The Chaos Theory . . .
A UNIQUELY Bermudian variation of the Chaos Theory comes into play every time Government suggests it's in earnest about addressing social and economic inequities, that it will confront those corrosive issues threatening to eat away the fabric of society.
The Bermudian version, of course, turns traditional Chaos Theory on its head.
In mathematics, this hypothesis assumes an underlying order can be detected and teased out of even the most seemingly random series of events. Often this is so.
Statisticians can now determine special destinies in everything from the beat of butterflies' wings in Africa to the pattern of rainfall in the Andes, charting cause-and-consequence effects between the most far-flung and seemingly unconnected occurrences.
In Bermudian politics, of course, precisely the opposite holds true.
The superficial order of things is frequently exposed as an entirely unrelated series of events that do not conform to any discernible plan whatsoever.
The latest Throne Speech is a prime example.
The "ten-year, cross-Ministry initiative" to refashion Bermudian society according to a meticulously conceived plan is sloganeering, not governing.
The Premier's Utopian blueprint for Bermuda, his "Social Agenda", is a newly-minted catchphrase not a new strategy. It's an umbrella term intended to persuade an increasingly sceptical electorate there's indeed an underlying rationality at work in what's clearly become an increasingly dysfunctional Government decision-making process.
Read the document. Then attempt to connect the legislative dots. But be warned. The results do not form a straight line leading to a sun-drenched, egalitarian future. Rather they resemble the sort of deranged squiggle more usually associated with art therapy sessions in psychiatric wards than workable plans that emerge from the sober councils of Government.
From education to public safety to economic stability, there has been no attempt on Government's part to rethink its current programmes let alone to reform them.
The Throne Speech contains no practical plan for addressing public housing, a field where politicians have helped themselves rather than the neediest in society ? cheerfully looting funds specifically earmarked for the island's most vulnerable.
It contains no undertaking to reform a public education system that graduates less than a quarter of its students annually, failing even those who do matriculate with ersatz qualifications that ensure they will be marginalised in an increasingly sophisticated and competitive job market.
And it contains not one reference to shoring up what is now a one-crop economy ? the international financial services sector ? from internal and external threats. Spiralling internal inflation ? the result of far too much money pursuing far too few Bermudian resources, resulting in everything from housing to school places becoming overpriced luxury items ? is as much a threat to Bermuda's socio-economic environment as mounting US legal and regulatory onslaughts against the globe-spanning corporations that outsource jobs and capital to the island.
The Premier's "Social Agenda" is yet another squandered opportunity for the Progressive Labour Party Government.
There has been no root-and-branch undertaking to identify existing deficiencies in Government policies and correct them, to end the incompetence, wastefulness and galloping corruption that are now all unfortunate trademarks of the Scott Government. Rather the Throne Speech simply promises more of the same ? more of the same failed initiatives, more of the same expensive follies, more of the same all-pervasive stagnation.
To accept the Premier's contention that Bermuda will be rebuilt according to a bold new masterplan would require Bermudians to put their logical faculties on hold and subscribe to a type of political wishful thinking few would willingly embrace.
For only if the Scott Government were possessed of an infallibility a Pope would envy could the sordid and often disturbing facts be made to cohere with the Premier's grandiose self-image as the architect of a socially renewed Bermuda.
Critical thought rather than empty buzzwords are what's needed; creative solutions to increasingly urgent social problems, not the dull thunder of the Premier's increasingly antiquated quasi-socialistic rhetoric.This Premier is clearly as committed to meaningful reform as Paris Hilton is to her latest beau. More dependent on a vocabulary of jarringly outdated clich?s and jargon than he is on anything resembling a practical way forward for Bermuda in an increasingly unsettled world, it's hardly surprising the Premier's stock with the public is dropping quite as precipitously as Marsh McLennan's. That will continue to be the case until he wakes up to the fact that Chaos Theory more properly belongs to the fields of mathematics and physics, not governance.