August 6, 2003

Dear Sir,

This letter is in response to the pending legislation regarding regulating potentially dangerous dogs with use of breed specific legislation in this community.

All dogs could, by the nature of the beast, have a propensity to be dangerous under certain circumstances. A common ingredient to the nature of a dog is to guard and protect "its" territory and its owner or keeper. Any dog can become a problem for the public if the dog is allowed to run loose and is not supervised.

The key word is responsible. Webster's definition of responsibility is: Being legally or ethically accountable for the welfare or care of another. To say they are dangerous does not address the real problem - irresponsible owners.

Please reconsider and retract your breed-specific ordinance. Please do not punish responsible owners who maintain their dogs as companions and members of the family; dogs that do not pose a threat to anyone. Why should we be denied our companions simply because irresponsible owners of the same breed of dog have not "ethically and legally" protected others from injury.

Please provide our community with non-breed specific legislation that is competent to regulate the irresponsible owners and protect those who maintain their dogs safely and humanely. Please provide definitions for vicious and/or potentially dangerous with measurable actions which cannot be questioned or misinterpreted due to bias.

The irresponsible owners do not care what breed of dog they lose the right to own - they'll find another breed of dog to fit their needs. As a responsible owner, I ask you to seriously consider the impact of breed-specific legislation.

The proposed legislation threatens my family with the loss of not just a dog, but a member of the family. Punish the deed, not the breed!

DOG LOVER

Sandys

GPS not that accurate

July 20, 2003

Dear Sir,

With the July 24 only a whisker away, in my household we all did something this Sunday morning, which we normally would consider a rather wasteful use of valuable recreational reading time; we listened to one of the talk shows.

One cannot help but admire the always-being patience of Mrs. Dill, with even the most tedious and repetitive callers. Most obvious was the predominance of PLP supporters calling, unlike the newspapers, where UBP supporters appear to be more frequent contributors. The other more concerning fact, is the amount of opinion, which is presented by callers as absolute fact, and in very many instances would not withstand even the most superficial scrutiny.

A good example of this was one caller's high praise for the Employment Act as an example of the current Government's expertise. Anyone who has read this rather dilettante document, with its grammatical and spelling errors, will soon realise that an 18 year old with only the expertise garnered during holiday employment could have done a better job. Apparently it has been lifted almost verbatim from legislation in of one of the Caricom islands. Amusingly, considering the current Government's belief that they actually qualify as socialist, it contains no reference to a minimum wage. Then there is the not so amusing fact that although this Government is quite prepared to bend the legal interpretation of its own Employment Act out of all recognition when wishing to entrap an Employer, rather like the situation with the Human Rights legislation, this Act does not apply to Government itself - the largest employer on the Island - responsible for employing between one in five and one in six Bermudians.

Another caller eulogised Dr. Brown for the impending GPS introduction in taxis. On this subject I have been meaning to write the following:

The GPS system as a basis for personal automobile navigation has been discarded in Europe as potentially dangerous (its accuracy of civilian use can be up to ten kilometres in error!) in favour of the newer positioning system called Galileo. This is because the GPS was in fact always intended for US Military use, and as such could be obscured from civilian use without warning at anytime. After the recent world military action by the US, we might be wise to leave this well alone.

The following is an excerpt from the relevant website:

"The Galileo positioning system (never abbreviated GPS) is a planned satellite navigation system, intended as a European alternative to the United States Global Positioning System. It was agreed upon officially on May 26, 2003 by the European Union and the European Space Agency. The system is intended to be primarily for civil use, unlike the US system. The US reserves the right to limit the signal strength of the GPS systems so that non-military users can't use it, or to shut down GPS completely, in time of conflict. The precision of the signal available to non-military users was limited before 2000. The European system will not (in theory) be subject to shutdown for military purposes, will provide a significant improvement to the signal available from GPS, and will be available at its full precision to all users, both civil and military."

Has Dr. Brown done his homework? Would the PLP be kind enough to let us know?

WORKHORSE

Pembroke

Reform constitutions

August 7, 2003

Dear Sir,

The primary role of a political party as I understand it is to bridge the gap between the people and their government. In a democracy this means a party should aid in conveying public opinion to government and in transforming that opinion into governmental action. Thus a political party is an important part of a democratic society.

Indeed all of our current parliamentarians were voted into office under the banner of a political party (without which, I hasten to add, most would not be there). This is why that all members of a political party should have a say as to who their leader is.

In Britain the Conservative Leader is elected by a postal ballot of all party members who decide from a short list of two candidates, determined through a series of ballots of Conservative Members of Parliament.

The process for selecting the leader of the Labour Party is even more democratic and is as follows:

Section 1: is the Commons MP's and MEP's. They are entitled to one vote each.

Section 2: applies to all eligible members of the Labour Party on the basis of one member one vote.

Section 3: consist of all members of affiliated organisations who have indicated their support of the party for the Labour Party and are not members or supporters of any other party.

The votes are apportioned in the final vote as a third for each of the sections. The leader of the Labour Party will be the Prime Minister if the Labour Party is elected into Government Office.

The important point to note here is that both political parties make provision for the involvement of all party members in deciding who should lead the party. This appears to me the fairest and most democratic way of deciding who leads a party.

Unquestionably a large part of ensuring that any party's leadership remains answerable and accountable to its supporters is the ability of those supporters to determine who that leader is.

It is ironic that on the one hand we have enhanced the democratic process by instituting a new electoral system i.e. one man, one vote, one vote of equal value yet the Bermuda Constitution stifles the democratic process by leaving the decision as to who holds the most powerful political position in the land in the hands of a few. The Bermuda Constitution should be amended post haste and all members of political parties be they PLP or UBP should have a say in who their leader is. (Note: I emphasise all party members not a group of constituency delegates who may be more easily subject to manipulation).

This would encourage greater political participation by the public and help to ensure greater accountability by the leader of the country not only to his cabinet and parliamentary colleagues but his party and thus public opinion. This would I believe result in more openness and transparency.

RECMAN

Devonshire

It is the people's park

August 4, 2003

Dear Sir,

I thought I would wait until all of the election hype had subsided to answer Mr. Shirley's letter, which was in response to mine concerning the Corporation of Hamilton's plans for a dock at Albouy's Point.

I must thank Doug for responding and providing us with valuable input from a tour boat operator's point of view. I wish to assure him that I have been very much aware for a very long time of not only the needs of visitors, but the needs of Bermudians also, when it comes to water sports.

Mr. Shirley has however missed the salient point of my letter, which is that the Corporation should have openly discussed with the people of Bermuda what it proposes to do at Albouy's Point. After all it is the people's park, not the Corporation's. They might have achieved this by better publicising their plan and invited the public to discuss it in open well, publicised meetings. Instead it was discussed in private and only with some tour boat operators. And please do not throw in that it was advertised on three occasions in the official Gazette, that system is as archaic as the use of drums to communicate with the public.

Mr. Shirley has assured us he does not advocate booking offices or any sort of advertising being placed at Albouy's Point, or boats being left unattended. He also advocates floating finger piers etc., all good stuff. The problem is however, Mr. Shirley does not have the authority to give the public any assurances about Albouy's Point, the Hamilton Corporation does, but they have chosen to do things behind closed doors in private meetings.

Finally, Mr. Shirley states "boats may not play a large part in the lives of many locals but they do carry more visitors than probably all other attractions combined". He is wrong. Boats do play a large part in the lives of thousands of Bermudians and they too have had to suffer what you so aptly call, the inadequate jumbled mess that visitors have had to contend with for so many hears. You can see how easy it is to forget others when we have a vested interest. If the public had been given an opportunity to give input into the development of a plan for their park we may have gotten a better result. We'll just have to wait and see.

QUINTON L. EDNESS

Warwick

Tweed belittled himself

August 7, 2003

Dear Sir,

Whatever moral high ground Rev. Tweed may have enjoyed and the political mileage the PLP made off him must surely be called into question following his speech as reported in this paper on Wednesday.

By his own words the man was a thug who got found out and ran away. Byre-scripting "hiding-out" to read "political exile" the PLP has recast him as a modern day Robin Hood and to their discredit.

His admission to having conspired to effect a coup d'etat through kidnap and extortion certainly justifies any police dossier prepared on him along with any action taken by US authorities faced with a would-be terrorist.

The PLP were pretty crass to roll this old war horse out for a cynical bout of pre-election pot stirring and would be well advised to put him back out to pasture now that the farce has played out. The more we hear from him the more he diminishes himself and the party.

In place of a platform the PLP gave us theatre, a mixture of 1960's era civil rights meeting and tent revival with a little Shakespeare behind the scenes for good measure. While historically relevant it said nothing to the issues facing Bermuda today. With the election over, Tweed has strayed from the script; like a bad actor on an improvisational tangent it is pitiful to see him clawing for glory and diminishing the rest of the cast in the process.

The real heroes of the era were the men and women who stayed behind and worked within the law to effect the changes we all benefit from today. There are more than enough of them but hard work and dedication don't seem to stir the blood like a bit of high drama.

The manipulation of this man by the party for political ends served only to divide the community by reviving the ghosts of past injustices committed by other old men who today are also effectively irrelevant.

I sincerely hope that Premier Scott is true to his word and works to forge the unity in our community that has for so long been sacrificed to political expediency.

JONATHAN DYER

Hamilton Parish