First, the good news. Premier Paula Cox now says she is open to the idea of a Cabinet pay cut, if it would help to move Bermuda forward.That’s a far cry from her last statement, when she said in a television address: “It takes grit and character to resist the temptation to indulge the politics of appeasement and to say there will be no symbolic cuts in Ministers’ salaries.“This, in my view, would be an empty gesture, inappropriate for a Government or for any team facing the prospect of having to do more with less and having to do it in half the time under double the pressure.”Nonetheless, at first glance Ms Cox still seems to be being dragged to this decision. She says she will only agree to the cuts if senior civil servants do as well, which shows she still does not accept the premise that it will be good for Bermuda if the Island’s leaders show they are sharing in the pain of so many Bermudians.As has been stated previously, it would have been much better if this decision had been made previously and voluntarily months ago.Then it would have looked selfless. Now it looks a grudging concession.Still, something is better than nothing, and it will be interesting to see how senior civil servants, who are paid about as well as their political chiefs, react. In this, at least, Ms Cox is being clever. The moral pressure has now been spread to Bermuda’s civil servants as well. Will they resist, or will they show their selflessness to the people who pay their salaries?Ms Cox’s comments also coincide with the vote by the Bermuda Public Service Union on whether to accept a new pay deal. Whether it will be enough to get agreement remains to be seen.Even so, it looks grubby. When Lee Iacocca took his $1 a year salary at Chrysler it was not conditional on others making sacrifices. Instead, it gave him added weight with which to bargain because he had already made the sacrifice. It’s a shame this Government is not so farsighted.