Tynwald Commissioner -They should have chosen Trevor!

I’m spoiled for choice! Lunch consumed I settle back for the ‘after dinner rest awhile’ interlude and scan Crown Dependency News. Eddie Power has an item with Kate Beecroft MHK averring that something called the NEWSNIGHTBLOG is a ‘good read. It certainly is very well written and thought provoking but it's spoiled for me by being drawn back to would Kate consider it a ‘good read’ if Howard hadn’t fired her after that ‘No Orchids for Miss Blandish’ episode. If she were still undertaking the role now occupied by the youngest Minister in the world, David Ashford MHK, would she instead be curled up reading the Daily Telegraph and faithfully toeing the COMIN line….hm!

Link: https://www.facebook.com/crowndependencypoliticalnews/

Before I have chance to resolve this conundrum an avalanche of emails arrives from Trevor Cowin. Trevor truly is the scourge of the establishment. He complains about many things to many Departments then he forensically dissects their responses and complains again - always helpfully indicating to the recipients where they have got it wrong.

He’s moved up a rung now and is dealing with the ‘Tynwald Commissioner for Administration’. It’s a rather grand title but I eventually determine this is the much vaunted ‘Ombudsman’ role that Tynwald talked about for decades. Anyway Trevor seems to be dealing with an ‘Unter-Ombudsman’ obviously the real deal is preoccupied.

The ‘Tynwald Commissioner etc’ it turns out is called Malachy Cornwell-Kelly the name rings a bell and first I think its a name I read in Thomas Pakenham’s ‘The Year of Liberty’ about 1798, which I’ve just read again for about the 30th time, but it turns out that was Cornwallis.

On researching Cornwell-Kelly is a former Clerk of Tynwald who went on to other things and then arrived back as Tynwald Commissioner. He’s gone ‘Full Circle’ to borrow a title from Michael Palin.

I make a mental note to perhaps drop a line to Chief Secretary Will Greenhow asking how many Commissioners and quangos we have. We obviously are by now the most scrutinised and regulated strip of land outside of North Korea

I’m unclear what Trevor's complaint is and indeed if now he’s complaining about the Tynwald Commissioner as well although it does occur to me that Tynwald missed a trick by not appointing Trevor as Tynwald Commissioner because if anyone could handle complainants it would be him.

I’m not including his emails he probably circulates them widely anyway. For the time my after lunch break is over and its on to ‘arts domestic’ I hate Sundays!

Image: Trevor battles on

Bernard Moffatt