ElectioneeringFebruary 15, 2011Dear Sir,Please may I comment on the new National Health Care discussions put forward by the Minister of Health Mr. Zane Desilva.As of February 17, 2011 the minister:a. Does not know the approximate cost of the plan.b. How it is going to be paid for.c. Has not even consulted some of the most important stake holders, i.e. the doctors.With the timing of this announcement, this sounds like the former premier’s politics. Remember the hotels that were promised but never delivered? Politics at its worst! There must be an election coming.ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHYSandysHire Bermudians firstFebruary 9, 2011Dear Sir,It’s a pity that the Members of Parliament didn’t share Senator Kim Wilson’s mindset that “a lower wage is better than no wage’, when they accepted their massive salary increase. Since that increase, I can recall a former Premier stating that it was beneath them as Members of Parliament to take a pay cut, however, just recently the current Premier stated that they have taken a pay cut by not having their salaries increased in the past few years. A pay cut is the act of reducing a salary and I don’t recall that happening with the salaries of Members of Parliament. A salary freeze is a situation in which a company temporarily stops giving raises to employees because of financial difficulties. I would imagine that Premier Paula Cox as thinking more in terms of a salary freeze when she spoke about the salaries of the Members of Parliament.Sen Wilson recently teamed up with the Bermuda Hotel Association and is urging Bermudians to consider working in the Hospitality Industry. She also recently announced that there would be a three-month moratorium on the granting of work permit for landscape gardeners, cleaners, kitchen and bar porters, housekeepers and skilled labourers.The moratorium, however, is not being well received by those business owners who have become accustomed to hiring foreign workers. President Stephen Todd of the Chamber of Commerce is concerned that the ban on foreign hiring would result in the position being temporarily filled by a Bermudian. I think I’ve missed something along the way. It used to be the other way around when I worked in the work permit section of the Immigration Department. Bermudians always came first. Why do business owners now think it is their right to hire foreign nationals?I do not sympathise with the business owners because I see far too many jobs currently being occupied by foreign nationals that Bermudians should be occupying. Sometimes employers’ complaints about Bermudian workers are justified but, there are also times when an employer will distort the truth to get a work permit approved. It’s obvious that a lot of the business owners have better control over the foreign nationals who are prepared, before they arrive in Bermuda, to accept low wages. If an employer realises that he can make a profit from this cheap labour, he will hire from this pool to enable him to boost his profit. Yes, we expect these employers to be upset with the moratorium because it will impact their bottom line.I don’t think that Bermudians are refusing to work in those positions. They would, however, need be employed in at least three of the positions to live comfortably in Bermuda. Employers must not forget that the salaries of many Bermudians have to cover rents/mortgages, utilities, vehicle and vehicle maintenance, school fees, food, clothing, gas and the list goes on. Most Bermudians are not as fortunate as some of the expatriate workers in Bermuda who have much of this provided for them by their employers. It may be true that a lower wage is better than no ways, but what is one expected to do for that low wage?JENNIFER CAINESDevonshireAn unlawful practiceFebruary 12, 2011Dear Sir,I have followed the correspondence on your letters pages about the Post Office’s recent practice of refusing to deliver our mail unless it is addressed exactly as they say a practice the Post Office’s staff sing about gleefully in its TV ad. As a fresh-faced young lawyer on the island, I decided to check the legal authority for this reluctance to do their job. It turns out that there is none! The Post Office is acting unlawfully. When reading the rest of this letter, keep in mind the strongly worded section 65(4) of the Post Office Act 1900, which contains a stern warning: “No Post Office Regulations which are in contravention of, or inconsistent with, or repugnant to, any of the provisions of this Act, or of any other Act, shall be of any force or effect.”Section 24 of the Act sets out the Post Office’s duty to the public it is the duty of every Postmaster to cause all post to be delivered within reasonable time. Section 39 deals with Undeliverable Parcels, defining these as “Any parcel which is so imperfectly or illegibly addressed, or so torn or defaced that it cannot be ascertained for whom it is intended, or which for any other reason cannot be kept or delivered” (my emphasis). It directs that such items shall be dealt with in such manner as Post Office Regulations may prescribe. The Act does not deal with undeliverable letters, but it seems that the same definition should apply.The applicable regulation is the recently amended Post Office Regulation 59, which states that “all postal packets which bear an incorrect address or for any other reason cannot be delivered.... are to be sent to the Postmaster-General (to return to sender etc.)”. Given the overriding duty of the Post Office to deliver the mail, and the definition of undeliverable parcels, I reckon that the Act does not allow the Post Office to refuse to deliver something when the address is clear enough to identify the recipient.Further, neither the Act or the Regulations gives a definition of a “correct address”. Although this appears on Post Office leaflets and posters, there is no legal authority to say that an address with an unspecified Parish, say, is “incorrectly addresses”. I’ll leave you with section 75(e) of the Act: “...any Post Office employee who wilfully misspends his time so as to retard the progress, or delay the arrival of a postal packet commits an offense punishable by a fine of $1,440.”Anybody like to prosecute the Postmaster-General?SIGNED SEALED AND UNDELIVEREDSmith’sA zebra by any other nameFebruary 14, 2011Dear Sir,We all have been reading quite a bit lately of a merger between the United Bermuda Party and the Bermuda Democratic Alliance. We all know that the BDA came out of the UBP in 2009; therfore a merger in any shape or form will be simply a return of the BDA to the UBP. When the merger takes place, the party will be given a different name. Whatever name it may be given it will still be the same old UBP with those who left in 2009 back on board. Mr. Editor, what else could it be? I said before in one of my previous letters that if the UBP changes its name every day of the week that it would make no difference. It is still the same set of people. It does not take a Princeton or Harvard graduate to figure that out. That is common sense; plain and simple. Should you call a zebra by any other name it would still carry its stripes.When the four men were brought from Guantanamo Bay to Bermuda, protests were made and one of the things that the people were saying then was; “We want a third Party”. When the BDA was formed, I thought (and probably others) that it was the answer to the cry for a third Party. Some time after the Party (BDA) was formed I remember Donte Hunt saying that the party was riding a wave. I thought that meant that they were getting good support. Now that there is going to be a merger, the question is: What happens to the cry of the people for a third Party, and what happens to the waver that the Party was riding? I have to come to two conclusions:(1) The BDA has turned its back on the people who called for a third Party.(2) The waver that the Party was riding has crashed and fizzled out on the rock of the strength of the Progressive Labour Party.The BDA, as we understand it, is about to fold at the first hurdle; the by-election in Warwick. Even if it came last at the first hurdle; where is the backbone and fortitude to continue and clear the other hurdles to get to the finish line, which is, to become the government? Have they forgotten how many times the PLP came in last before they actually won? We have read a lot into the results of the Warwick by-election which is only speculation. Would the pattern of results be the same across the Island? Maybe; and maybe not; we do not know. The BDA should have pulled themselves as far away as possible from the UBP and go for the long haul. Now it is the BDA that will have to switch its lights off and not the UBP. In the proposed merger, the UBP has everything to gain while the BDA has everything to lose. I would not be surprised if another party emerge out of the BDA to form the third party that the people asked for and demonstrate to the then defunct BDA what they should have done.RENDOL JAMESSandy’s