ve got on on the promise quite concerning that we’ve had the red and black zebra crossing, which is another great mastermind thing from the Department for infrastructure. The other thing that concerns me as a journalist resident who uses the prom every single day is the appalling state of the walkway isn’t such a huge amount of money. And yet we have a walkway that is not fit for purpose, where you can still trip over the remnants of the structures that were put in place when the promises as a concentration camp during the Second World War. And it’s a miracle that more people don’t come a Cropper along they’re certainly not fit for purpose in the evening, because the fancy new lights that they put in aren’t actually along the walkway area yet. So you know, I think it is an own mitigated disaster, and somebody has to be held accountable for it because that, you know, I know that major capital projects often run over time and over budget, but to be so varying from what we were promised and perhaps over promised and massively massively under delivered on there has to be some accountability for it and without any shadow of a doubt.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:48
Thank you very much. And I think the DNI have succeeded in one thing and that is they did shut down Douglas for a period of time. I mean, I would say I feel after three years of living and breathing The support I’ve provided to to the businesses on the promenade if I roll so I have been elected for the last five years that it’s almost become something of a special subject for me. And throughout the finance scheme, I’ve chaired the committee that has scrutinised infrastructure department infrastructure. And as I say, we’ve written three comprehensive reports, and looking at a number of different areas in relation to the Romanovs. So I arranged that businesses representation from the businesses who are affected on employment outcomes to more than speak directly, and to the ministers and members within our parliament, I thought it was very important that their voices were heard, I was hearing day to day, people who were suicidal people who had put their life savings into a business that was no longer viable. People who had their own personal homes secured as security against the rent on their business. The impact on this was absolutely devastating to businesses. And yet the project Impact Assessment when we asked for that, as a committee with one a4 page, to put that into context, it had the impact it might have had on the why was mentioned on there. And yet the businesses were almost an afterthought that isn’t acceptable. And I have been absolutely unequivocal in my position since being elected. And since the problem I’ve seen started. And I also attended meetings with the accommodation sector, I’ve pushed for the support schemes that have been put into place and tabled debates into one on the subject, as well as a new number of questions about failings within the Commonwealth scheme, as well as calling for capital projects, units, something that can far better deal with some of the contracts and details that have proved problematic within the scheme that we’ve seen. And I noticed already about some of the D scoping that dry had done with the province, they’d already purchased the granite for the roundels, that now has been stored, I assume, they’re no longer planning to do that they talked about build outs on the side of the province. Now they will look at once they can nail it, because they didn’t have the time to actually build them out properly. And they described the side routes that was done by D ally. And all of that then has moved although the delay line has been that there’s been no increased cost on the original budget, there’s been no impact. There’s been a huge difference in costs, no additional cost. There’s been a huge human additional costs. And I say that because the the knock on effect is that we haven’t been able to do some of the routine rote schemes, some of the potholes that we’ve seen some of the lining schemes, because those teams have then been re redirected towards completing the pronouns. And I would say I don’t know how in practice, John’s idea of having a Douglas member in the Department of instruction for this would have worked unless we coincidentally had a dog, as he said, but in the department infrastructure because we can’t move the department members every time there’s a scheme and we have schemes all around the island that we certainly can’t have a representative from every constituency in dry. So on a practical note, I’d love to hear more. But I’m not sure that’s that’s right. But it’s absolutely right that the overseas members have worked with on the scrutiny committees and with the scrutiny committees and use their role within Tim Ward to change and do that in a in a very strong manner. I believe in terms of my other concerns about the problem is that we still have elements still to be done. So when this problem scheme, as we now know is completed. We still have already within the pink book and funding, in principle, a line that talks about doing the seawall, alignment talks about the promener walkway and the D scope element of the LOC promenade tramway that stuff still to come. And I don’t believe that that should have been left till the end to continue this drama for more years. And in terms of your parking ticket. So without knowing the exact details of the minecart help, I have had a number of people who have come to me parking tickets during the Commonwealth scheme. On some occasions, I’ve been able to assist on other occasions, it has been safety related, I haven’t been able to support the military. So it would be very specific on the exact details. So I can’t really comment. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:18
Well, as you can imagine, this

Unknown Speaker 1:19:19
has been a very topical issue on the doorstep. And I have had I have heard some really heartbreaking stories and our hearts go out to a lot of people are spoken with. It’s clear that people are very unhappy and angry with a perceived lack of accountability and transparency around the problem but also around capital overspend in general. And as Amanda said, of the capitalism, capital projects do have a tendency to overall worldwide, but this seems to be an example of how not to go about this type of project. And it wasn’t an international embarrassment thought for the most people overall. You know, it seems to be The project’s incrementally flawed from planning through to implementation. And I’ve said in my manifesto that, if elected, I will call for an inquiry to examine the root causes of what’s happened to you. And with a view to holding those responsible, accountable, and providing insight into how we can prevent this happening in future. Now, I know that people are a little bit weary of inquiries that seem a bit longer than they don’t seem to actually get anywhere. But in some cases, I really do think it’s justified. And I think this is one of them. Because what’s happened to ages isn’t acceptable. I don’t think anybody you know, would would argue that it’s not acceptable. And just to finish, I do also think that we need performance, try to make it more responsive to people’s needs and more efficient basically, in achieving its goals. So I would like to use that that the findings tonight quote, to actually feed into the reform and restructure video, I think you Thanks God. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:21:01
how many times in the last five years have you heard the phrase, lessons will be learned. And the culture in the DNI is just rotten to the core of an untrained project management engineer, the British Aerospace, there is no project management in the DI it’s just chaos, that’s already been identified by the demons report, being under consultant company, because the government outsource all that responsibility to essentially the same. And they identify that the project management culture is locked to the core. The problem is you can’t support project managers and you need people who understand what they’re doing. So I think it’s, it’s the culture that needs to change within yes, we do need experience qualified project managers from elsewhere to go on core projects for project management visiting everything that the DNI is doing, it’s everything from the large project, like coming out to six guys to an optimal fill a hole in the road, when two of them are standing around waiting for when one starts digging to standing around. With real sickness, when they come by filling potholes, it’s a methodology that you have to think in your head. I think the damage, it’s not just the province. The province is so prominent and strong streets, because every but everything along that area has been affected. And of course, with the double double bang Whammy of COVID. Of course, businesses affected. So I do think as well as COVID support over the winter, I think we should be supporting package for some of the businesses on the problem. And I certainly think that parking tickets or mass support, vehicle tax or defects should all be refunded, because it’s been absolutely clear. So I’ve got probably about 10 or 15 colleagues a bit longer from now, goals complained about, they’ve had to move their car, they couldn’t find a car parking place. And the next day, outcome three business prevention officers, parking wardens who weapon with a 60 or an 80 pound fine. So yes, to summarise, the DI has to change, you know, and this is one of the areas I think I could make a big difference, either in expanding the digital economy or bringing this culture into the DI and I think that has to happen because the DI spend money like it’s hundreds of hundreds when it’s millions, 10s of millions. But we’re all sick of this and asked to change that.

Michael Josem 1:23:32
Thank you. And your question there was was about a couple of different pieces of prompt. But also what we’ve done is individuals hold the gun to camp. And I think that’s powerful question because it’s not just about what would have should have could have Buddha mode done. But rather than what we did, and I’m going to say I’m not I’m not encumbered in the in the house of cases mode, I’m an outside. But I’m doing what I’ve done to hold the government accountable, which is you know, I’ve done the boring work ever. you’ve reviewed the government documents, and I uncovered the fact that the health department is shredding letters from for reasons that was obviously became a big issue. In the in the third quarter and fourth quarter of last year, I did the boring work to hold that counsellor accountable and was over uncovered, I spent 24,000 pounds on legal fees to recover 3000 pounds in another waste of company expenditure. And I also feel your paper in regards to the province in a slightly more sensitive way. today. Some of you may have noticed, I’ve been looking a little bit and that’s because let me tell you that the combination of the rain and tram tracks and bicycles makes for a terrible combination. So he talked about going to a few bruises as a result of an injury yesterday. But that bruise on my leg and a bruise on my elbow is going to go away. And it’s trivial compared to the losses that have been enjoyable families and the businesses that have injured from you know speaking to the owners of the cafe Villa Some months ago, and I might put not only have they had the obvious loss of income, but they’ve had the additional costs, the additional cost of all the dust and the damage to the floor. So not only do they have less income coming in, but now they’ve got to take 1000 pounds to repair the floor as a result of the damage that they suffered from the from the product worked itself. They they raised to the government the possibility of using the handy biller archive for their store for the for some of the chairs because it’s, you know, outside the villa cafe there. And there’s a there’s a little bit of a few times James, and the government said, Oh, no, you can’t use this. Otherwise, any space will have to charge you rent. And that shows that this is a government that is not carrying its own government that is listening in. So that’s why I I’ve done the boring work of reviewing the government documents on this stuff. I now bruisers, just to show that some of these government’s mixed use schemes that do not work in the Magic Quadrant. And most importantly, when we lose our plans for the future, and that’s why, you know, rather than waffle, we’ll just let the group government accountability, we have a clear clear plan, which has bad skin in the game. It’s that holding senior government official directly accountable. Julianne, who’s the member for onken put some forward some proposals at the last last session of tabled, they were unfortunately voted down. But I think in there, there was a core concept that we can build on, we can get started on immediately, this core concept that that the senior government officials need to have skin in the game. It’s not good enough for us as taxpayers or as us residents or us as business owners to keep paying for all the costs. But we need to have a direct link between performance and remuneration. That’s something I’ve learned as a business leader for various businesses, something as a business leader here on the Isle of Man, that when we link remuneration and performance, performance improves and has no concept.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:53
Thanks, Michael. Thank you. I’d be interested to hear what your thoughts are on what the government should do, to effect a rapid transition to a greener, decarbonized world. Not just a greener economy, but think about the built environment and all that

Unknown Speaker 1:27:22
comes with that. And also the natural environment that is consistent with biosphere aspirations.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:38
By reading your question, I will be blatantly honest with you. In the past five years, I my focus has been dealing with people policy and process. We can say climate change, and the green economy has slipped by it hasn’t. But I’m not as knowledgeable on this subject, as a lot of the other candidates are and I and for that reason. That’s why I need to be honest with you. When you say rapid transition, I’m not sure what you mean by rapid you talk about next 510 1520 years.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:14
I think you need to demonstrate some progress this year, next year,

Unknown Speaker 1:28:22
so almost 10 years, because you know, we can build arena homes, but what cost? You know, we’re looking at young people now who can’t afford to get on the property ladder. And I as the homes as they stand. So do you believe the homes as the yard and assess them to make that home greener, greener? Or do we build greener homes, which are going to put the cost of the home up and out price them again, it’s about balancing the scale there. And I think we need to do it progressively forward. Yet again, I’m not a knowledgeable person on this subject. So I will be honest, and I will let someone else take over and break and give you a more comprehensive answer. Thanks, Christine.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:08
And on the issue of a smooth and swift transition, I don’t think that can be achieved incredibly swiftly. I think it has to be planned and progressed in an in an orderly fashion, I think to try to do things like say you’ve got to scrap all of the gas boilers and we mustn’t extract the gas that we’re in the gas reserves, we have to be honest, extremely short sighted. And I had a long conversation with Andrew Lang Newton this afternoon for students mind on the key and he was referring to the Riley’s report, and he takes a particular perspective on it. I take a completely opposite perspective. You may also be aware that there’s been a 300% increase in the retail price of wholesale gas over the last 12 months. And we’ve seen two energy suppliers in the UK go to war today. So I think there is a huge commercial potential from the offshore gas and that you may not be particularly palatable. But other nations that are seen as world leaders in greening their economies, such as Norway have hugely capitalised on the reserves that they have. And I think to not seriously look into it and to do the research and the evaluation and actually look at it as a viable proposition would be obviously foolhardy. And then to scrap a vast quantity of gas boilers, which many of us have in our homes, would in itself be environmentally wasteful. So I would like to see us Capitalising those reserves and using those to fund the transition to a green economy. I think the green economy absolutely makes sense. And if you’ve heard any of the other debates that I’ve been involved in, I’ve explained how I think a model of economics that’s based solely on GDP and financial outcomes is an extremely outmoded model, because no amount of money in the bank is going to be of any interest to anybody if they’re living on a degraded and polluted planet, and my eldest daughter studying environmental ecology and economics at university, and I think the three have to go hand in hand, we can’t have an idealistic version of how we would like to breed future to be it has to be realistic, costed not on some notional bond, and not on some notional economics, we got into very deep water with hypothetical economics for an awfully long time. We need a realistic approach, we need to realistically capitalise on the assets that we potentially have as an island, look into it, not dismiss it out of hand, because it just appears to be environmentally unpalatable environmental positives, it could yield a well with thorough analysis and evaluation.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:37
Thank you, I think one of the things that we’re going to need is very clear targets. And I think that’s something that we’ve talked about you minister KPIs attached to this, it can’t just be almost a measurable vision, without the specific so for me, that’s going to be fundamental. And there’s been a lot of talk around the climate change bill. I initially thought it 2035 because I think we absolutely need to go with this with the conviction. And I got to the point, actually, where I realised that we weren’t going to win that debate. And it’s far more important that we get the KPIs and implementation, right. So I think sometimes, one of the things that I’ve realised is you have to compromise on some elements that are actually less important, the legislation is only as good as the implementation plan that we attached to it. So I think that’s very important. And I think it’s absolutely vital that we look to energy efficient homes, we looked at proper rating of those homes, and government needs to lead by example. So one of the questions that I placed before Tim Ward was around the number of capital projects where government had actually put or even considered green options when they they put the developments together. That came off the back of the glenside development where I had a frustration that in department of health and social care, we had pushed to have bare ground source heat pumps. And within that there was an additional cost, that’s what will happen. And that’s what we’re expecting of you. That’s what we’re fixing me. And that’s going to be the knees. But government chose not to put that additional investment, Treasury declined to support that uplift. So we’re now building inside with gas boilers, that may, I think, is really not the right position. And if governments aren’t willing to put those investments in and lead by example, I think it will be far harder to encourage and bring people on that journey. So I think that’s another very important point, I think we absolutely need security for our electricity generation, we’re going to see an increase in demand for electricity, as we move to electric vehicles, electric bikes, all of these things, electric heating sources, all these things are going to require more electricity. And it’s interesting to point amalgamated about natural gas, and the possibility of a gas field. For me, there’s some very clear pieces of information that would be needed to better understand that. And that is that if we’re going to continue using gas, and we’re going to be importing it from Russia or further afield, and I do believe it’s right that we explore what the costs both environmentally and financially would be to use the gas here. So I’m not absolutely writing off. But I stand to be convinced around that. But I certainly think it’s one piece of the jigsaw. And it’s interesting that the company behind that I’ve got extensive information around renewables on their website, and the longer term funding to move to renewables. renewable energy for me is exploration, tidal energy, I think it’s something that I would very much like to see. And I’ve had some interesting ideas just on the doorstep as I’ve gone around overseas. And the climate change a group that has been established by government, I think, has been a really positive move, actually, because I don’t pretend to be an expert. And I know that not not all of my colleagues pretend to be we need to talk to each other about this. We have to get this right, because we’re going to get one shot at it. And the The only other point that I would make also is around understanding our need prior to making change. So if you look at the waste to energy plant as the example when that comes to the end of its life, They don’t really understand what our baseline is for waste that can’t be managed through either anaerobic digestion, whether it can’t be managed through recycling. Because we haven’t pushed that across the island, I wouldn’t say that was helpful. Do you have a comprehensive recycling service, I think that’s really positive, but that isn’t replicated Island wide. And until we properly understand it, we run the risk of building something that’s too big. But what we actually need as we find ourselves in that position now, so there’s detail that we need, that will mean we must move to recycling, reusing, and considering proper management of food waste, and other other waste as Bob. Thank you. Julie.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:40
Thanks. I just wanted to sort of note, some key points. First of all, before I go into my answer, first of all the international move towards this, you know, globally, we are transitioning over to bring the world so it will happen on the Isle of Man, ultimately. And secondly, which our ageing infrastructure is winding down over the next few years. So we would actually have that an outlay of upgrading the energy infrastructure anyway. So we need to use this as an opportunity to that’s why as I do you say, we need to take control of our transition, rather than relying heavily upon what the UK does, or what constituencies that sort of jurisdictions around us do. We need to use this as an opportunity and through this, we can actually stimulate our own economy and improve lives on our island, and the money will go back to us will have cleaner air, be healthier, generally will create jobs here, footfalls. And so Professor chrome was commissioned by a member of mint to, to undertake the Isle of Man programme for achieving our climate climate targets or the impact report. And that is an excellent blueprint, you know, I’ve read it, it is very comprehensive way for us to achieve our transition. The one thing that is lacking is targets, it does not have clear targets in it. And that is a big downside to me. So the one thing that I would add to Professor crimson, Patrick Paul is very clear targets for how we are actually going to achieve net zero. And in Professor greens reports, he does actually identify two pathways, there’s a low ambition a higher higher ambition pathway. And obviously, for me, we would be looking looking for the higher end ambition pathway. And so that would mean that we will be looking to achieve net zero by 2005. And I do think that is, is possible within the boundaries of physics and chemistry. I do think that its political will that we’ve been lacking. And so in terms of your question, what what would we do I mean, just the low hanging fruit, we’ll there’s so many things that we could do. I did mention before I understand the climate change issue. So I guess this is kind of one of my areas, and but just the low hanging fruit, and settled low interest loans to people to make energy efficiency improvements, so homes and businesses, and to instal renewable energy and government to set their own net zero targets, I think that would be an interesting one, it would really set a good example to the people that are switching government investments out of fossil fuel and into clean energy and renewable technology, and totally free public transport. So those things are some some low hanging fruit that I think we could do in our transition to net zero in terms of needs, specifically asked about the natural environment. And so I think that in active protection of natural environment, which is already indoor, because we do actually have some good protection of our natural environment, and we just don’t actually use it, we just don’t seem to actually follow through. So I think that first of all, we need to look to that and, and really, really use you know, social scientists, typically you just need to be easily protected, and protected trees and wildlife, etc. and look to strengthen those teacher. Thank you. Thanks, Jordan.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:04
Yeah, so the question is, well, what can we do now measured every year? I think the I think the first thing we should do is pause a little bit. The climate change bill has been thrown together is reactive rather than proactive. It’s how require feeling guilty that they had to put something together. I think we also have to remember it’s a global target. And we’re like 170 billion of the co2 that goes into the world, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something about it, of course. But my point would be, like, above the last question, well, should we spend 20 million pounds straightaway this year on insulating some homes for sale? All the way up, Boudreaux? Or should we spend 2 million pounds five international development formed helping a group of people abroad, protect rain forests that captures 10 times our emissions? I think The rehab, if you start thinking about that, we’ll still be making a difference. What we do need to pause in terms of what we’re actually doing straightaway, we don’t be rushing into things. The other problem with technology in this area is it changes so rapidly. So we make some commitments. Now, that might be the wrong things, we need to really think it through our parents station is supposed to last till 2015, it is maintained properly, you know, so I think the idea would be to use our natural energy resources so that we don’t have to run the power station at full speed, and we use less and less gas. And if there’s, if there is nothing he was offering before, there was supposedly something like 8 billion pounds worth of gas supposedly found just off the island. So the in the appeal debate, it said something about it, I don’t see the problem with using gas, if you’ve got 800 billion pounds, then that’s a lot of money, you can capture all the come up and from that gas, and then generates electricity. But as long as you’ve captured the carbon, you know, that would be okay. Well, in terms of real differences that we can make, there’s a lot of very quick wins, we can do here. And some of them in my life thought about, we need to use the farming grants more wisely. You know, there’s a lot of money goes out in farming grants, we need to encourage my local wetlands, we need farmers to grow certain crops to an entry point and encourages lots of natural wildlife etc. But one of the big areas that we don’t say we’re looking at when we look at BAFTA was prominent is our own see, we’ve got 10 protected areas at the moment, we need to expand that we could expand that in five years to 25. That was that will allow sea life and plant life to recover captures carbon, and it has a measurable difference. And it will also handle and some of the like destructive fishing techniques that we’ve got. So yeah, I think we need to think about it a little bit. We, we’ve rushed into it with with Well, we need a plan. Proper plan. Thanks,

Michael Josem 1:42:07
Michael would like to go five minutes late. I’ll be quick. First of all, congratulations, sir on finding the finding an issue where there’s a disagreement among some of the candidates here. And and I guess to start off by answering a question I love out there. And and I’d like to encourage some of the other candidate teams not just getting on because talk of there being an 800 billion pound gas reserves under the RFC, if you believe that they are going to tell me he will tell you as well. But the idea is not. And, and and that we’re all on up to talking about pausing. And what you’re Amanda talking about Capitalising, which I think is just a fancy euphemism for drilling. Yeah, exactly right. In my view is very simple to prohibit fossil fuel extraction on the Isle of Man. And you know, waters, in my view is very, very clear that we should not be drilling for gas off the coast of Lexie, the idea is ridiculous. The ideas are absurd. And our disagree also very much with what he was saying there about about cause I think we need to start already taking action. That’s why tonight, I will keep it dry for you. And I’m gonna say I do have a little bit of an advantage as a local residents live around the corner and so they may walk in. So in that sense, you know, many of you seen I’ve seen me take leadership, whether we cycled around town as part of this door knocking thing, whether we use 100% recycled paper here as part of our campaign, and that there’s a real opportunity for each of us to show personal leadership. Now, it’s an issue of national honour, but national honour for the Isle of Man for us to be good custodians of our land, for us to be good stewards of our land and our waters so that we can build a future for the two, the four and the six year old, he’s got to be on this planet in 2100. So that type of a will here on the Isle of Man that I can grow up for. And that’s why I’m very proud to have been endorsed by the move van, which is the only political party on the Isle of Man to be all in boschi partners. I’m very proud of my good friend, very good Grandpa, he later led the fight to bring forward the oh man government’s carbon net zero target. There’s a lot of work to be done. And I go back to thinking of that two year old four year old six year old and doing the honourable thing by them to ensure that they have a world that we can pass on to them and to the good students, the two year old four year old and secure.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:39
Okay, just come back as my name is mentioned that I’m sure you will come here tonight will be offset by your first trip back to Australia to see the relatives quite quickly overnight. So it’s only a rumour that it’s a billion we can’t say if that was to be, you know, what would we do with it? It’s The Golden tip. Not jumping ahead. Thanks

Unknown Speaker 1:45:06
Mina. I seem to remember having a little chat with you on the doorstep.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:14
I don’t think I like the last bit I came I was wanting to remember on the whole I totally agree with you about our carbon footprint and our quality of life and how he coached them that was just a large that we didn’t agree on. So first of all, I we have so many natural resources on the Isle of Man, so many nature reserves, so many special places for birdlife wildlife on the island, plantations. And while I would like to see myself this i’m joined dopa stop killing through I’m running out. That’s something that I’d like to see when we have these certain spawn here looks fun there. Let’s start there, and they’re not all joined up. So all this wildlife is supposed to stay in the field were supposed to say. So I’d like to see a much more joined up. And then we could we could use dimension policy anyway, so we could we could read costs and stuff like that on our end anyway. So going back to your other stuff about carbon footprints, and we’ve got a lovely green place. Union rails built by Brandon commissioners and strathberry nothing happens to you just walk in and he took the body wants to place carbon free and everything but it has some electric heaters. And they pass it in and the other day, the electric heaters on to dry the plaster out and cost them 600 pounds per month. So it was quite expensive to eat. Admittedly they don’t have it so it’s not as friendly as they’ve said is and this has happened again. Then we also have the main Slater party talking about this Eco Friendly House that only cost 140,000 pounds to build once again he walks through the door. No boiler no nothing ever gets overheated for you just review things there’s no graphs or anything that is just a market for sale, folded 20,000 pounds, the kids and the bill the two completely different prices. And so I do with the with the some of the new build stuff, but basically the technology we’ve got at the moment, this philosophy, loft insulation, and we’ve got all anyway. So going back to the renewable energy. We are looking at Orkney and Shetland, Orkney is completely locally self sufficient, but wind turbines and tidal power. They make so much electricity that make nitrogen on the road, they’re fairly self Chevron, they’re going to do the same thing. But they’ve got exactly the same problem because they just kind of get a feel just outside. And they promised them that they would use the fuel to form the wind turbines have the tidal power. And basically we’ve got exactly the same thing here on the on the man. All and wind turbines and tidal power still got grants from the UK air from the Europe and onshore performance. We haven’t got any grants whatsoever. That far too expensive. Like we say, a gas boiler. A young couple gas boiler goes 2000 pounds to replace it. For heat source pump 11,000 pounds to replace it. It’s simple maths, they can’t afford it. And the government can’t afford to subsidise that we have some heat forceful. There’s just too much money. So how are we going to fund what we have to do what we need to look into the goal, the long term goal of producing all our electricity for nothing. And it’s renewable, and it’s not damaging the environment. And the other thing is, while using this gas from Russia, but pumping it all the way from Russia, it’s costing you might be making a 60% more carbon block on that in the world for bonuses to get here. We’ve got a corporate all the way here. So that’s what’s wrong. So don’t even dismiss the gas feel. It needs to look at it. I have a look at it. Six years ago, the presentation was given to the outline government, and they stand on the shoulders. And what the presentation was that a third would go to the company, a third would go to revenue for the government. People. They would go to renewable energy, and that was how we sliced off and there’d be no cost to the taxpayer. That’s the presentation I want to

Unknown Speaker 1:49:37
get sorry. I just wanted to respond to that claim the capability to the code built on Victoria road to complete separate prices they actually weren’t. The reason that that went up the market in such a high price was somebody making profit got to build with the architect. It’s not me to disclose details about what that the Eco build house was built. I think an 80,000

Unknown Speaker 1:49:56
cap was 140 and that’s what he charged to put it up Correct. That is correct. Okay, well, it isn’t going to sum up now. Well, yeah, it’s reached the point where we need to start trying to wrap things up now. There will be no more questions for dentist candidates in less than two minutes each people to sum up their respective positions. Yeah. So

Unknown Speaker 1:50:27
my point is that someone else right in In summary, a I did not say that we should use the gasfield I said that we should investigate it because I think it would be utterly foolhardy to ignore something, I think that would not be environmentally responsible in terms of stewardship of the island. And I do think it could potentially be an extremely viable asset. And if you vote for me, what you’ll be voting for is and he’s not going to focus on making inquiries and recriminations and looking at what went wrong, you’re going to be looking for somebody who is going to be forward thinking, who is going to try and drive change, who’s going to try and bring about electoral reform, because I definitely think we need that, and you would be elected in five years, during that five years, you would be able to knock on my door, you wouldn’t be able to contact me and you would get a very high level of responsiveness. And you only need to ask people who have worked with me previously on the island that they don’t think I sleep. So you know, I think the the issues that we all face are broadly similar, what you’re being asked to do is to select somebody who you think will genuinely represent you, and your views and opinions is not going to be hide bound by a set of policies that they’ve done in an extremely detailed over promising Manifesto. My manifesto is very, very simple. And to the point, it says what I think are the clear priorities, it certainly puts mental health right at the centre of things. I think it’s a Cinderella, subject and has been for far, far too long. I think we live in an incredibly beautiful place, I think we have a huge amount to celebrate about the Isle of Man. And I will do my absolute damnedest to protect this unique and special place where we live, I have a huge history of environmental education. I just think that we need to be not short sighted and not look merely at the negatives of things, we need to actually have a broad and balanced research led approach. And we need to ensure that we are making the best use of the fantastic natural assets that this violence has not least the ingenuity and creativity of its people. And and I think it’s absolutely essential that what we do is look forward not backwards, despite having been a history teacher, because I’m fully aware that we never learned the lessons of history. Thanks, Christine.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:43
Sorry, we kind of lost a little bit, then I’ll be honest. Right, and why he should vote for me. First and foremost, I want to say thank you for this this forum. I really enjoyed this. We’ve been. I’ve been in debates previously. And it’s been popular politics, they’ll talk about the same things every election for the past 2025 years. We’ve had some really interesting questions tonight that’s avoided that because the popular politics is avoiding the real issues, vote for me, I will get to the root of the issues for your conflict of interest within our legal system. So people get fair cases, and treated fairly within our courtrooms by the police and by the systems around them. I will be transparent with you. I can’t be anything else. This is who I am, I will always be honest with you, I have an open door policy, and I will maintain contact with you throughout my job. And when ever I should get elected, it will be your queries, it will be your concerns that are not mine. I have no self interest. I have no interest in business. I have no properties. I will do in this for you because we need real people in politics. And I’m afraid that you’re gonna get it right now to be fair. And and yeah, I think I think that’s it just that promise to you and that faithfulness and transparency, the honesty and getting to the core of issues and not avoiding or running away from love. And yeah, that’s why you should watch the manifestos in the posts. Hopefully you’ll get them this weekend. So thank you. Thank you, Christy and djangocon. Well,

Unknown Speaker 1:54:32
I think basically what we’ve had in the past and certainly 10 years in government is we’ve been governed by Westminster, basically through VAT agreement, the bombshell McCain without the Brexit in this last parliament, the COVID and now we’ve got the corporation tax that’s coming out all the way. I definitely think we took a while for the ball. We’re not looking after our residents when we used to in the previous governments and looked after quite well and I think the standards of living On the automatic drop drop dramatically, you know, the infrastructure of the other man is, is not failing very well, I’m afraid the streets of Douglas, I’m in a terrible state, only fancy projects that have around the Isle of Man, you forget the problem of art, but the actual streets of Douglas and Lane suddenly instructions that were handed to the government in 1986, with an appalling of saying, we need to fight for better streets. And because, you know, I’ve said, I’m committed to renewable energy, I know you don’t like the answer that I gave you, I’m not saying we’re going to do that, we just need to look into it. But I still got a green hat on, I still wants to do more, to make it more environmentally friendly. And then I grew up on a farm, I know all about green things are very important to me. And then the other thing, I am committed to speaking the living wage, up to the cost. The other thing, the way to care about fish simply find that. And the other thing that also bothers me is the pensions on the Isle of Man, pensions on the Isle of Man for our young people, is a ticking time bomb, they have not got pensions, they’ve got small pensions, a lot of them have got pensions at all. And they’re gonna have to be forced to live on a state pension, which is the smallest in Europe 180 pounds for a person less than the living wage for them to live off. And if they retire just on a state pension, that’s all they’re going to have to live off. So we need to get a proper workplace pension for everybody, from shopkeepers to government workers that they can live off. Okay.

Michael Josem 1:56:37
I’m gonna say first of all, thank you to each person that asks, ask the question tonight, the first two women, the work and the endurance and the emotional stamina that you have in your work and your family audit buyer. And, frankly, I admire because it’s not something I think I could do to counsel a dividend and your question about living wage that improving and addressing future poverty is so important. And to and to you, sir, with your question about the about the promenade and holding senior government officials to account. It is so, so vital that we remember that they’re all government services and their citizens to their businesses. And to us, it would be a last question about the about protecting our environment. And the importance of, of our biosphere is so wonderful that we had so many different questions at the same time. So if you so I like to issue an offer to each and every person you’d like your source of hands go up at the end there. If any of you would like to stay in chat, I’m happy to stay and answer each and every question that each of any of you would like to say, hopefully, we’ll get that bargain on, I think we have to go outside because because we might get kicked out of this room. But if I do not get the opportunity to speak to you before election day, and so I’ll probably implore and invite each of you that next Thursday, to go and cast your vote. When you do so I encourage you to think that the two year old four year old and a six year old is living on poplar road, and think about the different visions that you’ve heard tonight. And think about who has the vision tonight, who’s expressed the vision to build the all the man as a shining beacon to see where the rest of the world is facing very stormy times. Thank you. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 1:58:24
if I, if I’m elected, I should be giving up a very good job that I’ve worked hard and trained hard for and spent many years studying for. And I hope you see that as a sign of the passion I have. I’m so fed up of hearing about lessons learned. I’m so fed up with waste, I have two boys in their 30s. And I have two grandchildren I standing for them really, because that’s what I worry about. The The biggest problem we have is our young workers leaving and more and more than been starving and cleaning this dangerous apartment that we’re creating a gated community for older people, and financially cleansing the yard. And we have to listen to them why they’re leaving. And the main reasons as I said, about dealing with the cost of living, the government have control over some of that the cost of housing, the government controls control, some of that diversify, create some of the new jobs that they need. We may have lots of different sectors over here, but they don’t have a lot of the new jobs that people who go to university want now, when I was still Why do you want to eat nurse, former astronauts, you know, at the company, I work for about 400 people at 100 different job types. You know, we need to think about your people stop the bleeding. And we also need to think about the size of cost of government that is another major bugbear and we have we need to restructure government. It’s got far too much management, costly management as well. So I’d like to see a lot of restructuring I think I’ve got the ability to do that. Because I’ve worked on various projects. I’ve run projects for the dti in UK on reducing management level management levels across departments, and also project manage things like the building times of the bank, as well as doing a lot of it work. So I think I have the ability to make these changes. So I’m not trying to civil servants I’ve been, I see myself going in to do this as an agent of change. Thanks, Johnny.

Unknown Speaker 2:00:31
So yeah, I mean, I’ve said so many times over the last few months, and I do recognise that the faces socially with whom you say that, I think this election is absolutely unique importance. There are so many challenges ahead with the fallout from the pandemic, both financial and health wise, the transition to a greener economy, addressing our housing crisis, attracting and retaining older people, to name just a few really, and we need an injection of new and fresh thinking of people orientated, and each case so you can really stand up to these challenges. I really want to take a moment to just focus upon it, the transition over to the real stable society, because this will be the defining issue of the next few years. And the politicians that we have in place over this transition will shape and define our future and that of our children and grandchildren. I think this is about having a vision to see the opportunity in this situation. There is power and value in most natural resources, and harnessing this and being in control this will be to the benefit of us all. It will strengthen our economy, it will create jobs and potentially attracting people back here. I know many of you share these thoughts from our conversations on the doorstep. So I wanted to ask you to think about voting for me for what you want to see for the islands future.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:51
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:57
Thank you very much. And thank you all for coming and giving us this opportunity this evening. I hope that over the past five years, I have demonstrated that I’m someone who does this, and I’m someone who does seek to represent and also someone who walks with you when those times get tough and when there are challenges that you can’t face alone. I’m certainly I believe someone who’s open minded, who wants to understand that issue before I come decisively down on one side, because I think sometimes it can almost be too simple to pick the easy option, when actually we must look at the evidence, we must understand the research and must make the right decisions for our future. I think I’m someone who will be honest and has been honest about where I can help you. But also those times, but actually I can’t where there isn’t a solution that’s easily fixable. And I’ve got a huge amount of time, and thanks to those people where they’ve thought to change things for the future. But haven’t been able to rectify the issue for themselves, because actually doing that incredibly selfless thing. And we see that a lot in politics. And I’m incredibly grateful to those people. I’ve certainly got someone who’s not afraid to challenge over the last five years, I think my scrutiny work has demonstrated that and some of the slightly more lively debates in Tim Ward, where ministers might not have agreed with the points I’m making, but I’m making them because they need to be made. It’s absolutely imperative we separate regulation, from provision of services, something we’ve seen across government, you can’t mark your own homework and government do that time and time again, that must change. So for me, the key priorities are going to be around climate change housing, retaining those people who are our neighbours, our family and our friends, and healthcare. And without those three key pillars, we won’t achieve the economic recovery and growth that we so desperately need to eliminate poverty. And to make sure that everyone on our island has a fair deal. I believe we have a truly beautiful islands and islands Island is delighted to call home and I plan to call home for the rest of my life where I’m pleased to raise my two step sons. And I believe if he was put your faith in me, I would continue to work for you, for your family, and for Douglas east and our island. And I hope you might consider supporting me for reelection next Thursday at the polls. So thank you very much for your time.

Unknown Speaker 2:04:19
And thanks to all the candidates for coming and I wish you all a fair and enjoyable election and that you’re recovering along with spending your time with these people. Thanks

Unknown Speaker 2:04:59
yeah This is

Unknown Speaker 2:05:17
undo bye bye exactly later oh

Unknown Speaker 2:05:49
yeah

Unknown Speaker 2:06:13
on the table Hey what’s up? Yeah. What is going on Tuesday

Unknown Speaker 2:08:45
this I know exactly what he was deciding I didn’t know where that like I was gonna lie on it. I can’t wait. I’m just obsessed with politics. And I mean I don’t think I mean all of the interesting questions that I really wanted to hear like, I think 30 years specialised in the world but weren’t really asked me. I want to say how does sturdy handle what kind of depression Have a

Unknown Speaker 2:09:18
great day start up see my hands are shooting up that’s all I got a huge amount How do you do definitely change my mindset around rather than leaving

Unknown Speaker 2:12:05
a comment below

Unknown Speaker 2:12:27
yeah Johnny said well distracted policy estimates This is based on the basis stations awesome. So three data rates will change changes that really you’re trying to do on top of each other because right from the start where are we now? This idea from shameless plugs to get everybody on so we have to change the structures I’m absolutely clear on that and the more I want to say

Michael Josem 2:14:20
hello PPC This is your zoom we haven’t even have a back for a pound