I HOPE my old friend and fellow songster Mr Geoff Corkish MHK (he forces me to sing while nobody can force him not to) is keeping abreast of the latest on global warming as political member of the Department of Economic Development with responsibility for tourism.
It appears that the good old days of the Manx visiting industry, when it was a disastrous summer season if we didn’t have at least half-a-million happy holidaymakers arriving from May to September for their statutory fortnights, are on their way back.
The British Isles are predicted to be sunnily sub-tropical by 2050 and it will be too hot to package it down to British-occupied Spain.
A new UK Government report on climate change says: ‘Hotter summers and warmer year-round temperatures may make the UK more attractive for foreign and domestic holidaymakers.’
Now it’s clear that Mr Corkish will not be in office to see these things happen in 40 years’ time, no more than I will still be doing a column in the Examiner, for the same money let me add. But we can consider what’s going to happen...
In Douglas the town council will have to find out what it’s done with all its hundreds of beach deckchairs. We will have to build new fleets of rowing boats for hire. And if anybody has any donkeys with beach skills they should let the authorities know now.
As for the horse trams, there will be no chance any more of the corporation trying to flog them off to the government.
Unfortunately, however, the Isle of Man’s summer tourist industry of the mid-21st century will enforce some unwelcome changes.
All those empty apartments on Douglas seafront will have to be demolished to make way for new boarding houses. I regret to say that the TT will have to be dumped; we can’t have all those bikes and bikers cluttering up the place for two weeks in June.
We will also have to expand Ronaldsway Airport to make way to the super-jets of 2050. This will mean demolishing Castletown and Castle Rushen. As for the Steam Packet Company it will have to face up to buying a new boat or two.
But let us pause for a moment and think things through even more thoroughly on the downside. There will be the likes of Spaniards and Italians and Turks wanting to get away from the searing heat that’s coming to where they now live. They will seek to have second homes in more temperate climes as history reverses itself back into the 20th century.
They will be building villas with swimming pools all the way up the lower slopes of Snaefell. They will insist on good Manx restaurants having to serve them the foreign muck they insist on eating. They will insist on not even trying to speak Manx, the language of their host country. In fact they will be in sufficient numbers to wipe out Manx language and history and culture.
The history of the Isle of Man will be turned back a hundred years. We will be back in the tempestuous days of the New Residents.
Bring back Fo Halloo I say.
• A READER has asked, anonymously, if the Bishop of Sodor and Man, is on Faith Book. Er, you mean the Bible?
• MY regular and also anonymous contributor in Laxey sends me a page from a copy of the Examiner saying: ‘It always strikes me as defeatism for the Samaritans to advertise in the same column as funeral directors.’