Every week, the Manx Independent and Isle of Man Examiner print letters from their readers.

If you want to share your views with our readers, write to: Opinions, Isle of Man Newspapers, Publishing House, Peel Road, Douglas, IM1 5ED or email:

Don’t forget to include your name, FULL home address and a daytime phone number even if you want to be anonymous in print.

We need to be able to verify the identity of everyone whose letter we publish.

We don’t print phone numbers or full addresses and respect anonymity if the author requests it.

Here are some recent letters:

Nowhere for the existing silt to go

I refer to the Department of Infrastructure’s proposal in its latest planning application for the Poortown Silt Dump, to leave the silt there permanently (Isle of Man Courier last week).

I’ve drawn to the attention of the new Department of Infrastructure Minister Chris Thomas MHK to these comments made in the application and summarised the position as I see it:

For clarity, the department requests that planning application 20/00837/B is withdrawn and a new application is enclosed which includes an environmental impact assessment detailing the proposed works, the environmental arrangements for the site, together with the arrangements for site restoration and aftercare.

As with our previous application (20/00837/B), the department is not seeking to deposit any additional dredged spoil within the facility.

The environmental impact statement states:

The proposed development is needed in the absence of a cost-effective, available alternative for the final disposal of the dredged material.

Disposal at sea was considered and ruled out by the DoI in 2015 due to the elevated contaminant concentrations in the dredged material.

Re-use for environmental enhancement at the site of the former Cross Vein Mine was considered and ruled out by the DoI and the Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture (DEFA) in 2019 due to untenable costs associated with this option; particularly costs associated with stabilising and transporting the development dredged material to Cross Vein Mine, and preparing and managing the site at Cross Vein Mine.

Disposal at the Wrights Pit North (WPN) landfill was considered and ruled out by the DoI in 2019 due to the site being a strategic landfill facility for non-leaching, nonbiodegradable, problematic wastes, and being unsuitable (e.g. unlined and nonengineered) and not licensed to receive large quantities of hazardous dredged material.

Disposal at the Turkeylands Old Quarry (TOQ) landfill was considered and ruled out by the DoI in 2019 due to the site being a strategic landfill facility for asbestos and Incinerator Bottom Ash (IBA) waste types and being unsuitable (i.e. lacking void space) and not licensed to receive large quantities of hazardous dredged material.

Disposal at the Turkeylands New Quarry (TNQ) landfill was considered and ruled out by the DOI in 2019 due to the site being a strategic landfill facility for the deposit of inert wastes and maturated IBA from the island’s Energy from Waste (EfW) facility, and being unsuitable (e.g. unlined) and not licensed to receive large quantities of hazardous dredged material.

It would appear, therefore, that there’s nowhere for the silt presently stored in the field adjacent to Peel Power Station to go, which has a planning condition requiring its removal by 2024.

This limits the options available for the dumping of future dredgings from Peel Marina and limits the options for a site for the intended Peel Sewage Treatment works.

So, what options do you have you for disposing of silt from future dredgings from Peel Marina? If there are any, then clearly the statements in the environmental impact assessment are at best misleading and at worst aren’t true and you application ought to be refused?

In the absence of any apparent options, is it your intention to drop the flapgate permanently, let the harbour return to its previous tidal state and let the silt disperse to the sea in small quantities on a daily basis with each ebb tide?

Trevor Cowin

Poortown Road

Peel

Too many weeds in the island

No doubt our Tynwald members will be congratulating themselves on Tuesday over the immaculately manicured grass and the hedgerows in the square mile around Tynwald Hill but they really need to look at most of the other areas around the island where it is nothing short of a disgrace.

t road from Ballasalla to Castletown for example where for most of the walk it is impossible to walk two abreast while in some areas it is impossible to walk with a pram for fear of the occupant being scratched by the overgrown brambles.

Beauty is not just about Tynwald Hill and the 5th of July.

Juan Kermode

Meadow Court

Ballasalla

Being diagnosed with dyslexia

I was interested in the report ‘health bosses want to build a new adult respite base (Manx Independent, June 9)

I was surprised to discover Radcliffe Villas deals with adult learning disabilities and that it had opened in 1983.

If I didn’t know better I could have sworn adult learning disabilities were virtually unheard-of in the Isle of Man in the eighties and possibly so in the early nineties.

These days the most well-known learning disability is dyslexia.

In the eighties and early nineties you never seemed to meet anybody on the Isle of Man who said they were dyslexic.

Very few people here had heard of this condition.

Most people who had heard of dyslexia, back then, thought it was just a fancy word for being unable to read and write, or being barely literate.

In those days, if you said you were dyslexic and that you could read and write adequately, that was regarded as a contradiction in terms.

A long time ago, it seems like 100 years, I was officially diagnosed with dyslexia by the school doctor when my family lived in England.

I didn’t know about this until I was 19.

Nobody seemed to talk about learning disabilities when I was a schoolboy or a teenager, at least not on the Isle of Man.

There were several occasions I told people I was dyslexic when I was a young man.

I would always hear the same ‘answer’. People would say straight back ‘you’re not dyslexic, you can read and write’.

The next most typical ‘answer’ I would hear would be ‘I don’t see how you could be dyslexic, your handwriting is too neat and your spelling is too good’ etc.

I shouldn’t need to say this. Learning to read and write isn’t the only reason we go to school.

A pupil or student may be able to read and write well and they could still be otherwise backward.

They could fail all their exams.

When we are at high school almost everything we are taught is a preparation for exam.

I eventually stopped telling people I was dyslexic because nobody here believed me.

I might as well have told these people I was an alien from another planet.

These days we have gone from one extreme to the other.

Being dyslexic now sounds no more unusual than having ginger hair.

Surely it must be over-diagnosed?

Everybody who does badly at school has a learning disability and every underachiever has a syndrome.

Nobody seems to be lazy or stupid any more.

I am no longer surprised some people have said there is no such thing as dyslexia.

But I was officially diagnosed with this condition when it was barely heard-of.

Ian Ellis

Richmond Grove, Douglas

Culpability in sex abuse of children

Calling in on her way home from school my granddaughter announced: ‘We’ve been studying betrayal blindness.’

I learned that on May 15 the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination - comprising more than 14 million members - released an independent investigation on its mishandling of decades of sex-abuse allegations (Google: SBC Report).

The findings are appalling and the implications staggering.

Victims and whistle-blowers made phone calls, mailed letters, sent emails, appeared at meetings, held rallies, and contacted the press – only to be met, time and again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility.

Yet SBC authorities were singularly focused on avoiding liability so that, survivors and others who reported abuse were ignored and disbelieved, while convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church or congregation.

A modus operandi favoured by the Catholic Church and Church of England.

How did Christianity produce institutions in our modern societies which are breeding grounds for sexual abuse?

Psychologists call the phenomena betrayal blindness, meaning, what happens when someone can’t or won’t see the evidence of betrayal or abuse that’s staring them in the face, because of what it would cost them to recognise and act upon it.

As we consider the SBC investigation in America, we would be foolish to think that Christian sexual abuse this side of the pond is a thing of the past.

Religious institutions here too must change.

The pursuit of power, the protection of assets, or the insinuations of lawyers and insurers that there is a ‘greater good’ than bringing the truth, however uncomfortable, into the light, be damned.

Those who have experienced danger in a place where they rightly expected to find safety should raise their voices with impunity.

Perhaps those who pray in Tynwald could ask their god to forbid His disciples from sexually abusing children.

Doug Clark

Ballamodha, Ballasalla

Try to lure Tour de France here

I see that this year’s Tour de France will start in Denmark later this week.

And it reminded me of the time, about 10 years ago, when I contacted the Manx tourist board with my suggestion that the Isle of Man could host a stage of the race.

I expressed the view that it would put the island very much in the international spotlight if a stage was held around three laps of the route of the iconic TT course.

In their reply, the tourist board told me that, while acknowledging the value of my suggestion, such an idea would be very prohibitive in terms of the money needed to finance such an event.

With the likes of legendary Manx cyclist Mark Cavendish having highlighted the island’s sporting prowess, I wonder if it is now time to re-consider such an idea, which would certainly put the Isle of Man firmly on the sporting map, as well as attracting many new visitors to the island.

Dave Bassett

Crosby

Liverpool

Inquiries needed into pharmacies

There needs to be an inquiry into why such long queues and no receptionists to answer calls at Lloyd’s Pharmacy Parliament Ramsey.

It is appalling the length of queues that seem to be increasing each day.

On June 22 I queued at least half an hour to pick up my repeat prescription ordered the previous week.

I had tried phoning first to see if it had been fulfilled – but there was no answer and phone kept being cut off after ringing for while so hence the queuing at the chemist.

When I finally arrived at the counter I was told they had never received a repeat prescription so I had better contact my doctor’s surgery.

I tried calling numerous times that afternoon and eventually about 4pm the call was answered and I was told the prescription was given to pharmacy on June 18.

Tried calling the pharmacy but again no answer and then cut off.

The following day I asked my daughter and her partner if they would mind seeing if they could pick up the prescription for me .

When she went in she told the assistant what I had been told by the surgery.

The shop assistant eventually found the prescription upstairs somewhere - but added it could not be processed until Monday 27th.

My daughter asked for the prescription and took it to Kirk Michael Pharmacy and it was processed immediately with all the items requested.

My heart goes out to the elderly, infirm and those that need prescriptions fulfilled.

Not everyone has access to their own transport or someone to pick it up on their behalf.

There seems to be something wrong with the Lloyds Pharmacies systems at the moment I feel the pharmacists and harassed shop assistants are not to blame I feel the problem is bigger than them.

I know I am only one of many with the same concerns.

Pauline Birks

The Elms

Ramsey

Confused by your roundels on prom

As a visitor from Australia for the TT since 2012 I have been left confused by the recent road work at Douglas Promenade.

The first time I drove down Broadway towards the Promenade I saw a green light and came to what I thought was a traffic light controlled T intersection with me having right of way.

As I went to go through the intersection I suddenly encountered traffic travelling straight through the intersection and narrowly avoided a collision.

It was later after closer inspection I realised that the traffic lights were for the pedestrians and not the intersection.

When you come down the promenade you have no traffic light but as you turn onto Broadway you encounter traffic lights.

By removing the round about it has made the intersection a very dangerous place, especially for motorcyclists.

Motorists travelling along the Promenade treat it as a continuous road. Please install a roundabout or a set of traffic lights to halt any confusion.

When you travel along the Promenade toward the town centre you encounter the pedestrian crossing with the yellow flashing lights and zebra crossing.

They are fine. What is not so good is in between these crossings is a laid out crossing in brick paving which has nor white bricks but is used by pedestrians to cross the road.

I still don’t know if I should stop for pedestrians or put up with the abuse from drivers for stopping to let them pass.

Douglas has a lot of tourists who do not have local knowledge and need to know the road conditions.

This is needed for both the driver and pedestrian.

Please bring back the horses and let them venture all the way along the Prom as it is a unique attraction that ensures the breed for generations to come.

John Scarfe

West Australia

The terrible state of the Isle of Man

So Chris Thomas, new Infrastructure Minister, has charitably said he will not be blaming his predecessor for the current state our island is in.

Really?

Admittedly, the sad state of affairs cannot be tied down to one person but I have always believe that the head of any department or organisation carries the can in the final analysis.

But I have to admit that the track record of the DoI or Department of Incompetence as it has rightly been called over the past few years has been deplorable.

I came to live here 54 years ago and it was love at first sight.

The island was Britain in miniature and had everything I needed. I sang its praises to all my friends and as holidays abroad became so popular I urged our government to get in on the action by advertising holidays in our island as the foreign holiday at home with none of the stress associated with passports, flight connections, changing money etc.

Recently as Covid regulations started to ease and holidays became a possibility again I so wanted our government to seize the moment at last and get in on the act.

I started to think about all the lovely times my family has had over the years enjoying what the island had to offer. And I thought of what we have to offer now. It was heartbreaking!

Port Soderick beach, play area and glen are a deserted mess and the magnificent Marine Drive is incomplete. That could have been repaired years ago as an exercise for the Royal Engineers.

Pulrose Bridge has become a hump-backed multi-coloured confusion.

Dare we hope the NSC swimming pool will have its flumes fully operational and safe for the school summer holidays after how many attempts to get them right?

We have only half a railway and horse trams left and even the future of the horse trams was in jeopardy for a while. The much-loved and missed fairy lights along the prom are gone, replaced by characterless no-nonsense street lighting.

The prom itself is like an unfinished jigsaw.

Whoever designed it must have been high on drugs.

Driving along it is a nightmare, especially with the ridiculous and highly dangerous roundels.

They need to be replaced by the universally understood roundabouts, resplendent with shrubs and flowers as they always were. I doubt if an evening stroll along the prom would be a pleasure any more.

The sunken gardens may or may not be returned to their former splendour. I’m not holding my breath on that one and I would probably not be able to find a vacant parking spot nearby to find out anyway.

The lemon squeezer restaurant has turned into yet more government offices.

The former Summerland site is still an eyesore after all these years and could be a beautiful memorial garden and open air concert stage.

Further afield Laxey Wheel may or may not be working.

The main road through Ramsey town is a miss-match of styles, far too narrow in places and with inadequate parking.

A group of dedicated hard-working volunteers are attempting to bring the once famous Victorian Pier back to life - with no help from the government.

The museum at the Bungalow has gone.

For years the government deliberated about having a dedicated TT museum. At the Bungalow they had the nucleus of what could have been a perfect TT museum and cafe in the perfect place, watched over by Joey Dunlop. What did they do about it? Nothing! They let it go.

The children’s skate park and play area on Peel prom are gone.

On to Port Erin where the Marine Biological Station still lies in ugly ruins and only a public outcry prevented the much-loved Cosy Nook Cafe from being modernised out of keeping with the character of the village.

In Castletown those that care have had to fight hard to ensure the town’s Nautical Museum’s raison d’etre – the Peggy – will be returned to its rightful home.

Add to the above the terrible state of the roads and pavements, the overgrown hedges, weeds and brambles obstructing footpaths and obscuring road signs and a general air of neglect.

I have to acknowledge the sterling work done by dedicated volunteers in keeping our beaches, glens and nature reserves and public attractions tidy but I cannot help but say to the government – HANG YOUR HEAD IN SHAME!

Rosie Scott

Friary Park,

Ballabeg

Post office staff need training

Would it be possible to get all the counter staff in the main post office trained up to do Moneygram?

I try to support a family in The Gambia with money for food etc and find it very frustrating at times to be told ‘it’s the lady’s day off today and we can’t do it’ .

I feel sure it can’t be that difficult,

Peter Russell

Woodville Terrace

Douglas

If you want to share your views with our readers, write to: Opinions, Isle of Man Newspapers, Publishing House, Peel Road, Douglas, IM1 5ED or email:

Don’t forget to include your name, FULL home address and a daytime phone number even if you want to be anonymous in print.

We need to be able to verify the identity of everyone whose letter we publish.

We don’t print phone numbers or full addresses and respect anonymity if the author requests it.