Douglas City Council appears to have a plan to solve housing issues in the city. The Council recently opened its flagship housing development the James Brown Apartments. The complex is made up of 48 two-bedroomed units, built to the latest environmental standards and fitted with air source heat pumps. So what is Douglas doing that allows it to deliver quality housing projects on time and on budget and are there lessons to learn for the Island’s other housing authorities? Douglas’s experience seem yet again to highlight the clunky, risk averse, delaying nature of government processes. Anyone out there up for delivering change?

Manx Care’s mission is to become the best small Island health and social care system in the world. An ambitious aspiration but few people would argue against it I imagine. That said, despite a substantial uplift in funding, Manx Care seems some distance away from its aspiration, and incapable of sticking to the budget set for it. So what’s going wrong and how do we cure Manx Care’s ailments. The Minister gives her diagnosis on Perspective. Can we really have the world’s best health service without draining precious resources from the rest of Isle of Man Government? It’s a big ask.

Quite a mix on Perspective this week with some cracking speeches from May Tynwald on a move to change the tax status for cohabiting couples, and a request to speed up changes to drugs law. We also have Christian Jones’ parting gift to Manx Radio, a revealing insight into a 1940s guide on how to sabotage government. It seems that what was viewed in the 1940s as sabotage is now deemed to be best practice by most European governments. Perhaps the most important mission of the next House of Keys will be to unpick the resplendent fabric of Government’s “emperor’s new clothes”.

Bearing in mind the fast approaching September General Election, May Tynwald was a relatively convivial affair. Health, Brownfield Sites and Cannabis were just some of the highlights which we’ll squeeze in to Perspective this week, but Ramsey Cottage Hospital, renewable energy, and government’s efficiency program were also raised. Perspective is bursting at the seams this week. We also ponder why government struggles to collect parking fines. At the moment it appears there’s a fair chance you’ll get fined for illegal parking, but there’s a much more relaxed approach to collecting fines. Traa dy liooar seems to be the common theme in this week’s show.

Why are Garff residents so angry about the Ørsted Mooir Vannin wind farm and is it Ørsted or the government they’ve got in their sites. As the controversial Clause 5 is finally dropped from the Local Government Bill why did it cause such consternation across the local authorities? Also passing through LegCo at the moment is the Retirement Benefits Schemes (Amendment) Bill 2026 which updates our 26 year old legislation so as to enhance consumer protection and enable more effective regulation of the pensions industry. Quite a bit to squeeze in to this week’s Perspective. Were the Island’s local authorities just tilting at windmills over Clause 5?

Inaction on climate and nature could reduce GDP by around 5% over the next decade, and the weather we’re experiencing now is the most stable it will be in our lifetimes. These were the stark messages delivered to an invited audience of the Island’s politicians and senior civil servants earlier this week. They heard a call for urgent action to address the climate and nature crisis, and were urged to shift away from short-term thinking in policy and decision making. We’ve heard the blunt warnings but will anything actually change? … Apart from our climate of course?

Ørsted is proposing to develop the Isle of Man’s first offshore windfarm and as we heard on Perspective three weeks ago not everyone is happy about the proposal. Is the approximate 2 billion pound benefit to the Island worth the environmental and aesthetic cost of the project. Orsted gives it’s view on this week’s Perspective. If permission is granted the wind farm will be much more visible than other windfarms off our east coast but is this intrusion a price worth paying for more stable energy prices and a cleaner environment? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.

Perspective 26.4.26 - April Tynwald highlights

In a relatively relaxed Tynwald sitting members appeared to be a little less argumentative than in recent sittings. Perhaps the calm before the election run in storm. Items discussed included a move to unify government’s land and property portfolio, the state of the economy and the National Insurance Fund, and the UK government’s decision not to recommend the Assisted Dying Bill for Royal Assent. We also hear about Sunday’s census and why it matters. Are we facing a constitutional crisis on the Assisted Dying Bill or is it just a constitutional embarrassment?