Badger is spot on in his comments about declining entries. The decline has been specially noticeable in the last couple of years, since the introduction of the course licence. I don't think that's a coincidence or an effect of the increasing age of riders. As with Barry, I personally know of riders who want to enter and have done meetings but the ACU haven't accepted them as qualifying events. Yet someone who plods round on a G50 at the back of a F400 club race would be accepted. Madness. But as the man says, madness we have no choice in as long as the races are held under the ACU. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Given a more enlightened regime the issues we have been debating would be less pressing, since with more riders coming back there would be less worry about big-budget bikes and TT pot-hunters scooping up all the trophies. If a few people did drift away there would still be plenty of entries. But that's not the case, we do have a shortage of entries and it behooves us all who want to see the events continue to consider why people are turning away. The impossibility, for the long-term amateur supporters of the Manx, of riding on a level playing field against TT riders on megabucks machines, I suggest, is one, though TT riders on megabucks machines may differ in their views.

As I've said in the past there's no real way of limiting what people spend on their bikes (though a "buy the winner" rule might be a good sanity check!) but I remain convinced that spending the price of a small house on a racing bike is not in the spirit of the Manx.

I also remain unconvinced that the Classic events should be such an exception to the rules on which riders are allowed to ride at the Manx. I appreciate there's no logical TT progression as there is in the modern classes, so excluding winners wouldn't be right, but I still feel riders should have to choose between TT and Manx, not both. The Manx is not the TT, simple as. Folk who think others only race there so they can speak of being beaten by world class riders are fooling themselves.

Intrigued to hear the suggestion of allowing 750 machines into the Senior classic (this would bring me back so I'm not unbiased here!) though the 500 purists and those who have spent a fortune on Patons and the like may object!