Dear Sir,

I had a good chuckle after reading the article in today’s Royal Gazette (July 6, 2020) headlined “Gosling refuses to take city reform lying down”.

The mayor is quite right to respond in kind to Lieutenant-Colonel David Burch’s tirade in the House of Parliament last week when he said he would pursue shutting down the two corporations. One has to wonder how this item became so important to the minister when there is massive public opinion against the proposal.

Mr Editor, I’ve been fortunate to have started and sold one businesses as part of my career journey, and one thing I learnt along the way is to pay attention to your customers.

If the customers of the corporations, and by that I mean the general public who use the facilities in Hamilton and St George’s on a regular basis, whether working or visiting in the City, the many business customers, who operate within the cities’ limits, and other businesses, who use the cities’ infrastructure delivering their own products and services, are mostly happy and content with the corporations’ operation of the cities, why would the minister — and by extension the Premier and other members of the Government — seek to interfere with the corporations and close them down?

It makes no sense at all, unless, of course, the Government is going for a grab of the corporations’ assets and control over any contracts that the corporations issue.

One has to ask the question, if the public and customers of both corporations are quite happy, why attempt to fix something that ain’t broken? And if there are things that are broken, a better solution would be to work with the corporations to fix the problems.

The other big issue, of course, speaks to the point that this minister, and maybe by extension others within the Government, think that they can operate the corporations better than the present administrations.

Does anyone believe that government does things better than the private sector? I think around the planet, the answer to that question will be a resounding “no”!

I do hope that the moderates within the Progressive Labour Party and Cabinet — we know who they are — will push back against those old hardliners in the party. They, I believe, are fighting old causes that really aren’t as relevant today as they were last century.

Frankly, most of them need to move on. The island needs new blood who see co-operation and joint problem-solving as solutions to improving Bermuda, not disruptive and destructive policies that only antagonise. I’m glad the Mayor of Hamilton has taken a strong stance and hope the Mayor of St George will do the same.

The Government needs to back off on taking over the corporations, which have broad community support, and instead focus on improving its own operations.

ALLAN D. MARSHALL

St George’s