THE sharp tongue of Bermuda Industrial Union leader and Government MP Derrick Burgess has often earned him headlines in the very media he appears to loathe.

This week, Mr. Burgess was given more column inches when he made scathing allegations against this newspaper.

The Progressive Labour Party stalwart based his complaint on our ongoing story about a group of pension fund managers who paid Cabinet Minister Dr. Ewart Brown $2,500 each to lunch with him.

"It is quite evident that the reporters of the will go to any lengths to discredit certain people and organisations in this country who are prepared to work for the initiation of positive social change," Mr. Burgess said.

"The efforts of these negative reporters to stop or reverse real social change with false accusations seems never to stop."

That language was mild compared to the tongue-lashing Mr. Burgess gave in July last year. He accused the daily of being "evil and effectively racist" and added: "It's about time they started writing something positive about our people . . . people of African descent."

Mr. Burgess shoots from the hip ? and it's often the messenger he's shooting at. Those who reveal something he'd rather not be revealed are frequently in the firing line. And it's not just the media facing the bullets.

In recent years, Mr. Burgess has accused Auditor General Larry Dennis of thinking along racial lines and a Supreme Court judge of ignorance.

It was Mr. Dennis' special report on the Government project to build a new secondary school on Berkeley Road that so provoked Mr. Burgess' ire in November 2002.

Among other things, Mr. Dennis reported that it was unlikely the school would be completed for its original target completion date of September 2003. It is still uncompleted.

The Auditor also questioned the financial ability of the new insurance company, Union Asset Holdings, a subsidiary of the BIU, to provide the performance bond for the project.

Mr. Burgess' response was characteristically inflammatory. Although he later denied calling the Auditor a racist, the implication could hardly have been clearer.

"The Auditor General's behaviour indicates that he shares the all-too-common belief that people of African descent are illiterate and chained in darkness, and for them to have any type of success, they must be duly humble and suitably subservient," Mr. Burgess said.

He dismissed Mr. Dennis' report as "very biased" and added that the Auditor had not contacted the BIU before coming to his conclusion that the Union could probably not satisfy potential bond claims.

"Again, this behaviour suggests that he believes that we in the BIU are descendants of slaves and have no right to expect courtesy or consideration," Mr. Burgess said.

Judge Vincent Meerabux was the Supreme Court official, whose judgment that a general overtime ban on the docks was illegal was described as ignorant by Mr. Burgess in April 2000.

Mr. Burgess described the ruling as "the most repressive in the history of workers' rights in Bermuda". And when asked whether continued action by his members would place them in contempt of court, Mr. Burgess said: "That's not contempt of court. That's contempt of ignorance on the part of the judge."

Subtlety may not be Mr. Burgess' strong point, but that has only helped him to keep hitting the headlines.