SURE it's been quiet on the Hill, Mr. Editor ? we're down for the summer after all, and the only flapping heard up there these days is the sound of a loose halyard slapping against the flagpole in the occasional breeze. But down the Hill, Mr. Editor, across the road at the Cabinet Office, it's a different story altogether.

In the second year of the reign in Bermuda of Alexander The Man, the hits just keep on coming. First, there was the shock resignation of Just Walk Away Ren?e Webb, which followed closely the equally shocking disclosures on the tender and terms of the Coco Loco lease.

As if that wasn't enough, Cup Match wasn't long over and the whole sorry, sordid mess at the Bermuda Housing Corporation was back in the news again after being kept under wraps for two whole years for the purposes of a police investigation.

Then just when you thought you had heard and seen it all for the summer, the PLP Government gets reactive and fires Pro-Active from the Berkeley construction site.

If you didn't know any better, Mr. Editor, you would think that the timing of these disclosures and decisions was by design, and deliberate ? done in the dog days of summer when Parliament is down and out, and voters are distracted by the heat and holidays.

Personally, I welcome the sunshine. Eyes have been opened and tongues are wagging in a way we haven't seen around these here parts since . . . since when? Since the last days of previous administrations, and I leave it to our readers, Mr. Editor, to decide to which administrations I refer.

A pattern emerges from recent events and voters can't help but get the picture as they connect the dots. Let me see if I can't help them. Just a little.

AKE first the BHC disclosures. The Man Himself, after reading the two-year-old report of Auditor General Larry Dennis, boldly declares that there is no smoking gun and exhorts us all to put the whole damn mess behind us and move forward. Well, sure, I understand why he would like us to forget. There is much to forget.

A few examples from Mr. Dennis' report then:

Forty-six loans totalling $770,000.00 which were not within the power of the BHC to grant in the first place.

The discovery of "a sample of projects" for which quotations ranged from $22,000.00 to $390,000.00 and for which the actual costs overran anywhere from ten to 100 per cent, In one case, work quoted at $390,000.00 eventually cost $740,000.00.

In six instances, cost overruns were increased by contractors' invoices being paid twice. One such duplicate payment was for $32,000.00 and two others were each for $10,000.00.

The case of a property refurbishment which the property owner was told would cost around $390,000.00, but actually cost $750,000.00. The owner refused to pay the difference which will likely be paid by BHC (the taxpayer). This wasn't the only case either. There were seven other similar cases and owners have so far agreed to pay only $145,000.00 of overruns totalling $320,000.00.

Meanwhile, we all know about the vast sums one very special painter received ? $810,000,00 over seven months ? not to mention the case of a contractor who was paid $4.2 million for the construction of 12 new condos which was twice the going rate for such construction.

So what did the Auditor General conclude? That there was sufficiently poor control at the BHC that at the very least an environment conducive to wrongdoing was created. What he couldn't determine is whether it was deliberate or gross mismanagement: some choice, don't you think? As for allegations of kickbacks, he said that he was unable to make any finding one way or the other, and I quote from his report:

" . . . my investigation of the Corporation's records produced no indisputable corroboration that kickbacks or other fraudulent activities have occurred. My investigation, however, has not dispelled these allegations. The poor internal control environment and the apparent culture of the Corporation were certainly not conducive to mitigating the risk of wrongdoing by Corporation officials."

Moreover, he told us in his Report, his findings were sufficient to warrant a police investigation ? a police investigation that lasted two years, which involved Scotland Yard and which, the Police Commissioner told us, also featured some 50 search warrants, some 40,000-plus documents, and interviews with 160 people: curiously though, not one of those people interviewed included the Minister(s) responsible for the BHC at the relevant times or those Ministers with whom the BHC did business. Go figure.

No wonder The Man Who Would Be Premier wants it behind him. It all occurred on the watch of the PLP. It all occurred after the PLP went out of their way to put their people in place. We can all appreciate the difficulty in having to account for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have been spent on building affordable homes that still haven't been built after six years in power.

LP apologists are already out there, telling us we can expect this sort of thing from a Government, it's been corrected, and voters will soon have forgotten and moved on to other more important issues. Like what, Mr. Editor, Berkeley? Well, I suppose firing Pro-Active was one way of diverting attention from the BHC, but hardly distracting.

This was the firm which the PLP chose against the recommendations of the technical advisers in Works & Engineering, and this was the firm which the Man Responsible elected to empower and to whom he promised support to get the job done, and who defended them and their work at every turn, pooh-poohing the concerns of his then Shadow Erwin Told You So Adderley . . . and who was that Man?

Why none other than the Man Himself who so far is making himself scarce on the issue (Ashfield, you're on your own here. The other guys DeVent another way.) The blame game has begun in earnest and again everyone's to blame but the people who are responsible: the PLP Government. Meanwhile, the clock ticks and the bill to the taxpayer increases: how many more hundreds of thousands of dollars, no millions, will have been incurred as a result of PLP mismanagement?

A day late and a dollar short? That was yesterday. In the New Bermuda, it's years late and millions short.

I'm certain they will want to put this one behind them too. No wonder either, that the PLP pressured the Speaker in the last session into watering down an Opposition motion which decried Government's systematic mismanagement of the Berkeley construction project. They knew something we didn't. But Pat Yourself On The Back Ms Gordon-Pamplin: you were on the mark.

XPECTATIONS ran high last week with news of a press conference at Government House. Some among us were thinking a Cabinet shuffle, a symbolic gesture that change was on the way in the face of BHC and Berkeley. But Walter Lister? A Minister Without Portfolio?

Call me cynical, Mr. Editor ? it comes from years of being exposed to politics ? but I think you have to put this decision in the right context. Walkaway Ren?e had to be replaced: not just at the Cabinet table but when it comes to counting support for the Big Guy.

Walter has been a long-time PLP Loyalist; and remember Walter was the Man who stepped aside so that the former Premier, Jennifer Smith, could run unopposed for the job of Deputy Speaker and be on track for Speaker ? and in so doing he spared his party some further potential grief should there have been a vote so soon after She Who Must Be Obeyed was Disobeyed.

It also doesn't hurt that after more than 25 years of service to the PLP as a backbench MP the elevation to a Cabinet Minister's salary will enhance his pension too ? no matter how short his stay at the table.

Chalk up another potential vote for Alex.

EPORTS of a leadership challenge are not only said to be exaggerated by the PLP's Scott Simmons, they are flatly denied. Well, it doesn't hurt to be safe when you are The Man and he certainly doesn't want to be sorry after the fact. Even the most casual observer noticed how the Man In Waiting kept himself out of the picture (but not out of the photograph) when Minister DeVent had to meet with angry workers on the steps of the Cabinet Office. Revealing too, wasn't it, Mr. Editor, that it was just Ashfield and Michael Scott on their own?

Meanwhile, The Number Two Man had been busy inside trying to recover lost ground with Bermuda's taxi drivers, looking for Brownie points as he moved to institute increases in fares, notwithstanding his earlier position of no GPS, no increases.

Meanwhile, there are reports reaching me of an increased membership drive within the PLP, within a certain Warwick constituency in particular.

They can deny all they like, Mr. Editor, but it was just a year ago that the Man In Waiting told us that he and some of his colleagues had to mislead voters to make a change, and only one person knows better than Alex Scott how carefully and surreptitiously the trap door can be set and sprung in the PLP, and she is Woman.

RESS aide for the Premier? Well, they've got it half right. The Premier could certainly use some help. The country, too.

The chickens are starting to come home to roost ? and they're ugly.

PS: You will recall I last left off describing the Premier as Alexander the Man (as opposed to Alexander the Great) and now I'm thinking now that maybe Alexander the Not So Great is more appropriate.