I was about to post about this when I saw the previous post - no qualified lawyer would have said this is sub judice but they would have certainly have told them to say nowt as its almost certain that it will be useful to cloud 9. Having watched the interview with Mr Topham (before they had had the decency to tell him that the deal was off) I can understand why hes upset but  can;t see that they will have much of a chance because-  1. every proper public tendering exercise always  clearly states that competitors do so at their own expense and risk and that no contract even has to be awarded - its at your own risk its subject to contract and you  build up no legitimate  expectation even if you win the competition (of course this assumes that the gov employed at least a barely competent trainee lawyer when preparing the tender?) 2 As I remember Vision 9 created a company particularly for this venture, probably to limit their exposure if they failed to perform, as such its unlikely that it had any reputation to protect - theres an old saying in the law that only rich men have reputaions and a shell company with no history or cash isn;t likely to get much from a court.


What was interesting was that mr Topham suggested that there had been resistance to change from within the department (DED?)
I've said before that if the contract was lucrative enough we would have seen the DED employees forming a company (or at least having shares in one) and feathering their nest - its the manx way! ( the gov have never divulged the identlty of the other bidders) In the event it clearly went pear shaped when cloud 9 came in with no assets or experience of running motorsports events and made loads of patently unrealistic claims and nearly snatched the prize from under their noses. Part of the Gov saving was baling out most of the DEDwood to cloud 9 and I suspect that even after offering a silly 10 year initial contract the staff would be unwilling to bale out of a comfy gov job to a potless start -up with little chance of success - I doubt cloud 9 wanted to employ any of the 'amateurs' (as Mr Topham called them) on Island and would have preferred to hire their own.
Behind the scenes I suspect other gov departments smelled cash in the water and started circling - some would have legitimate concerns about increased pressure on services but others probably just saw the illusionary £ figures.


Anyway, although I am pleased that cloud 9 won't get the opportunity to wreck the TT, it's most worrying what will happen next - having spend loads of cash 'proving' that the event needs to be farmed out it will be - I doubt any company with the competence to do it will go near it with a barge pole so anything could happen - the manx reputation has been badly damaged - heads should be rolling but they won't.