The resignation and forced departure of Australian chef Anthony Reynolds after he made what all seem to be agree was a joke about putting arsenic in Premier Dr. Ewart Brown's food has divided the community.

There are many who think that the actions taken by the Government were entirely appropriate; that Mr. Reynolds' comments were beyond the pale and that jokes of this kind about any Country's leader must be taken seriously. Then too, there seems to be a feeling that for anyone to "disrespect" the leader of the Government is quite wrong.

On the other hand, there are many who feel that Mr. Reynolds' resignation and his subsequent forced deportation were an over reaction to what was an offensive and foolish statement, but that it was nonetheless a joke, and of a sort that is not all that unusual in a restaurant kitchen.

What is not known is what kind of employment record Mr. Reynolds had at the hotel. Clearly he must have been reasonably well qualified and experienced to be an executive chef at one of Bermuda's better hotels, and one that takes a good deal of pride in its restaurants. But it is not known if this was the first incident of its kind or one of many.

If it was the first of its kind, then it would seem that the Government overreacted.

Certainly, Mr. Reynolds' comment were entirely inappropriate regardless of the diner to whom it was directed, and to make them about the Premier was even worse.

Security threats directed towards the Premier are hardly on the order of magnitude of those directed towards, say, the President of the United States, but it only takes one madman to commit a terrible act, so one can understand why the comment was taken seriously.

Nonetheless, it was clearly a joke, and anyone who has worked in a kitchen, watched chefs at work on television, or read books like Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, knows that, rightly or wrongly, all kinds of unsavoury statements get made.

That does not justify the statement, and Mr. Reynolds perhaps took the best course possible when he resigned, whether voluntarily or under duress.

But Immigration Minister Derrick Burgess went too far when he described the chef as "undesirable by any civic evaluation or standard", and claimed the man made "a statement threatening to put arsenic in the food of the Leader of any country or Head of State, is reprehensible to say the least and is tantamount to threatening an act of terrorism, a criminal act of a most heinous nature".

But Mr. Reynolds never made any such threat. To equate what he did with terrorism is ludicrous. If it were valid, then why wasn't Mr. Reynolds prosecuted rather than being allowed to leave the Island, whence he would be free to poison other countries' leaders by lacing their meals with arsenic?

Similarly, Mr. Burgess claimed that since Mr. Reynolds had resigned, "his work permit and residence in Bermuda were no longer valid or legally tenable ? at which point, travel arrangements were promptly made and the work permit holder subsequently escorted by Immigration Officers, to the Bermuda International Airport for safe and swift passage out of Bermuda."

This is also nonsense. Common practice at the Department of Immigration is to allow people who have resigned or whose work permits have expired a number of weeks to settle their affairs before they leave. If every person who failed to leave on the day of their resignation needed to be escorted off the Island, Immigration officers would be very busy indeed. Instead, Mr. Burgess was attempting to add validity to what was an utter and total overreaction to the stupid actions of a man who was clearly immature and insensitive. But immaturity and insensitivity are the not the same thing as terrorism.