Watching the cyclical debate around the numerous disastrous issues and projects associated with the DOI we are reminded of that scene in Lethal Weapon 2 where Arjen Rudd - money launderer, gold smuggler, heroin importer, and all round bad guy of the South African variety - is confronted with the prospect of Detectives Riggs and Murtagh arresting him for his crimes. To avoid the inevitable showdown Rudd suddenly puts his hand in his pocket to remove his diplomatic pass and sneers “Diplomatic immunity” down the barrel of a gun safe in the knowledge that with his get out of jail card played he gets to walk away to fight another day. And that feels rather like the scene that is playing out in front of us all today in relation to several senior members of the DOI and the crumbling not fit for purpose department they mistakenly believe they are holding up.
As we write Nick Black former CEO of the department has superficially retired but really like Arjen Rudd he is still there sneering and waving his diplomatic pass for all to see while a big bag of smuggled Krugerrand's has been stuffed into the boot of his car. The real problem here being that, as we all know, we aren’t just dealing with a few rogue diplomats claiming diplomatic immunity either. We’re dealing with an entire embassy payroll which benefits from similar protections that in all likelihood is going to require some kind of loose-cannon Martin Riggs character to deal with.
It’s well reported that the most controversial quote attributed to former MHK Peter Karran was his accusation of institutional corruption levelled at the Court of Tynwald - and with the DOI today we have probably the most clear example of Karran’s type of institutional corruption ever seen in the Isle of Man. At the time Mr Karran’s “institutionally corrupt” comment was widely (and deliberately) misinterpreted in the financial sense of the words rather than what we are sure he meant, and what we clearly see here, which is a deep form of moral (or even amoral) bankruptcy at an institutional level. A management culture and structure which throws up clear evidence of deep defects of personal character, crooked modes of thought and behaviour, the widespread acceptance of failure and an absence of almost any form of commercial competence or logic that is so unbelievably toxic that it corrupts everything it touches via some warped process of osmosis.
In fact even the word toxic seems to fall well short of the mark when attempting to describe the enormously corrosive culture which pervades in departments such as the DOI - which seems to consume and destroy anything and everything in its path. Common sense doesn’t seem to matter, public service doesn’t seem to matter, financial prudence and value for money doesn’t seem to matter. In substitute all that does seem to matter is lack of accountability and ever bigger salaries, presumed status and prestige, relentless grand plans, and the cultivation of great swaggering egos which cannot be reigned in - a classic Bonfire of the Vanities scenario. Which incidentally reminds us of Tom Wolfe’s famous chronicle of nineteen-eighties greed and excess where washed up alcoholic journalist Peter Fallow declares that “If you’re going to live in a whorehouse there’s only one thing that you can do: be the best damn whore in town” - which seems to sum up perfectly how the inverted pyramid of institutional DOI incompetence and vanity works and the exact reason why Alfred Cannan needs to take swift and decisive action in relation to the DOI now.
Cannan-fodder?
So far our pandemic recovery plan has been a good measure of luck and reasonable strategic thinking and what the IOM probably does need right at this point in time is a decidedly unreconstructed free-market Tory like Alfred Cannan at the helm - someone who seems prepared to make big decisions and to borrow or raise money in the capital markets to fuel our economic recovery. Money is cheap, risk attitudes and risk tolerances post-covid are higher, and there is a sense of renewed optimism in many quarters about the general direction of government travel at the high level. Until, of course, we arrive at the very structure of government itself which still seems incapable of any form of structural reform and remains so content with openly rewarding failure that any form of cultural change will be impossible until it does.
Let us not forget that the only reason we are currently borrowing such eye-watering sums of money is to buy out vast failures in what are largely infrastructure projects such as the MUA debt, the Liverpool ferry terminal, the promenade project (which is a disaster of almost epic scale), and a literally enormous cash requirement for the IOM Steam Packet. So let’s not delude ourselves that without any form of cultural change the vast amounts of money currently being raised will actually be applied to our economic recovery at all. It won't. It will simply be applied as a gold-plated sticking plaster over the gangrenous festering open sore that is the DOI and its toxic arrogant and loose-spending management as well as other similarly dysfunctional departments of government with their equally toxic, corrosive, and destructive influence over everything they touch. So as we slowly approach the new year with a new Tynwald and a new Council of Ministers at the helm of government there are decisions that we all know need to be made, lines in the sand that need to be drawn, and gauntlets which need to be thrown down now. In short - if you expect the public to share in any more pain after the worst and most insecure two years in living memory for most private citizens Mr Cannan then a fair amount of Cannan-fodder needs to be thrown into the grinder now before it’s too late.
If Mr Cannan genuinely thinks he’s up to the job of rebuilding our economy and our faith in our government in moving forward and fully capitalising on the road ahead (as we suspect that he may well be) then he knows exactly what to do ..
Pictured: Claiming Diplomatic Immunity didn’t end especially well for Arjen Rudd in Richard Donner’s 1989 film Lethal Weapon 2.
