David Cameron says the Isle of Man is not a tax haven. He should have seen us when we were shouting loudly about it to the outside world and lots of rich people were coming across the water to us for the good of their wealth. This was in the early 1960’s.
Dave was born in 1966. He missed it.
I didn’t.
We called them New Residents.
They were often the likes of retired British colonial officials used to living and working in foreign lands along with the natives.
In the Isle of Man they tended not to have too much to do with the Manx natives.
They usually settled down in and around Ramsey, for some inexplicable reason, and when it came to socialising they did it largely among themselves and one of them, somewhat wickedly, invited me to attend a Sunday drinks party at his home.
As he opened the door to me he whispered: ‘Don’t let on that you’re Manx. Just listen in to their chat. You might get something out of it.’
I did.
The general conversation, I found, was largely confined to discussion of the merits or otherwise of the guests’ respective accountants and advocates and others handling their financial affairs.
One of the restrictions they faced was that they had to prove that the Isle of Man was their ‘centre of life’, where they made their home, with visits back to the UK strictly limited.
As a result it was inevitable that I, in my undercover role, was button-holed by a lady and her husband who asked me: ‘And how much time are you allowed to spend off the rock?’
I told them I could go off the rock any time I wanted for as long I wanted.
They were taken aback and immediately demanded to know which bright boys in Athol Street were handling my tax refugee status.
‘We must give them a ring,’ the lady said.
It was time for me to break cover. ‘I don’t need people like that,’ I said. ‘ I’m Manx you see. I was born here.’
For a moment they confronted with admiration this masterly piece of advance tax planning and its sheer simplicity.
I thought for a moment that they might ask me how my parents had thought up such a wheeze for me.
They finally came to terms with the fact that they were in conversation with one of the natives.
They were a nice couple. They didn’t move on quickly to more comfortable interlocutors.
They began asking me questions.
Eventually the lady asked me if I spoke Manx.
I told them I knew a few words, like ‘thie veg’.
I explained that this meant ‘little house’ which was the outside toilet at the homes of quite a few Manx people in country areas at the time.
The lady steered around this delicately.
She asked: ‘Do you know enough Manx to translate for me that motto we see with the Three Legs of Man?’ She made a commendable attempt at ‘Quocunque jeceris stabit.’
Now that really threw me.
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Jim Barnaby raises a question of literary style relating to an item on Manx Radio online saying: ‘One thousand 400 operations at Noble’s cancelled.’ He says: ‘Is this the same as 1,400 operations or one thousand four hundred operations?’
I’d like to think that this is a cutting remark.
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I have been sent a list of statements for the pleasure of Lexophiles (lovers of words) which I will slip in from time to time, starting with: ‘A bicycle cannot stand alone: it is two tired.
Lexophiles sound like people who enjoy going to dinner at L’Experience.’