WHILE there's one profession that can claim to slightly predate politics, none - including the oldest - is more disreputable.

Party politics came late to Bermuda. Nevertheless, its tactics of censorship by omission, of dissembling, of trimming facts until only the pared, meatless bones remain to be served up to an information-hungry public have been embraced by successive Governments as effortlessly and adroitly as if they were centuries-old local traditions.

In the waning days of the United Bermuda Party's long tenure, truth was so very frequently sacrificed on the altar of political expediency there were genuine fears it might be going the way of the cahow.

Now, under a Progressive Labour Party Government, uncomfortable truths are simply ignored - met with don't-give-a-damn shrugs of the shoulders and lingering, pregnant silences worthy of one of those guilt-plagued, dumbstruck characters from a Pinter play.

Inconvenient facts or embarrassing revelations involving what this Government is stage-managing in the shadowy wings of the Bermudian political theatre go unanswered so often that silence has become a form of tacit confirmation.

Examples are legion.

Everything from the Premier's attempt to land herself on the Oprah Show (in her capacity as "a respected former educator with an abiding interest in literacy", according to the careerist Canadian Senator who tried and failed to engineer the appearance, a woman whose abiding interest is seemingly composing creative biographies) to matters of serious import have typically been answered by this Government with the loquaciousness of a Victorian undertaker's mute.

This week there was one of those infrequent exceptions to this Government's rule of least said, soonest got away with.

There was some very belated stamping of Finance Ministry feet and an accompanying demand for a retraction to a report that appeared in this newspaper some weeks ago on plans for a review of Bermuda's tax system that include models based on a direct, graduated form of income tax.

Some background would be helpful.

Last month the Mid-Ocean News learned from unimpeachable sources within the Canadian civil service that the Bermuda Government was seeking assistance to formulate models of an income tax-based system for the island. Feelers had been extended to Canadian bureaucrats capable of assisting with such a project.

That such a review was in the works should not have come as a surprise.

This Government has a well-established reputation for living beyond its means. Its free-spending boulavadier ways have been financed by dipping deeper - and more regularly - into taxpayers' pockets as well as an increasing dependence on borrowing. And borrowing, of course, amounts to further, delayed tax increases since the loans have to be paid back along with the interest fees.

With more bills coming due more often, it's clear the existing system of revenue raising has reached the point where the law of diminishing returns may well set in. The economy is currently becalmed, trapped in a period of what economists euphemistically call "negative growth". Import duties, the prime source of Government revenue, cannot continue to be increased as a matter of course without risk of closing down the businesses which generate them.

Across-the-board land tax increases led to a small-scale taxpayers' revolt. And the additional revenue raised by jacking up sundry taxes such as automobile licensing fees is usually in inverse proportion to the resentment such hikes cause, making them vote-losers of a kind no Government seeking a second term wants to countenance.

Which leaves income tax.

Bermuda already has a flat income tax by another name in the form of the Payroll Tax, the successor to the old Hospital Levy. But a graduated form of income tax based on the old soak-the-rich principle has been an article of socialistic faith at Alaska Hall for decades, never mind the compelling arguments against introducing such a system to the island.

An independent tax review commissioned by the UBP shortly before its ouster in 1998 concluded, perhaps not surprisingly, that a root-and-branch overhaul of the existing tax structure along with a concurrent reining-in of public spending would stimulate the economy - and, by extension, increase Government revenues.

An income tax, on the other hand, would almost certainly result in the middle classes being burdened with ever increasing tax bills while the wealthy - aided and abetted by their entourages of tax lawyers and accountants - played neverending shell games with the tax authorities to hide their true worth.

When submitted to the incoming PLP Government this document joined the Civil Service Review (the improbable vehicle selected to usher wholesale constitutional reform into Bermuda through the back door) and various other politically sensitive, taxpayer-subsidised reports on this Government's Index of forbidden literature.

ITS findings, although leaked through unofficial channels, have yet to officially be made public. If the report had feted an income tax system instead of cataloguing its flaws, doubtless Government would have had the document mailed to every household on the island.

Only a few months ago a Government backbencher who worked at the Finance Ministry in a former life told Parliament that the introduction of a graduated form of income tax for Bermuda could not be ruled out, that the Finance Minister's options should not be artificially restricted because of the island's longstanding and deeply-rooted bias against such a tax.

His Government did not contradict him. The PLP has traditionally obfuscated when it comes to the timing of introducing income tax, a radical departure from the Bermudian norm that would doubtless cause a public backlash comparable in scale to the protracted constitutional crisis. However, if elected to a second term - and given the built-in advantage it hopes to acquire with an arbitrarily redrawn political map, Alaska Hall is confident this will happen - the PLP would presumably then feel empowered to launch a tax system its most ardent members view as the ultimate weapon in the campaign of class warfare it's been waging since 1963.

Mesmerised by the theoretical numbers involved - and there can be no doubt that more millions are banked in Bermuda than in any comparably sized patch of real estate in the world - the realities of tax avoidance and capital flight have never dented what amounts to a faith-based approach to income tax among the PLP's truest believers.

So when this newspaper learned of surreptitious plans to investigate an income tax-based system for the island, this was hardly a shock to register particularly strongly on the Bermudian political seismograph.

The Finance Ministry was then contacted about the matter by telephone in a timely fashion. Written questions were demanded. These were submitted. There was no response.

The story appeared in print.

There were denials the same day in Parliament that the Finance Ministry had been involved in any such investigation; the Mid-Ocean News stood by its story.

Then silence on the matter.

Until this week. The Finance Ministry then launched a rearguard public relations action, producing a fax it says was sent to this newspaper's offices on July 25 demanding a retraction. It was never received.

If it had been the Mid-Ocean News would have continued to stand by its story. With one proviso.

That agencies of this Government have investigated introducing a direct, graduated form of income tax for Bermuda is beyond question. That such inquiries, bewilderingly enough, did not fall under the direct aegis of the Finance Ministry - as they ought - is in fact true.

The Mid-Ocean News therefore unreservedly apologises to the Finance Ministry for linking it with policy matters that should have fallen within its purview - but not to this Government for publicising the fact a tax review including models based on income tax was being pursued.

With an all but unknown Central Policy Unit now in the process of co-ordinating the policies and programmes of various Government Ministries and Departments, with the Cabinet Office accruing more and more responsibilities unto itself, with any number of local and overseas consultants on the public payroll - put there either overtly or, increasingly it seems, covertly - opportunities for obscuring the truth in a wilderness of bureaucratic mirrors have increased exponentially in recent years.

THIS Government, after all, denied in best wounded-pride manner that Cragmore was being considered as a $5 million whited Victorian sepulchre in which to inter the living corpse of the Tourism Ministry. That proved not to be the case.

This Government denied that a constitutional overhaul was in the works on the floor of the House of Assembly. This direct and intentional obfuscation fell under the heading of misleading Parliament and should have led either to the Premier's censure or resignation.

Most recently this Government denied anything was amiss at the Bermuda Housing Corporation when charges of serious financial irregularities were laid in Parliament. The fall-out from that ongoing scandal continues to poison its reputation for probity.

The sincerity of Bermudian politicians when confronted with information they have attempted to keep under house arrest has always been as faint as a trollope facing a life term in a nunnery. That continues to be the case. Its an eccentricity the second oldest profession shares with the oldest.