More CableVision woes

September 19, 2002

Dear Sir,

I would like to know why you, The Royal Gazette has not put the fact that CableVision has said that it will not operate without a licence, yet it will carry on broadcasting violating copyright laws with shows like HBO et al.

NIGEL TURINI

Pembroke

Lottery is a good idea

August 26, 2002

Dear Sir,

Sometime back, about a little over a week ago or more the president of the BFA Larry Mussenden was on television asking the business community, the international business community to be exact, for funds to support the sports programmes. I call it begging.

These international companies donate large sums of money to various organisations for various reasons. I have never seen a full-page ad thanking the generous companies for the contributions they have made to the community.

Every organisation needs to pressure the Smith administration to introduce a national lottery which will financially take care of their needs.

It would be a good idea if leaders in the community examine the possibilities of organising a baseball little league or teams of several baseball little leagues throughout the Island to compete with little leagues teams at the Little League World Series in the US. Again the lottery will play a major part in financing the air fare to the US for the local baseball teams.

The lottery would be a benefit to most of Bermuda's social programmes, such as low-income housing and etc.

GEORGE BURCHER

Hamilton Parish

It's Immigration's fault

September 18, 2002

Dear Sir,

The ongoing unchristian tragedy at St. Mark's Church in Smith's parish is one of only several disruptions in the orderly life of several Christian congregations in Bermuda. The sad mess at St. Mark's is the most publicised, but the AME Church has become the victim of a similar problem and another Anglican parish has had its otherwise fairly serene life disrupted for the past year for the same baleful reason.

That reason is plain, simple, and utterly unacceptable. The reason is the Immigration Department. The Anglican Church, like the AME church and the Roman Catholic Church, does not have any number of Bermudian ordained priests from which to chose its clergy. When St. Mark's was obliged to seek a new priest for the parish the present incumbent was ready and willing to serve. Only his ability was and remains in question. He was also Bermudian. There was no other Bermudian available. He was, therefore by the absurd, inflexible rules prevailing at Immigration, forced on the parish. Its only other choice would have been to close its church and disperse the congregation among other parishes. This dispersal is anyway what has largely happened.

It would be both unproductive and uncharitable to discuss here the present incumbent's abilities as a parish priest. Nor would it be productive to discuss his parishioners' repeated desire to have a married priest when they seem quite unwilling to provide their rector's putative wife with any emolument for what they clearly see as her most important job. Whatever the qualifications the incumbent at St. Mark's in fact has or actually lacks in the job, as far as the Immigration Minister is concerned he is an ordained priest and thus has a piece of paper that says he is qualified for the job. That's all the Immigration Department can see or cares to see. That's the end of it. The parish would certainly not have hired their present priest in the first placer if they had had a reasonable choice. Because of heavy-handed Government interference, the parish did not have any choice at all. The present mess is the direct result of Government interference.

This is clearly unconstitutional. The Immigration Department has denied the parishioners of St. Mark's the free exercise of their religion by denying them their choice of priest. It has also, apparently, pulled the work permit of an AME pastor, to the disruption of the spiritual lives of his flock. Immigration department is hardly qualified to pass the innumerable judgments it now makes on the hiring and firing of business people in lines of work of which it is totally ignorant. For the Immigration Department to have the power to impose a priest on an unwilling parish or to dismiss a priest from his cure of satisfied souls clearly contravenes the freedom of religion guaranteed to the people of this island in our constitution.

The Minister of Immigration must immediately exempt the priesthood of our many churches from Immigration oversight on constitutional grounds. Government is now arbitrarily curtailing freedom of religion in this island.

LIONS TREE CHRISTIANS ZERO

City of Hamilton

Customer comes first?

September 20, 2002

Dear Sir,

Why do I get the distinct feeling that the general public is being treated as pawns in a much larger game between CableVision and the Government. In a country with limited leisure activities, no one seems to be considering the clientele.

Cablevision now wants us to believe that they are benevolent service providers by supplying antennas to senior citizens. Is this so we will forget their ineptitude, bumbling ways and bad service of the past?

Meanwhile, I get the feeling that the government will announce in a week's time that they have resolved the dispute/or contracted with an alternative company to provide TV service, making us believe that they are the "white knight" that has saved us from our woes. This will not cover up their arrogant mannerisms, incorrect legal assessments and bad handling of this dispute.

The general public is getting fed up with this play being acted out at our expense. Alternative activities can replace cable TV, and people will remember government's role when the general election rolls around.

FED UP OBSERVER

City of Hamilton

Students poorly treated

September 20, 2002

Dear Sir,

Imagine showing up for work after a summer holiday, all decked out in new clothes carefully chosen for the first day back at work. Imagine being met at the door by your boss who tells you "Sorry, you no longer can work here. The evaluation we shared with you last year indicated your attitude was poor and we have recently decided that you must work in a site for employees who are felt to be unproductive and distracting to others."

When you ask if you will be paid, you are told you will receive a foreign currency that needs to be collected abroad.

You walk away, feeling angry, confused and humiliated. So too did many of the secondary school students who returned to their former school only to be turned away. You choose to go to your union. The students have to grin and bear it or drop out.

The damage done to these students is not easily undone, no matter how justified is the need for their removal to another setting. Many of these students already face rejection in other areas of their lives: to add one more rejection is to add fuel both to their anger at authority and to their seeking of acceptance by a peer gang.

While I am certain the Ministry of Education was responding to a very real need in the schools to find alternative settings for some students, the manner in which this was undertaken not only angered parents but 'hurt' students in the process. The Ministry of Education has tried to make amends by apologising to parents. That is not enough. Each student who was not advised in advance of the transfer deserves a personal apology. Not only may this make the students more receptive to their new setting but it also will teach the students that 'authorities' can admit to mistakes. More importantly, it may salvage a little bit of each student's self-esteem. If these personal apologies have already been conveyed, then the Ministry has started to make amends with these students. If not, then each of these students is awaiting an apology.

STUDENT ADVOCATE

Sandys

Top value for money

September 18, 2002

Dear Sir,

Well done Trimingham's - you've done it again. A couple of items I purchased from the sale rack in your Paget store for $20 and $13.75 I saw last week in Macy's in Green Acres Mall, N.Y. for $35.00 and $30.00. The items were identical and were on sale.

CAROL CARVALHO

Southampton

What fills our prisons?

September 22, 2002

Dear Sir,

I have an answer for Spanish Point Voter. SPV asked in Saturday's paper: Has the judicial system in Bermuda lost all touch with common sense? SPV was referring to Bermuda's drug laws in connection to tourists. My answer is "Yes".

Without doubt the value system of the judicial system that will put people in prison for possessing a drug, pot, that is not proven to be more harmful than alcohol and a good deal less addictive than cigarettes is operating in another moral universe than you and I. A different economic one too.

As another writer to The Royal Gazette pointed out it is expensive to lock people up because of these drug laws. So we pay for the judicial system to exercise its exotic moral dementia. We have one of the largest prison populations, per capita, in the developed world.

What puts us over the top? Theft? No. Fraud? No. Rape? Not in these courts. Drugs? Yes. Prison is becoming part of the Bermudian way of life because of drug laws whose deterrent effect has been for decades a broadly ignored failure.

JOHN ZUILL

Pembroke

Keep Island drug free

September 22, 2002

Dear Sir,

In the September 21 issue of this newspaper, a "Spanish Point Voter" commented that Bermuda is going the wrong way if we want to be top-of-tops in the tourism business by punishing or fining tourists found with marijuana joints in their rooms aboard cruise ships. Hello? Wake up! Are you even a proud Bermudian?

Why should we lower our judicial standards just to be able to get more tourists on the Island? Instead of tourists going home complaining about our tough laws, as "Spanish Point Voter" claimed they would, maybe the more mature tourists will go back telling their friends about how wonderful our efforts to keep our Island drug-free are.

Instead of joining Jamaica and the other Caribbean islands where you see immature "can't handle this freedom" teenagers smoking joints in public, crowded places, we should keep our standards high. Thank God we don't have slack marijuana laws, or nearly 700 murders this year, or corrupt neighbourhoods where gang warfare is the noise that "lulls" you to sleep.

Now, here's my good advice to the judiciary: Do not lower our great standards so that our island becomes controlled by the mostly American tourists that visit here. This is already starting to happen in the Caribbean. All the neighbourhoods near mostly American-owned hotels are kept clean and tidy, while the rest of the country is turning pure ghetto.

AKILAH BECKLES

Hamilton Parish