What?s the GP car policy?

January 1, 2004

Dear Sir,

Your recent story on the soldier using the Premier?s official car to do his shopping made me wonder about the policy regarding use of GP1 and other Government vehicles. I remember seeing Premier John Swan eating dinner with friends in a Southampton restaurant, with GP1 parked outside. I doubt that this was the only use of GP1 by that Premier in what was not clearly Government business.

In the interest of greater transparency in Government, is there a policy on use of Government vehicles, and if so, where is it published?

The truth about divorce

December 29, 2004

Dear Sir,

I read with interest the headline in your December 21 edition, ?Housing shortage linked to divorce rate?. Above this heading was one in non boldface stating, ?Latest figures show one in two marriages fail.?

Sir, I would like to correct a common misconception about the so-called divorce rate. First of all, divorce, and marriage for that matter, is not something that interests demographers as much as it used to. What demographers are interested in is the fertility rate ? the number of live births a woman has actually had. In days gone by, generally speaking, childbearing began at marriage and ended at divorce. So marriage and divorce rates were used to help predict population growth.

Today, of course, the assumption that childbirth occurs mostly in marriage is no longer true. (In 2002, 36 percent of all children born in Bermuda were born out of wedlock.) The divorce rate (or more to the point the marriage success rate, since this is what people really want to know) is more of interest to lawmakers and society because of its implications, such as its impact on the demand for housing, as pointed out in the article.

However, trying to determine the divorce rate is not a straightforward task. The normal, but incorrect, way to determine it is simply to express divorces as a ratio of marriages. For instance, in the United States in 2000, there were 957,200 divorces and 2,355,005 marriages giving a ?divorce rate? of 40.6 percent.

In 2002, there were 230 divorces in Bermuda and 297 resident marriages yielding a ?divorce rate? of 77.4% ? a rate that is considerably higher than that in the United States.

These rates are misleading because the number of divorces and marriages that take place within the same year have nothing to do with each other. To determine an accurate divorce rate involves a panel study. Such a study tracks the same people over time. For instance, of all the marriages in 1990, how many were intact in 1995, 2000 and 2005?

And what of the marriages in 1991, 1992, 1993 and so on? You can see that it is quite a tedious task to determine the divorce rate, particularly in other jurisdictions where there is no central point for collecting the data.

In 1992, the U.S. Bureau of Census completed a sophisticated analysis on the divorce rate and concluded: ?...if one assumes a continuation of recent divorce trends, about four out of 10 first marriages to the youngest cohort may eventually end in divorce.

Alternatively, if one assumes a return to the pattern of divorce during the 1975 to 1980 period, five out of 10 first marriages may eventually end in divorce (Current Population Reports, P23-180, 1992, p. 5), .?

There are two things to note here. One, the prediction is based on current divorce trends which, contrary to popular belief, has been declining, in the United States at least, since 1981 (when expressed as a rate per 1,000 married couples in that year.)

The second thing to note is that the prediction is also based on the ?youngest cohort? and first marriage. That is, those in their teens and twenties marrying for the first time are more susceptible to a higher divorce rate. At the other end of the spectrum, those who have been married for, say 35 years or more, are not at all likely to divorce.

So what is Bermuda?s divorce rate? Well, expressed as a rate per 1,000 married couples, and if my calculations are correct, it is 11, nearly half the rate in the United States (20). But whatever the divorce rate, perhaps more emphasis has to be placed on making marriages more successful, in the first instance, and dealing more effectively with its implications in the second.

No Christmas spirit

December 28, 2004

Dear Sir,

I am writing to express my total disgust at the behaviour of the Bermuda Police Service on Christmas Day. As is now the custom in our household, we started the day with a trip to Elbow Beach for a swim and a glass of champagne with our friends and family, some of whom had travelled over from the UK. The morning was absolutely glorious and there was a wonderful spirit on the beach with many families and friends enjoying a spectacular Bermuda Christmas morning.

Unfortunately within minutes of our arrival word was spreading around that the Police were ticketing all vehicles that were parked on South Road. In the 16 years that we have lived in Bermuda there has always been a healthy crowd at Elbow Beach on Christmas day and consequently there has always been a bit of a parking problem on South Road as the beach parking facility reaches capacity very quickly.

I fully appreciate the need for safety and I fully appreciate the need to uphold the law, however there must surely be a time when discretion should be exercised to benefit the general public rather than penalise them en masse. Pro-active policing would have determined that one or possibly two police officers should have been at the scene in advance to either prevent such ?overflow? parking or better still to permit on-street parking and assist east- and west-bound traffic. The entire scene would then have been considerably happier, less stressful on the public and no doubt less stressful on the visibly unhappy officers in charge of scribing 30 or 40 parking tickets. Instead we had a reactive situation where police officers were dispatched to deal with a ?problem? that should never have been; Community Policing at its very worst.

I think this action is shameful and I urge the Police Commissioner to retract the $50 fines or at least offer to send the money to a worthy charity. Let?s hope that a similar situation can be avoided next year. Happy New Year to one and all.

For a referendum

January 2, 2005

Dear Sir,

It?s time the Bermuda Government put a priority on democracy for a change.

This means full support for a legally binding and decisive referendum on the matter of Independence. Why? Because a referendum is the only direct way to give the man/woman in the street a YES or NO vote in the very important matter of his/her future.

There is a petition circulating by ?Bermudians for Referendum? and available to be signed at any of these signature centres: Down to Earth Health shop, Otto Wurz, Mailboxes Unlimited on Par-la-Ville and Church Streets, Pulp & Circumstance, The Spot Restaurant , Great Things, The Paraquet Restaurant, Aberfeldy Nurseries, Sousa?s Gardens, Somerset Country Squire, Frog & Onion Pub, Esso Collectors Hill Tigermart, Terceira?s Shell Service Station (North Shore), Crawl Hill Esso Tigermart, St George?s Esso Service Station, Paradise Gift shop in St. George?s and Black Horse Tavern in St. David?s. If we don?t demand a referendum now, we may not get one, in view of the Government?s prevarications.

If Mr Scott says he does not support a referendum, he is clearly against the purest form of democracy, and against allowing the people of Bermuda to express exactly how they feel on such a supremely important issue.

It?s no good carrying on about a General Election. In General Elections, the voter is compelled to vote for a politician or political party. You can never be sure if politicians will carry out their promises, or if they will do exactly as the voter expects them to do. It is a very indirect form of voting and puts in the same melting pot many other confusing issues (health, seniors, housing, tourism, crime, traffic, etc etc) represented by the politician or party.

I demand to know from the Government if they are for or against having a referendum on Independence, and if against, why? A vote against a referendum is a vote against freedom and democracy.

Dangerous policy

December 24, 2004

Dear Sir,

The PLP have made numerous mistakes running this country, but the latest one of trying to force all employers to pay time and a half after a 40-hour work week beats everything else. I do not think that they gave much thought to this mandatory enforcement, and results will be catastrophe.

I have no doubt that this ?enforcement? was the brain-child of the BIU. If you will recall, in the 1960s and 1970s the BIU forced the Hotels into an agreement that was untenable.

For years now, the hotels in Bermuda have been forced to pay time and a half and double time to all staff who worked over 40 hours. For any holidays, they were forced to pay the staff this extra money ? even though the hotels could not pass anything on to the guests. Along with this enforced rule, the BIU encouraged staff to refuse various jobs they were required to do. What happened? Forty-six hotel properties have closed since the 1970s. Still the BIU continues their socialist agenda of forcing businesses to terms and conditions that are not tenable.

Even though this four-hour rule does not affect me personally, I know numerous businesses that depend on their workers voluntarily working 60 hours. The workers are delighted to earn this extra money and are happy with the arrangement. But no! This Government wants to interfere and stop normal market/working arrangements.What will happen? The businesses will be forced to import more staff as they cannot afford to pay time and a half. This will put more pressure on our housing situation and the present workers will have lost out. This is a lose-lose situation.

Building costs are at an all-time high. What now? Building costs will escalate even more. What happens about building contracts that are presently in progress ? who bears the cost of this additional burden? If both the builder and land-owner cannot pay this extra cost, then the work will take much longer to complete. Everyone will lose ? the builder, land-owner and the workers.

I know that the Senate has voted against the bill, but it will probably come back again. Please do not make the same mistake that was made with our Hotel industry years ago and allow the BIU to dictate its socialist terms to the rest of the island. They killed the Hotels in Bermuda. Do not let them destroy the rest of our businesses. They simply do not understand how businesses operate.