June 11, 2003

Dear Sir,

It's flying cockroach season. The politicians shall be flying from house to house looking for love, bumping into walls, flying into our faces to confuse us with their beating wings.

And when they do, the old question arises; at all other times they are scurrying for cover and dark corners to hide in, but now they are out and about and causing confusion. Why? Because it is the political mating season and we the voters are in heat for only six weeks of the next five years. The politicians will be trying to convince us that they have really cared all this time. They will be singing Willie Nelson's "Maybe I Didn't Love You' quite as often as I should, 'But You Were Always on my Mind'!

Don't vote party, vote personality this election. If you don't like him or her, kick the bum out. If you think the politician standing on your doorstep has been there for you throughout, vote them in. The parties don't do us any good. If you don't believe me, try to describe either party's social policy without contradicting yourself. The parties are nothing but centres of power.

Vote for the person not the party. Then when they get to Parliament they will not be as beholden to the party structure and hopefully will think and speak for themselves and you.

JOHN ZUILL

Pembroke

June 10, 2003

Dear Sir,

One must admire the consistency of Dame Lois Browne Evans who, in the House of Assembly, blamed capitalism for the world's ills and made clear, yet again, her great enthusiasm for socialism.

In the late 1960s, she was a big fan of Communist Russia making a widely reported courtesy visit to its embassy in London whilst Russian thugs were murdering their innocent countrymen - in much the same way as the Cuban government operates today.

Dame Lois still admires and is proud of the fact that she is a socialist - a system that has impoverished millions. It must take great talent for a lawyer to ignore the compelling evidence that it is to capitalism we owe all material prosperity and in the absence of the free market economy and all its underlying institutions, Bermuda's economy would be reduced to subsistence level - as would her six figure government salary.

I would like to point out to Dame Lois and others who wrongly associate capitalism with racism and exploitation, that the main economic rival of capitalism in the early 19th Century was slavery.

In 1849, 15 years after slavery was abolished in the British Empire and 15 years before it was ended in the United States, Thomas Carlyle published a paper about a debate he had conducted with John Stuart Mill (an apostle of freedom) entitled "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question".

In this paper, he described economics as the dismal science and denigrated capitalism because it was implacably opposed to slavery and was a threat to a privileged exploitative minority.

Slavery, which had existed everywhere on the planet and during all of human existence, gave owners absolute power over the lives and persons of their slaves. Capitalism took that absolute power from slave owners and gave it to the consumer and the individual - irrespective of race.

In addition to its historical opposition to slavery, capitalism stands for political and economic freedom, and it has enhanced freedom all over the world. Most former socialist countries have dumped that dead-end system based on envy for the vibrancy of the free market economy.

With a great sense of timing, Bermuda that has enjoyed the many benefits of capitalism seems ready under the envy-obsessed PLP leadership to embrace socialism, an economic system that has failed the average voter everywhere it has been tried, has created untold misery, and has wasted the lives of millions. There is, of course, a major exception to this rule.

The political classes (such as Dame Lois) always do exceptionally well under socialism because the opportunities for graft and corruption are unlimited, and rarely resisted.

ROBERT STEWART

Smith's Parish

June 10, 2003

Dear Sir,

A friend of mine just gave me the Thursday, May 29 Royal Gazette to read. The letter from "Focusing On The Big Picture", from Smith's Parish - about black vs white household incomes in Bermuda - was interesting.

At the risk of being out of date (if this subject has already received attention), I'd like to comment on that letter. First, the table of household income ranges shown in the letter does not show "the (economic) progress that has been made" by households, black or white, as the author states.

The table is a statistical snapshot of all households in Bermuda taken at a single point in time (in this case, the 2000 Census). From that one snapshot, we have no idea whether, or which, households were richer or poorer ten years before. We cannot deduce "progress" (or decline) without a comparison with earlier data.

We can only say: that's the situation as it was at that point in time (the 2000 Census). In fact, we can make no relative conclusions about the advance or decline, composition, or otherwise variable nature of household incomes by a single snapshot. We need earlier data to draw relative conclusions such as "progress" or otherwise.

Second, it is interesting to compare percentage proportions drawn from the table. For example: of the total 19,505 households counted, 64.1 percent are black and 27.5 percent are white, a fair representation of the Bermuda population overall. In the highest three income brackets ($76,000-over $108,000) combined, the proportion of all black and all white households is very similar: 45.5 percent of all black households are in that range, compared with 43.1 percent of all white households.

In the highest income group (more than $108,000), "Focusing On The Big Picture" states that black households are more than 1.6 times more numerous than white households. More interesting, however, is that black households account for 64.1 percent of all households but only 56.9 percent of the highest income group (over $108,000). That compares with the disproportionately large 35.1 percent of white households in the highest income bracket even though they only comprise 27.5 percent of all households. (In all other income ranges, the proportion of black vs white households is roughly in line with the mean, relative to the overall total number of households.)

So, what does all this Jabberwocky tell us? It tells us that: first, by far the largest proportion of both black and white households is in the top one third income range of $76,000-over $108,000, which is interesting in itself (because you would usually expect the largest proportion of households to be more in the midrange of incomes); and second, that the relative proportion of white households at the highest end of the income scale is significantly larger than their overall proportion of all households, and, conversely, the relative proportion of black households is lower. Draw from that whatever conclusions you'd like.

A third point that arises from "Focusing On The Big Picture's" letter is that there is no comparison with the debit side of the equation, to give a balanced picture of net prosperity comparing black with white households. Income is one side of the coin. Debt and expenditure is the other side.

If white households average $100 in debts and spending but black households only average $50, this skews their relative net prosperity. And finally, Mr./Ms "Focusing On The Big Picture" condemns the use of "cherry picking" statistics "that don't tell the true progress" of the Bermudian community.

He/she states that "the above table illustrates clearly that much progress has been made in raising and equalising the income opportunities of our people." Of course, the use of a single statistical table is, in itself, "cherry picking". The table in question does seem to suggest equalisation of "the income opportunities of our people", but it can never in itself show "progress" or otherwise in an evolutionary sense. Statistics are a kaleidoscope of tunnel vision: twist the tube a fraction and the whole view changes. Drawing conclusions from a single view has to be confined to what you see at that time.

"The Big Picture" is, I'd suggest, rather larger, more variegated, and certainly less definitive than Mr./Ms "Focusing On The Big Picture's" letter suggests. Mr./Ms "Focusing On The Big Picture" is most on the mark with his/her comment that "it is imperative that Bermuda have an administration focused on serving the people and not themselves."

In the same issue of the Gazette there was an article noting that the Bermuda government, for whatever reason, was the only British Overseas Territory that did not send representation to the UN decolonisation summit at Anguilla earlier in May.

Does Bermuda really want a government with such a cavalier attitude about the electorate's interests in such an important debate as "decolonisation"?

GWELLYJACK

London, England

June 13, 2003

Dear Sir,

I would expect by now that my friend Father Bill knows full well, during his priestly "state of suspension" from duties at St. Mark's; no pay cheque; being cut off from an altar; no housing of his own; that freedom in Christ Jesus produces a healthy independence from peer pressure, people-pleasing and the bondage of human respect.

Fr. Bill will no doubt come to know in his continuing battle against evil forces in the Anglican Diocese, how the tyranny of public opinion can manipulate lives. The expectations of others can exert a subtle but controlling pressure on any person's behaviour. It was so in Jesus' day.

Pilate washed his hands of the situation that confronted him. It appears we have a like situation in front of us. Do we wash our hands?

In Christ Jesus, freedom from fear will empower Fr. Bill to let go of the desire to appear good, so that he can move freely in the mystery of who he really is. Preoccupation with projecting the "nice guy" image must be a thing of the past for this deeply hurt, courageous priest.

I understand that legal action is soon to be taken in the courts of Bermuda. That is sad. We do not have to go this way. Yet, I applaud and support Father Bill in his stand. Those who have defamed his name and caused great suffering to one of God's anointed will pay a dear price for their folly one way or another.

Perhaps all is not lost. Someone needs to step in and find Fr. Hayward a monthly pay cheque, an altar, a job in the diocese, and suitable housing. But will the Pharisees hinder a compassionate stand? They continue to exert pressure of one kind or another. Remember that in one province in Canada a suit brought against the Church financially bankrupted them?

CLAUDIUS

Southampton