Isle of Man - angling for new subsidies

TJN's Senior Adviser Richard Murphy has done a lot of path-breaking work on the subsidies that the Isle of Man has received from the United Kingdom, through a complex revenue-sharing scheme. He has just noticed another game being played. In short, the Isle of Man took a massive hit to its revenues a year ago when the British government - most likely responding to Murphy's work - cut back the Isle of Man's subsidy sharply.

What did they do in response? They conducted a new exercise in calculating their GDP, which would have the effect of massively increasing their UK subsidy. As Murphy notes:

"That’s a GDP jump of 50% in a year."

The details are here.

A 50% jump in GDP is strange enough. But if you are looking for strangeness on the Isle of Man, then take a look at this. (And no, it wasn't published on April 1.)