Friday, February 17, 2012

Are Nurseries Important?

There's been a lot of understandable anger on the rock in the last 24 hours, news that government nurseries and pre-school facilities are to close has not gone down well! However for every angry mother there is somebody else who will tell you that they've not had access to those sort of facilities anyway because of the post code lottery and another who will tell you that "whatever else" is more important than pre-school.

I have a lot of friends who are going to be affected by this (the early 30 somethings, desperate for kid crew) and if you were having kids on the understanding that the facilities were going to be there it must be a hell of a shock when the announcement comes they are to close. I feel shit for them.

Trouble is you have to think of it in terms of the VAT thingy ma' jib. When the dust settles the island will have lost a 3rd of its income - A WHOLE FUCKING THIRD. Imagine in your house what would happen if you lost a third? Life's priorities would suddenly change to Rent/Mortgage,Food and Heat. That's it. There is no room for anything else, like to haves, luxuries etc - all gone. This is what the Isle of Man faces. This is the reality of the situation, bound to be made worse by todays budget, but what I can't understand is how they can still pay thousands of paper pushers way above the market rate (£24k+ for an un-skilled, GCSE C in English administrator..really?????), not contribute realistic amounts towards their own pensions and spend hundreds of thousands of pounds relaying some pavements, all in this reality? Lose some of the non-jobs, make the poeple who benefit from the pension pay for it and leave the pavements in the same shitty state we've had to put up with when the times were good for fucks sake! It's no wonder people get pissed off.

How can you ever expect people to understand that you're on the bones of your ass when you're walking around with an open wallet for your mates to pillage?

Edit - Lets add some number for fun, just so people can see how desperate a hole the Isle of Man is in.

Government wages = £270 million
Benefits = £250 million

Isle of Man Governments Total Income = Not a whole lot more than that

Or For Simple People

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