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HIGHLIGHTS UPFRONT
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that bills itself as “Uber for dogs”, whatever that means. If a pool of talking hairgel like Dapper Laughs can spin a series of 7 second videos about sexual harassment into minor celebrity then the sky’s the limit.
he Christmas season can be a time for thought and reflection, for taking stock of life and being thankful for the many blessings that the year has brought us. This must be great for all the happy festive elves, but in my case the changing of the seasons has quite the opposite effect.
#2: be a professional teenager This is a subset of #1, but such a low effort way to make money that it stands out in its own. Say what you will about people who get famous for singing badly or making awful comedy, at least there is some pretence of effort that goes into what they do. What is far weirder is that there are teenagers in the world today who have managed to become millionaires solely by uploading videos of things that teenagers would normally do: playing video games,
The coming of cold, darkness and Christmas music transforms me from the sunbathing layabout of the summer months into a bitter, resentful creature of winter. Instead of being grateful for my loved ones and all the Maltesers they will bring me, I fixate on the awfulness of British weather and how much I would like to be freed from the economic requirement to leave the house until Spring. Based on my personality, I am destined to be part of the idle ruling class, and the only things standing between me and an allcaviar diet are a lack of rich parents or any particular talent.
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IN THE COMMUNITY 2015
having stupid opinions about music and obsessing about their appearance. As their audience is other teenagers, presumably surrounded by people doing the same stuff, the young YouTube millionaires are in the position of somebody who has got rich by standing at the beach selling people bags of damp sand. It’s genius, or at least it is until you try to watch a video with six million likes called “Ten Reasons Why Mum Should Leave My Room Alone”, and your brain turns into custard and dribbles out of your nose. The only downside to this approach is that I’d need enough money for three facelifts first.
#1: become an online celebrity The all-consuming nature of a 24/7 internet connection means that people now expect to be electronically stimulated the entire time they are awake, and so the web is hungry for the slimmest morsel of content that can be squeezed into the gap between games of Candy Crush and pictures of Kim Kardashian’s arse. Dream big and you yourself could be that morsel, and a lack of talent is no barrier. In today’s brave new world, you can become a global celebrity simply by virtue of having a funny dance, falling into a pond, or being an annoyedlooking cat. It’s incredible, because in the early days of the internet the only way to achieve fame was by charging money to take off your clothes. Now, you take off your clothes for free and hope that this enables you to “monetise your personal brand” into a sponsorship deal with a hip new startup
#3: receive money from an impoverished African nation We all live in an international finance centre, so the odds are that sooner or later one of those plaintive emails sent from “Moses Attenborough, Your Friend And Former Finance Minister of Nigeria (Africa)” will turn out to be a genuine offer to supply us with a cut of some noquestions-asked US dollars. I firmly believe this to be true, so often spend my weekends replying to any such emails I receive in my Man net inbox. I’ve yet to receive any actual cash, but have a steady supply of witch doctor curses, Thai Rolex watches and many charming pen-friends in downtown Lagos. #4: do business on the “dark internet” The a e s recently carried a terrifying story about “the dark web” illustrated with a
THE ISLE OF MAN’S EVERYDAY ‘SUPERSTARS’ WERE IN THE SPOTLIGHT ON NOVEMBER 14 AS THE HEROES IN THE COMMUNITY AWARDS RETURNED TO THE EMPRESS HOTEL IN DOUGLAS. Along with honouring Island residents who do extraordinary things for the local community or who have overcome great adversity, the event also raised a massive £30,000 for the Manx Radio Dream Catcher charity.
decent living to be made just by becoming middle Isle of Man s discrete broker of BitCoin services and detailed instructions for deleting your search history before the wife gets back from her bridge club.
Dream Catcher chairman Michael Lees said: “Sometimes it is the people who are least celebrated who make such a difference to the people around them. We are delighted to have shown them the recognition they truly deserve with such a sparkling and emotional gala!”
#5: Make Thousands Each Week like This Stay At Home Mom The ultimate get-rich-quick scheme, which is so cleverly designed that nobody can tell you precisely what it is that Stay At Home Mom does in order to make her undoubted millions. We are aware that doctors hate her, but also that she knows how to lose belly fat, and look twenty years younger, all without paying income tax. Unlike most people who got rich online, Stay At Home Mom shuns the limelight, so she has never delivered a pretentious TED talk or chaired a panel at SxSW. Perhaps she is worried that the dermatologists would seize the opportunity to strike? Instead, she prefers to concentrate her attentions in reaching out daily to every person who uses the internet without an adblocker, offering the endless and tempting promise of free millions for us all. I really want to have faith and click on one of her ads, but I tried once and something went horribly wrong - instead of being directly connected to Stay At Home Mom I found I’d signed up to give all my money to Tom Cruise in exchange for some wacky religious pamphlets about space monsters. Dermatologists hate him!
FULL LIST OF 2015 WINNERS: First Names Group Heart of Gold Diane Taylor from Organ Donation Isle of Man Maitland Child of Courage Beth Brown, Emma Healy, Jessica Sherwin & Grace Lee Home Strategic Parent of the Year Annette Slater KPMG Grandparent of the Year Kitty Clague Manx Radio Teacher of the Year Julie Owen from Ramsey Grammar School Standard Bank Dedication to the Arts Over 18 Matt James from Taylorian Productions Steam Packet Company Dedication to the Arts Under 18 Georgia Cooper from Soundcheck Quinn Legal Dedication to Sports Over 18 Phil Taubman from Southern 100 Club Citywing Dedication to Sports Under 18 Ben Grainger Celton Manx Dedication to the Community Steve McGowan from SMP Partners Dream Catcher Superhero John Paul Glover
This year’s ceremony had a black and gold Oscars theme with winners, their guests and members of the local business community treated to a glamorous evening fit for Hollywood. Entertainment came from local superstar songstress Coral Amphlett and Heroes-favourites The Soul Suspects made a welcome return to the stage to finish the evening off in style! Dream Catcher will use funds raised to donate gifts such as specialist equipment to disabled islanders and building material to other local organisations and charities.
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BECAUSE QUALITY MATTERS
Today every woman in her kingdom is surrounded by luxurious fashion and furniture entwined like passionate lovers. Discover a world obsessed with a desire for luxury, driven mad with prosperous infatuation, could this be the darker side of love?
EVERYDAY SUPERSTARS GET CELEBRITY TREATMENT AT HEROES IN THE COMMUNITY AWARDS
“The papers recently carried a terrifying story about “the dark web” illustrated with a giant scary iceberg. I think the aim was to frighten parents into spying on their children, but the actual outcome was to alert the paper’s retired readership to the possibility of buying prescription medicine and other nefarious services on that ‘world inter web’”
Most people would look at their bank account, suck it up and resign themselves to working for a living. They would take a week off in December to dull their brains with mince pies and Wallace & Gromit reruns, and accept this as fair reward for a lifetime of toil. Unfortunately, I am allergic to hard work and tired of The Wrong Trousers, so instead of scouring the internet for thoughtful presents I spend the winter months searching for new ways to make big money with minimum effort. The power of technology means we live in a golden age of get rich quick schemes, so sooner or later I must be guaranteed to strike gold. Come the day I find that One Weird Trick to Make Million$ From Home, your present will be in the post. Until then, why not have a try at some of these yourself?
WORDS Grant Runyon ILLUSTRATION Laura Syvret
PROSPEROUS PASSION
giant scary iceberg. I think the aim was to frighten parents into spying on their children, but the actual outcome was to alert the paper’s retired readership to the possibility of buying prescription medicine and other nefarious services on that “world inter web”. Considering that this is an audience still using Netscape Navigator, it’s likely that a respectable amount of money is to be made just by registering search-optimised websites along the lines of “Discrete IoM Viagra Sales”, “Intimate Massage In ” and “Mother In Law Assassinations (West of Island only)”. I’m not suggesting that anybody actually deliver these services, only that you might score some easy cash just by setting up a PayPal account and taking speculative deposits. Failing that, there’s probably a
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Clothes by: CLAIRE CHRISTIAN COUTURE 47 Duke Street, Douglas www.clairechristiancouture.com Ivory cotton canvas bandage top with black leather trim £195
PHOTOGRAPHY - JULIAN SIMMONDS - www.juliansimmondsphotography.com
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STYLING - WILLIAM HOLDEN AT CLAIRE CHRISTIAN COUTURE ASST BY, MARIA HILL, KENNETH Ivory cotton canvas a line skirt with black leather trim £185
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ISLE OF MAN PREMIER MAGAZINE
BECAUSE QUALITY MATTERS
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12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS HARDWARE
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he show, which ran over the Halloween weekend, saw thousands of votes cast by guests from all over the world. And it was the famous Jaguar that came out on top in a field that included the McLaren F1, the original Mini, the Bentley Speed Six and the original Range Rover. The car was officially unveiled at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show and was an instant hit. One of the display cars featuring on the show stand in 1961 was an open-top version of the iconic sports car - 77 RW - which was driven almost nonstop from Coventry to Geneva by Jaguar’s legendary test driver, Norman Dewis OBE, nearly 55 years ago. Such was the E-Type’s popularity it attracted many well-known celebrity and VIP owners such as Steve McQueen, George Best, Sir Jackie Stewart, Brigitte Bardot and Frank Sinatra.
Words: Les Able
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A young romeo promising his beloved the innocent pleasures and delights over the 12 days of Christmas as listed in the popular Yuletide song from the 18th century would soon discover that true love certainly doesn’t come cheap in 2015.
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In fact, it’s estimated that the modern day lover would need at least £17,000 in his, or perhaps her, pocket for the four calling birds, the eight maids a-milking and all the rest as epitomised in The Twelve Days of Christmas. This song, or carol to some, of the festive season conjures up nostalgic and cosy images of yesteryear when families gathered round the yuletide fire, played forfeits, ate mince pies and drank mulled wine in large quantities. RAYMOND WEIL
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According to the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes this song, which in December becomes supermarket background music, is taken from an 18th century children’s book for a fireside memory-and-forefeits game. One hundred years later it was played every twelfth day night before eating mince pies and twelfth cake.
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The leader of the game began by saying the lines of the “first day” and they were repeated by each participant in turn and for each mistake a forfeit was demanded. In France the song, perhaps not surprisingly, concentrates more on food along with 11 “beautiful full-breasted maidens and 12 musketeers with their swords”!
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In the early 1990s a ‘cool’ young lover would have got away with a mere £2,000 to cover the cost of The Twelve Days of Christmas extravaganza – although this would have been seen as love at bargain basement level – with the more ambitious and frivolous perhaps paying out at least double at the luxury end of the market.
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It was an era when the first of The 12 Days of Christmas would end in a relatively modest outlay for a partridge from a friendly gamekeeper and perhaps £10 for the pear tree from the local garden centre. Inflation over the last two decades has put paid to all that. A brace of partridges, if available and not frozen that is, would cost around £6 from the local butcher while the pear tree more like £25. So what about the fifth day and a visit to the jeweller’s for five gold rings? A warning, any request to see five gold rings at prices of up to £1500 each in these raid-ridden times could prompt the pressing of the alarm button. As for six geese a’laying, the once traditional Christmas roast, will need an outlay of around £280 compared with £120 some 20 years ago. Swans, now a protected bird, would be a no-go area on the seventh day so seven swans a-swimming might, just to impress, be a commissioned water colour at say £550. Eight maids a-milking, who once upon a time would have gladly milked in the hope of catching the young master’s eye, have long since been overtaken by hi-tech mechanised milking parlours. Even supposing our romeo can find eight young wenches, sorry ladies, aged between 18 and 20 willing and able to squeeze a cow’s udders, not to mention wearing an appropriate costume, then each would expect to be paid at least the Minimum Wage of £6.40 per hour.
HARDWARE
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INFLATION HITS THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS Nine ladies dancing, perhaps in disco style, (per performance) would set our romeo back at least £4,000. A great deal of persuasion would be needed to get ten lords a’leaping so the compromise would likely have be actors, perhaps each with a hunky Chippendales physique, at a fee around £3,500.
A 1,451HP ENGINE MA ES THE HENNESSE VENOM GT SP DER THE MOST PO ERFUL ROAD-LEGAL SPORTS CAR IN THE ORLD.
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he US-based company will display its newly uprated Venom at the Specialist Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas. Power for the Venom GT Spyder comes from a twin-turbo 7.0-litre V8 engine that now runs on E85 biofuel. Using the biofuel helps boost the power by 207hp compared to the previous model as this fuel burns more efficiently. As well as being the most powerful road car, beating a Bugatti Veyron by 450hp, the Hennessey car is also claimed to be the quickest. The company says it will cover
0-60mph in 2.4 seconds and reach a top speed of more than 280mph. The Venom GT Spyder is based on the chassis of a Lotus Elise and weighs 1244kg, which gives the Hennessey the best power to weight ratio of any road car too. The company only plan to produce a handful of Venom GT’s in 2016 as they are also preparing the next evolution, the Venom F5. They plan to demonstrate the improved power and performance both in terms of straight line acceleration as well as road course handling and lap time performance.
Our romeo would also have had to visit a pet shop for three French hens, these would be bantam-sized birds covered in silky hair instead of feathers and prices at £70 for two hens and a cockerel. There would have been another visit to the pet shop on the fourth day for four calling birds, possibly canaries at a prices starting at around £20 each. Over the years the song has been done and recorded by a variety of singers, including ol’ blue eyes himself Frank Sinatra. His version replaces some of the gifts with ‘five ivory combs, four mission lights, three golf clubs, two silken scarves and a most lovely lavender tie’.
ECCENTRIC CONCEPT CAR BUILDER RINSPEED HAS CREATED THE ETOS SELFDRIVING SPORTS CARS TO SHO OFF AT THE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHO IN LAS VEGAS.
The stark fact is that the song and the gifts that go with it don’t have much appeal to the modern woman – most women would prefer a cashmere sweater or a designer handbag.
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he show is a huge shop window for the weird and wonderful and Rinspeed looks set to hog the limelight as the Etos also comes with a drone, complete with its own landing pad on the back of the car. The idea of the drone is that it can video the car in case of any danger of a collision and it can also check out the road ahead of the car for traffic jams and hold ups. The Etos uses hybrid power and has a steering wheel that retracts out of the way when the car is in autonomous self-drive mode. This allows the driver and passenger to sit back and relax on a journey, but when the road becomes twisty and fun, the driver can take control again.
It might, however, be worth remembering the ‘partridge in a pear tree’ is the lover’s ultimate offer. The pear is in fact heartshaped and the partridge, so it is said, an aphrodisiac!
THE AGENDA SUPPLEMENT
DO BUSINESS IN STYLE
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AS THE NATION FLOCKED TO SEE DANIEL CRAIG AS 007 IN SPECTRE, THE ASTON MARTIN DB5 HAS BEEN REVEALED AS THE MOST SOUGHT-AFTER BOND CAR OF THEM ALL.
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ccording to researchers at online marketplace eBay.co.uk, a piece of DB5-related memorabilia sells every 30 minutes during daylight hours. At 37 sales or more per day, the DB5’s iconic styling seems to strike as close to the heart as it always has. Posters, model cars, full-size car parts and even complete vehicles make up the numbers and give the DB5, which featured first in 1964’s Goldfinger, a clear lead over
AN INCREDIBLY RARE EARL RANGE ROVER CONVERTIBLE CONVERSION IS SET TO BE SOLD AT THE NEC CLASSIC MOTOR SHO AUCTION AND IS E PECTED TO MA E .
the next-most popular Bond car. In second according to eBay’s statistics is the humble Citroen 2CV, an item related to which is sold every 60 minutes. The bright yellow getaway car from For Your Eyes Only is, by this measure, more popular than the Sunbeam Alpine from Dr No, the Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me and the stunning Toyota GT 2000 from You Only Live Twice. ISLE OF MAN PREMIER MAGAZINE
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he 1973 Range Rover is one of the very earliest “Suffix B” models, highly sought after now by collectors. This Range Rover was turned into a convertible by Special Vehicle Conversions in the late 1980s. It’s only covered 62,500 miles from new and has been the subject of a sensitive restoration. After being converted into a soft-top, the two-door Range Rover led an eventful life and was won by one of its owners in a game of cards. However, this owner didn’t have sufficient space in his garage and put the car into storage where it lay until the current owner heard about it and managed to buy the car in 2014. When it was unearthed from storage, it was found to be in excellent condition, but the car has required considerable recommissioning. BECAUSE QUALITY MATTERS
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CONTENTS UPFRONT Edito..............................................................................................................................................5 Wilkins Watch of The Month...................................................6 Live Long & Prosper..................................................................10 What’s On...................................................................................................12 Me & My Pet............................................................................................14 Current Affairs....................................................................................................16 Heroes In The Community.......................................................18 Give..........................................................................................................................................20 News in Numbers..........................................................................21 MISC......................................................................................................................................22 EVENTS IoM Cloud Launch Event..............................................................24 IoM Breast Care Fashion For Life.................................26 Vino Wine Tastings..................................................................................27 Creechurch Capital Fifth Birthday..............................28 Manx Breast Cancer Support Group Ball.....30 Douglas Rotary Club..............................................................................32 CULTURE Monthly Upload...........................................................................................34 Craft is Art...............................................................................................................36 Calendar Photo Competition..........................................38 Heroes - Viking Stories.......................................................40 Culture Vulture..............................................................................................42 Culture News......................................................................................................43
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FASHION & BEAUTY Live Long & Shop Prosperously..............................46 Fashion Ideas..........................................................................................48 Fashion Shoot.......................................................................................................50 Gift Guide......................................................................................................58 APPETITE Recipes................................................................................................................................66 Food Trends..............................................................................................................68 Wine Talk.........................................................................................................................72 TRAVEL A Christmas Abroad...................................................................................74 Travel Adventures...........................................................................................72 HARDWARE Motoring News..................................................................................................112 Gadgets............................................................................................................................114 Top Ten Techie Christmas Gifts.....................................116 Phone Home........................................................................................................118 PAPARAZZI Are you in?...............................................................................................119-128
Isle of Man | Home & Interiors | December 2015
The best place to find a new place in the Isle of Man
THE BEST PLACE TO FIND A NEW PLACE IN THE ISLE OF MAN 77
ON THE AGENDA | NO.16 | DECEMBER 2015
BUSINESS NEWS, VIEWS AND COMMENTS ON THE AGENDA THIS EDITION: We speak with a local business woman and writer, Michelle P. Tonnesen, explore family values with the Riley family, talk cider and pies with the Manx Cider co and set some New Year’s financial planning resolutions with Christina Skelly. Plus all the movers, shakers and business news from around the Island
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