That was, Mr Acting Editor, some reality check (pun intended) and it is not one we will be able to cash any time soon. Public debt now stands at $1.469 billion and counting. Our new Government is projecting an operating deficit of a further unprecedented $331 million for the coming financial year and, yes, gasp, they intend to raise the authorised debt ceiling by one more billion dollars to $2.5 billion.Ouch. This is not a promising start for a party that campaigned on disciplined financial management, and committed to the elimination of wasteful spending, with a view to reducing, not increasing public debt.But hey, hang on a minute, we inherited the problem, they tell us, and it is going to take time to fix it. Up until the election the shoe was on the other foot and the One Bermuda Alliance was in Opposition. Now they reckon it may take up to five years to actually turn things around which, not coincidentally, happens to be when the next election will come due. Mind you, what is it they say about the cleverer politicians: better to under-promise and over-deliver than over-promise and under-deliver. Maybe the same is true for projections: better to predict the worse and come up better.Still, on any view, it is going to take time to grow the economy, there is no immediate quick fix, and it will require the injection of foreign capital. But whether voters will be that patient is another matter entirely.Meanwhile, the political battle lines for the next five years, and possibly the next election, are already being drawn. The One Bermuda Alliance successfully tagged the Progressive Labour Party not just with the enormous debt they incurred as Government for the past 14 years, but with a tanking Bermuda economy, and dumping on their doorstep the financial woes of anyone and everyone. It helped win them the Government. The PLP know it and in return are banging away at the OBA recovery plan, such as it appears to date, as pro-business, pro-foreigner and definitely not pro-Bermudian. It is a theme of attack that can be woven (and is) in the early criticism of term limits, work permits and licence fee reductions.Sure, this is broad strokes — but that’s politics for you. The KISS principle in action. It’s a criticism that also happens to play into not just people’s fears, but their worries and concerns for their jobs, and those of their children, and for the future of Bermuda generally. It’s very real and it’s very natural to respond this way. A balance will need to be struck. Few have forgotten what followed when shareholders cashed out on the Bank of Bermuda.Bermuda, on the other hand, is no bank. The recovery plan of encouraging and assisting primary foreign exchange earning enterprises (to use the language of the Finance Minister) is going to be a hard sell in some quarters, important quarters too, when it appears to them that opportunities for Bermudians are being sold out from under them — and in politics the operative word is “appears”.There is going to have to some sustained education or learning up on what’s required, and why, and it will have to be done by the language of persuasion; not by lecturing and not by hectoring, all of which will produce a backlash that will make national discourse difficult, if not impossible.People will need to believe that their Government has their backs and is not just creating opportunities for them (read jobs) but opportunities for advancement as well.Speaking of education, that and retraining will be key to any hope we have of not just turning around the economy but of being able to compete at the highest of levels, particularly if Bermuda is opened up for foreign investment and greater competition, both of which will demand a skilled and productive workforce. That’s what counts in the real world. Sorry, but there are those who have serious doubts about our capability (and our ability) to produce and compete — and they tend to be in key positions. The Hopkins report or not, we have a public education system that has over the years, decades even, suffered frankly from (at best) a kind of neglect — as we have lurched from Government to Government, from administration to administration, from Minister to Minister and Minister, and from vision to vision. You get the picture. We all know the picture and it is going to take time to turn education around too — and not just with more money, but with money spent in the right places and with the right people. No easy assignment.Don’t get me going either on the need for more effective programmes of social rehabilitation. They are essential too, if everyone, and I mean everyone, is going to have a shot at participating in the new Bermuda.Marie Antoinette — remember her Mr Acting Editor — once famously said: Let them eat cake. Not good enough. Let them smoke dope is no substitute either.* Got an opinion and want to vent? E-mail jbarritt@ibl.bm.