We Pay But Have No Say

An electorate of 24, a guaranteed salary for five years and no real public accountability, it sounds almost too good to be true doesn’t it?

Well, it isn’t too good to be true for those who putting their names forward for LegCo.

Today sees the opening of the nominations for LegCo as people who didn’t fancy the General Election in 2021 but want to be lawmakers will seek the support of our dear MHKs to be selected for Tynwald.

I’m not going to be cheap and say MLCs don’t do anything, even though LegCo has only sat independently of Tynwald 11 times in the last 16 months, all of the current MLCs are working people who want to do good things, it’s just the lack of public accountability that is the issue.

Voting

With nominations for the selection process opening today, they will then close on February 24, ahead of a vote in March.

Obviously we’ll get the usual list of who has nominated who, a bit of a bio about the candidates and why they’d make a great lawmaker, but unless they particularly fancy a trip to Paul Moulton’s house, Douglas Head or Mongoose Towers (formerly Knox House, but we’re choosing to ignore that), there is no guarantee of proper scrutiny of the candidates by the public, who will be paying their salaries.

Anyway, there’s nothing new in this argument, I ranted on about it last time and probably will again in the future, I just think it’s a shame David Callister wasn’t successful and want to leave people with this question, no cheating, no Googling, how many members of LegCo can you name?

Further particulars of the role together with information on how to stand for election may be found on the Tynwald website by following this link.

BTW if any MHKs fancy nominating me, drop me a line at samturton@gef.im, PLEASE!