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We are all very concerned about plans to change the operator for patient transfers by awarding the contract to a different company.

It is such a vital service, and one which Bridgewater – the present specialist contractor performs extraordinarily well, and we have real fears that a taxi operator will struggle to provide the same level of care. When this happened in the past total chaos happened to the detriment of patient care.

This is why we need to keep Bridgewater for patient transfers - a patient’s view:

Unless you have experience of it you cannot imagine how awful it is.

You’re ill and very scared - first you have to get up at 5am to catch the 7am flight - delays happen and there’s nowhere comfy to wait.

You’re sat there in your wheelchair with everyone looking at you.

You might have had an op or be having chemo and have no hair or wearing a wig and very conscious of the fact!

You’re picked up at Liverpool and taken to your hospital where, again, you sit and wait for your appointment.

Appointment or surgery over you’re picked up and taken back to the airport where you wait (mostly on bench seating) with everyone looking at you.

Sometimes you sit there for as long as five hours - that’s if your flight isn’t delayed.

Nowhere comfy or private to sit when you’re feeling so ill and embarrassed.

Not a pleasant experience and Bridgewater do all they can to improve this experience for you.

The other company tried last time showed no care for the patients and often just drove off without them or left them standing outside the airport.

Surely the Isle of Man could spend some of the money (they presently spend on other things) on Patient welfare and put our people before small cost savings for an inferior service.

Carole Male

The Crofts

Castletown

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Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the decline in population in the Isle of Man is the fact that there are fewer people in their 20s here.

I might be accused of wearing rose-tinted spectacles but when I was in my 20s (20 to 30 years ago), there was a lot more going on for younger people.

It was the tail-end of mass tourism so we benefited from the critical mass that the tourists brought that many venues needed to make a living.

We had the Cave in Summerland, the Palace Lido, the Academy in Ballasalla and Nightlife in Ramsey.

There was also plenty of entertainment in bars in hotels along the prom as well as great pubs such as the Dogs’ Home and later Bushy’s, which always seemed to be full.

From what I have seen of the Courthouse club (rather than the bar/restaurant) in Douglas, I think the men’s toilets in the Lido had more space.

I was also astonished recently to learn from a Manxman in his early 20s that he didn’t know what the Barbary Coast (the pub crawl, not the bar/restaurant) was.

What has become of the Isle of Man?

While pubs now have longer opening hours, there is less of an incentive to go to nightclubs. So that will have had an effect too.

I doubt that the island offers younger people the entertainment and the vibrancy that it once did but I have to admit I am not a connoisseur of venues such as Jaks or Quids Inn. Perhaps they are wonderful and I am out of date.

While I suspect young people leave the island because they think it’s ‘boring’, the island does attract people after their 20s.

Having droned on about how much better the island was in my day, I have to admit that I left in my 20s. That was mainly to further my career.

Several good friends and I came back to our homeland as we approached middle age. Having children is a big factor in those sorts of decisions.

We returned with experience and qualifications that we’d never have got in the Isle of Man and, I think, improved the institutions – both public and private sector – that we joined because of that and our commitment to the island.

Some have suggested that the island should entice people in their 20s back after being a student with tax breaks. But that might mean that those young Manx people fail to realise their full potential because there will never be the scope in the Manx economy in many areas, so it could be counterproductive in the long term.

Roger Spencer

Douglas