A low-tax island conservative reads about France’s cobblestone economy and the school money in transit, then explains Tynwald’s view of public spending
Wednesday, 21 October 2026. Douglas. My desk overlooking the horse trams on the promenade, a strong coffee and a spreadsheet I am pretending to work on, 2.30pm.
A Number That Made Me Choke On My Coffee
I studied economics before I got into comedy, which means I still read OECD reports for pleasure, which means I do not get invited to many parties. This week I read the report on France’s cobblestone economy and the school money that is permanently in transit, and I nearly choked on my coffee at the number. According to the OECD survey it cites, French public spending reached fifty-seven point two percent of national output last year. For every hundred euros the French economy produced, the state spent fifty-seven twenty.
And yet. Students are blocking school gates over missing teachers, overloaded timetables and classrooms that cannot cope with the heat. Some schools reportedly lack chalk. The ministry’s answer, which I would like printed on a tea towel, is that the money for schools exists and is currently in transit.
On The Isle Of Man We Have A Word For That
The Isle of Man is a low-tax jurisdiction. Our income tax rates are modest, there is no capital gains tax and no inheritance tax, and the standard corporate rate is zero. People on the mainland call us a tax haven. We call ourselves a place that noticed, a long time ago, that the more money a government takes, the less of it seems to reach the classroom. Tynwald argues about every penny. Sometimes it argues about pennies it does not even have. That, in my view, is how a parliament should behave.
My neighbour, a retired accountant named Mrs Kinvig, read the French piece over my shoulder and said, fifty-seven percent and no chalk. I said yes. She said, in my day we would have called that theft and sent for the constable. I said the French ministry calls it in transit. She said the constable would call it in transit too, on the way to the station.
The Committee For The Efficiency Of Efficiency Measures
The report’s finest creation is the ministry’s response to the OECD’s advice about spending more efficiently. It forms a Committee for the Efficiency of Efficiency Measures, with eleven members, a secretariat of forty and a subcommittee on lunch. Its first report is due after the election.
I have worked in one office in the public sector, briefly, during university, in a council department in Barnet. I can confirm the subcommittee on lunch exists everywhere. In Barnet it was called the Wellbeing Working Group. It had a budget for fruit. It never once agreed on the fruit. By the time I left, the fruit budget had been spent on a consultant to recommend which fruit. The consultant recommended bananas. Nobody bought the bananas. The money was, I assume, in transit.
A Fair Point From The Other Side
Now, to be fair, because a good conservative should be, the report itself quotes a lecturer who says the figures do not prove that heavy spending produces worse schools, or better ones. The money, she says, is not missing, just looked after so thoroughly that nobody can find it. And the OECD’s own recommendation is not to cut education but to spend more efficiently so there is room for education and defence. I accept that. My argument is not that schools should get less. It is that a state spending more than half of everything should be able to find a box of chalk.
The Paving Stones
The history section is wonderful. Paris paid to lay its paving stones, later paid to cover many of them with asphalt, and now has a third contract in tender to uncover some for tourists. One observation calls it not infrastructure but a relationship. I would call it the life cycle of a government project: announce it, regret it, rebrand it and charge admission.
The Isle of Man has its own version. We have horse trams on the promenade in Douglas, a tradition more than a century old. Every few years someone proposes changing them, cutting them or modernising them, and every few years there is an argument, and the horses keep plodding along the seafront regardless. The horses have outlasted several governments. I find this deeply conservative and very reassuring.
From The Island
For newcomers, my Isle of Man humour diary is where I write about island life and British politics from a slightly right-of-centre angle. People sometimes ask why a North London girl moved here. The honest answer is the sea, the job and the fact that, on the Isle of Man, if a public project goes wrong, you can usually find the minister responsible in the queue at Shoprite on a Saturday and ask him about it personally. That is accountability. France has a committee for it. We have a supermarket.
The horse tram has just gone past my window. The horse looked at me. I believe it was judging my spreadsheet. It is entitled to. It works harder than most ministries and does not need a subcommittee on lunch. It just needs a carrot. Efficient government, in a single animal.