Unlike the rest of us, who trudged wearily back to work this week, Parliament’s Christmas holiday extends until February.

Which is not to say the daily business of governance doesn’t go on. It does, of course. But Bermudians will have to wait until late next month for the inevitable slew of new legislative initiatives to be announced, as well as for flesh to be put on the bones of some projects which have already been unveiled.

Details of a massive — and massively expensive — public works undertaking in the form of a new airport will be forthcoming when Parliament reconvenes. So will the legislative and administrative infrastructure for the 2017 America’s Cup (having a full-time Minister to preside over this hugely complex and multifaceted project makes eminent sense, formalising a situation which has unofficially existed for many months now).

A new Education Minister will be in place by next month and hopefully will do more than simply warm his or her seat while holding the portfolio. But history will be no more on the new Minister’s side than the entrenched bureaucratic interests.

Frankly, public education remains the poisoned chalice of Cabinet positions in Bermuda. After more than four decades, not one of the United Bermuda Party, Progressive Labour Party or One Bermuda Alliance frontbenchers who has held the post has had either the political or moral courage to challenge the Ministry’s mandarins. And the consequences of this inaction have been tragic for generations of Bermuda’s young people.

Because the simple fact of the matter is that the sisters, brothers and cousins of public school students who attend private schools tend to do very much better academically and in life because of a rational, relevant and challenging curriculum.

And now gaming has been legalised with nary a hint of the widely expected but apparently wildly overestimated political push back which had been anticipated, Government will need to impanel a commission to oversee casino licensing, regulation and enforcement and specify its terms of reference.

Of course, most Bermudians will enjoy the extended break from the circus-like atmosphere which has increasingly come to characterise meetings of the legislature. Both the OBA and the PLP need to stop viewing Parliamentary sessions as de facto campaign rallies intended to fire up their respective bases and ratchet up the polarising rhetoric. Indeed, there is entirely too much emphasis now placed on what amounts to non-stop campaigning between elections, far too little on governing.

Neither party offers voters much in the way of positive agendas: rather the non-stop mudslinging consists almost entirely of overt and coded appeals to the electorate to blame the other side for all of the problems Bermuda is confronted with.

Each side enjoys casting its elected representatives as high-principled Avatars of Virtue, shrugging off the attacks of the Evil-Doers across the Parliamentary aisle and the slings and arrows of their partisan critics on radio phone-in shows and social media.

But they cannot hope to defeat their greatest foes: growing voter sophistication and growing weariness with the name-calling, scaremongering and serial irresponsibility which has come to mar so much of political life in Bermuda.

To say the charges and counter-charges frequently laid in Parliament are lurid is to say the sky is blue. Allegations of plain, old, garden-variety incompetence are eschewed. Instead the public is fed a constant diet of outlandish claims involving scurillous subterfuge, devilish conspiracies and single-minded vendettas being pursued under the guise of political business. But these eye-popping (and routinely unsubstantiated) claims now usually inspire yawns and knowing shrugs among voters rather than shudders.

Most Bermudian voters would welcome a more consensus-driven approach to politics. The Government and Opposition already share much common ground in terms of policy priorities and positions on key issues although they are loath to admit it. And opinion polls consistently demonstrate OBA, PLP and swing voters all share the selfsame chief concerns — the economy, jobs, crime — while also sharing the same distaste for the hyper-partisanship favoured by their Members of Parliament.

It would be heartening to think that when Parliament does reconvene the MPs could start to go about their business in a more dignified and intelligent way, one which did not threaten to subtract from the sum total of human knowledge as has been the case of late.