ector hears the outspoken comments by about timewarp officers believing they answer to no-one has caused quite a stir in the force. They have also stirred up former top cop to weigh in on the matter. Big Wayne told parliamentarians last week that he believed Jonathan Smith was a little too young for the job. No wonder he never got the full backing from his insubordinate subordinates was the gist of his argument. Hector wonders if this was the same Wayne Perinchief who in an interview in April lamented the fact Mr. Smith was on his way out. His actual words? "Maybe at his exit interview, or before then, someone can find out why he's going. I don't want him to go." As much as Hector admires big Wayne he does feel that perhaps he also needs to add consistency to his flair for bluntness when launching into one of his oratorical forays.

Hector hears might be right to question the quality of some of Bermuda's thin blue line ? according to one motorist who was threatened with a ticket for parking in a taxi bay on Front Street this week. The dutiful, but none-too-bright, cop said he had just ticketed one motorist and he would have no hesitation in ticketing her unless she drove out of the taxi bay in front of the Emporium building. He seemed quite put out when she explained that taxi parking was restricted to the night hours ? not mid-morning shoppers. Hector begins to worry when it is left to the public to explain the traffic laws to those who are supposed to Police it.

Still on traffic, like most motorists Hector was not surprised to read the recent expose on some of the inequities of the Transport Control Department where seemingly vehicles get passed or failed on the whim of whether the examiner's soccer team had won at the weekend. But it gets worse. Hector was told of the motorist who took two identical vans to TCD for inspection. The first was sailed through although the owner began to worry when the examiner said his colleague would then inspect the second. The upshot? You guessed it. The second examiner promptly turned it down for having tinted windows ? exactly the same as the previous vehicle. Hector hears it took the intervention of senior Transport Ministry officials to overturn this decision. Hector hears there could be some changes afoot at TCD quite soon.

Unusual goings-on at Supreme Court recently, when a lawyer unleashed the rarely heard 'carrot cake' defence. was representing a serial burglar when he proved his appetite for imaginative lines of mitigation in trying to spare his client an extra year or so behind bars. After outlining why the defendant's lengthy criminal record was linked to drug addiction, Mr. Richardson told the court about his client's harsh upbringing and how he helped Police with their inquiries after getting arrested.

"He's a fabulous baker," the lawyer then told a somewhat bemused Puisne Judge, . "And he makes a fantastic carrot cake." It seemed to do the trick with the prisoner getting a shorter time to bake cakes while he is doing his porridge.

Recently Hector reported on the din created by builders outside Supreme Court one. Now he hears there's an even bigger din coming from upstairs in the Assembly chamber. Indeed the Government's much mooted broadcasting channel might not turn out to be such an expensive option after all ? if Randy Horton's latest performance in the house is anything to go by. Because there will be no need to go to the expense of buying transmitters and microphones to be heard around the Island if all ministers follow the bellowing intensity of the Labour and Home Affairs Minister. As Minister Horton let rip on road safety and penalty points, his voice grew louder and louder to the point where the Opposition benches took exception to the hectoring. "I can only be loud," retorted the Minister, to which he was asked if he talked at such volume when at home. There is no question who calls the shots and wears the trousers in the Horton household, he answered: "And I know that she is listening."

Things were getting quite heated in the Senate chamber recently with fondly reminiscing about corporal punishment during her school days. In a misty-eyed ramble she told how her teacher used to cane her and her classmates if they failed to learn a list of new spellings. This did not go down at all well with , who exclaimed: "We can never bring the birch back. There would be uproar in this chamber and in the community if we did." Realising that his fellow Senators were chuckling, Sen. Roban then remembered he was actually sitting next to a newly brought-back Burch ? in the form of the outspoken Lt.Col (pictured). "That's the long skinny birch, not the Burch next to me who is a Burch of action and not to be riled," he explained, to more sniggers.

Lastly ? in his "It had to happen" corner, Hector heard about the tracksuit-clad hopeful who went to The Barn in Devonshire wanting directions to "the new gym". Understandably the muscle-flexing expatriate thought the Mid Atlantic Wellness Centre was somewhere where to buff up rather than a euphemistically-named mental hospital.

Someone should be paying more attention to the commercial breaks at VSB. During the Tuesday evening news bulletin TV no sooner had viewers been reminded to watch tonight's sombre documentary The Dejon Simmons Story about how 90 percent of the 17-year-old student's body was horrifically burned in a motorbike accident than the Oleander Cycles advertisement using a backdrop of burning flames to promote its motorbikes flashed up on screen. Ooops indeed.

Hector has been enjoying the hype last week about Bermuda being a haven for finding . However the stats show a different story. From August to November, 54 out of a total of 80 divorces between August and November involved women divorcing men. So, still quite a few Mr. Not-so-wonderful's out there. Mind you, Hector is still available, just in case you were wondering...