APRIL LUNCH

The lunch was attended by 34 members and by five guests. Our Speaker was Chris Robertshaw who has been a member of the House of Keys from 2010 to date. During that time he has been a Minister and is currently Chairman of the Planning Committee and several other Parliamentary Committees. His extremely thought provoking talk, entitled “Re-inventing Government in the Isle of Man”, gave rise to numerous pertinent questions from those of us who were present. Chris expressed the view that the current Government's six year forecast is not achievable so that the next administration must establish a clear strategy in its first year of office in order to maintain a balanced budget. He said that we need to reduce our existing seven separate departmental organisations into a single legal entity so as to replace our current bureaucratic and inherently expensive structure and thus achieve a smaller smarter Governmment. He said that we also need to follow the examples of some other countries which have increased the use of technology to reduce administrative costs on service delivery and then redirect all of that effort, and the savings made, to front line services. Many of the recommended changes would not be popular but failure to urgently adapt to the changing world could be disastrous for the Isle of Man's future. We are a small island and that makes it relatively easy for us to make changes. Chris gave far too much information for me to cover in this Report but his main message was the need for Government to now act decisively to move resources from a top heavy bureaucratic structure to the front line services where they are needed most.

Visit to Ballamoar Goat Farm

Twenty fortunate people, led by our Treasurer, spent a relaxing afternoon in the country thanks to Clare, Mike, their goats, their rabbits, and their chickens. Our group enjoyed the close presence of the goats; especially the kids (ie young goats; not children) which gambolled around them with the enviable freedom of the new-born. Amongst information obtained was that (a) Chicken selection and selective breeding allow the farm to produce white, brown, and blue eggs to order (b) Female goats are referred to as “does” or “nannies”, intact males as “bucks”, “billies” or “rams” and castrated males are “wethers” and (c) angora rabbits and goats produce angora and mohair textiles respectively. The visit was followed by our group sitting down to enjoy afternoon tea and home-made cake.

OUR NEXT LUNCH will be on Wednesday 11th May 2016 at Ramsey Golf Club. Open from 12.30pm for a 1pm start, when our guest speaker will be ROGER SMITH whose topic will be “WATCHMAKING”. Isle of Man based Roger was a pupil of the world famous watchmaker, the late George Daniels, and he has developed a reputation for high quality precision watchmaking.