Save Hamilton!

July 6, 2010

Dear Sir,

This present PLP Government is busy bankrupting Bermuda. Please don't let them take over Hamilton and add more destruction to our Island. Wake up, people! Every child you have will be born owing money. Please stop the madness.

HARD WORKING BERMUDIAN

Paget

Danger of blind support

July 5, 2010

Dear Sir,

You can understand the rise and popularity of Hitler, Mussolini and Bush (recent vintage) by simply observing and being bemused by the ultra partisan support given to this ethically suspect and financially inept government. Arguing against fact is in itself a less than subtle attempt at spin, however when debt is spiralling out of control and monies are not accounted for, loyalty should give way to common sense. This is compounded by the fact that when the dust settles, the "Average Joe" PLP supporters will remain in Bermuda, living a less than acceptable life, while the very people they currently support will be sipping champagne on a sunny island just south of Florida.

If under a UBP government, we experienced the current violence that is being played out daily on our streets (12 years in power means that the PLP own this problem) or the subzero tourism numbers or the depressing state of education or huge sums being spent on foreign consultants (mostly American) or the friends and family approach to allocating contracts and special positions in Government, we would be rioting in the streets. Giving a pass because of race is simply wrong, particular when it is at the expense of mostly black Bermudians that need a hand up. A reasonably intelligent guy answering to the name Einstein once said: "The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

BOB THE BUILDER

Warwick

Situation is scary

July 6, 2010

Dear Sir,

I am not shocked that our new, and imported, Assistant Commissioner has spoken out after only a few days. I was hoping, but wasn't holding my breath, that he might state something positive and generic like: "I am taking my time and analysing the situation etc."

He didn't. He is alleged to have said: "I don't see anything that really scares me."

Now some may think that is an inflammatory statement and I am one of the some! I have no doubt he isn't scared. I am almost positive that he will never actually deal with a shooting at the scene or that he will ever lead an armed Police raid in Bermuda. He definitely won't be living in a high risk area. His family won't be targeted and he will be almost as well guarded as the Premier, if he desires. Also, our major private golf clubs are very rarely subject to gang violence.

Based on what he allegedly said, and his heading up of all the serious crime and drugs situations, we can all sleep peacefully secure in the knowledge that this "saviour" will cleanse us all during his brief and well paid job here. Sir, I don't know you, but you very much remind me of a certain Deputy Commissioner Alfred Morris who graced our shores in the 70s. He was another retired UK officer here to teach us all and save us all. Mr. Morris, after only being here a short while, was asked by the then UBP Cabinet to state categorically whether or not "Bermuda has a drug problem?"

This query was put to him after I gave a lecture to a Rotary Club. The topic was "Drugs in Bermuda". My address was covered in the press. In that address I mentioned that a group of narcotics officers, including me, had very recently made the first local heroin seizure and common sense dictated that we then had a heroin problem as it was estimated that if we seized a few "street decks" someone, somewhere in Bermuda, must have had a lot more. Mr. Morris, for his own particular reason and without consulting his "advisers" told Cabinet that we didn't have a problem. So, Government was happy as its overseas crime expert had reassured them. Our funding didn't go up but ... guess what? ... our problem got worse. DCOP Morris puffed on his pipe and left Bermuda.

Mr. Mirfield, I sincerely hope you are truly here to assist and that you do sort out this scary situation before most of the important businesses flee our shores along with quite a few Bermudians, of all races, who are leaving or have left for peaceful climes. I wish you every success but remember this Island is a sophisticated country, not a very, very small part of the UK where you were raised and worked. Please remember the old Chinese proverb from the Tang Dynasty: "Shade and light are different in every valley."

JOHN L. WILLIAMS

Detective Inspector (Retired)

Bermuda Police

Smith's

Taciturnus responds

July 4, 2010

Dear Sir,

In response to Valirie Marcia Akinstall's letter, "Show Yourself Taciturnus", from London, published on July 1, I should like to make the following points:

1. The literary use of a pseudonym is a time-honoured way of expressing opinions or writing novels, poems, music, and critiques etc., in order to focus on the ideas themselves, not on a cult of personality.

If Mildred Dobbs from Clapham writes a letter to The Times, her name and Clapham may be appended to the letter, but we have no idea who she is, and we are very unlikely to ever meet her, so to all intents and purposes, she may just as well have used a pseudonym.

2. Ms Akinstall flatters me by suggesting that I might be a journalist. I take that as a compliment in spite of the unpleasant invective ("ridicule, contempt, hate speech") invoked in reviling my character. What does it matter who I am? I buy The Royal Gazette every day, and read it from cover to cover, and when I am allowed to do so, I air my views and opinions through the medium of "Letters To The Editor". I have had letters published in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, to name-drop but a few. But I use the medium to express ideas and reactions and suggestions, not to gain praise or abuse for my stances.

I do not suffer from xenophobia, which is why I would not give a moment's thought to the possibility that Ms. Akinstall might be a British Citizen who has somehow found our Royal Gazette online, or a member of the Communist Revival Association Party, or that her name might in fact be a pseudonym, or that she might be a Bermudian In Chambers. What prompted me to write a completely spontaneous letter of response was the idea expressed in her excellently written letter that we could be instructed in the matter of freedom of the press by one, Leon Trotsky, who defiled the very idea of freedom of speech by ensuring that all proponents of dissent were either hanged or shot or marched off to live out their miserable incarcerated days in a below-freezing barbed-wired gulag in Siberia.

Who am I? I am an infinitesimally minute aberration of biological matter in a brief manifestation existing on a slightly larger speck of matter which its sentient inhabitants call "Planet Earth": a minute round-bellied, spinning object in a dark tiny corner of a minute solar system in one of countless numbers of millions of universes.

3. Although Ms. Akinstall has vilified me and construed my letter as containing "ridicule, contempt, and hate", I wrote the letter without the slightest suggestion of any of these three negative characteristics. I never ridicule, I am never contemptuous, and I have never suffered from hate, for which I truly thank God, as I have seen what irrational hatred has done to others. Maybe my sense of humour can be a little dry at times, but the message is never intended to be hurtful: only helpful.

4. I had no intention of being disrespectful to the "well-respected lecturer in law". I merely wanted to convey my opinion that anything that Leon Trotsky had to say could not possibly be seriously considered as instructive to an ongoing debate in a democratic society. Trotsky and his associates eliminated opposition by ruthless coercion and execution. A woman who had set aside wealth and position to feed the poor of Moscow after her husband was assassinated, and who became a nun, was thrown down a well along with innocent boys and some retired men. Grenades were thrown down after them. When the assassins realised that they were not dead and, in fact, the nun was comforting the surviving maimed, and encouraging them to sing religious songs, they fired their rifles down the well, and then threw lighted bundles of straw down the well so that the maimed dying victims would be burned to death. That, if I may say so, is hate. Mindless, cruel hate. That is only one small story about a few of the victims of the Russian Civil War, euphemistically referred to as "The Russian Revolution".

Sadly, as in the matter of other examples of man's inhumanity to man, no one is left to blame or to atone for the monstrous evils perpetrated by our forebears on the former inhabitants of this planet. The only honour we can grant the victims is to remember them and to recall them individually and collectively: it is one of the greatest tragedies of time that we cannot bring back those who suffered unjustly so that states might offer redress and remorse, and plead for forgiveness, and that we who are here today because of their sacrifices cannot bow down and carry the weight of their burdens of sorrows.

Surely we cannot dignify Trotsky by venerating his writings? That was my point. Not to be disrespectful to anyone, but purely to disagree with the writer and her quoted source, the lecturer in law.

I even gave him the benefit of the doubt and suggested that he might be quoting Trotsky in order to warn us what happens when The State interferes with freedom of the press.

5. In writing under a pseudonym, my opinions are as unmasked as they could ever be. I am deeply sorry that my letter was construed as "covert, cynical, and hateful". Letters To The Editor is about the exchange of positive and constructive ideas — not for the practice of polishing a potential career in law and politics with grandstanding rhetoric.

6. Having written the above, it is here that I must bow my head in shame, because, although I did not mean to do so, I do see Ms. Akinstall's point that I could be interpreted as impugning the reputation of a respected lecturer in law when I questioned why he would direct us to Leon Trotsky's writings on freedom of the press: the very press which Leon Trotsky shut down with such ruthlessly despotic totalitarianism. I should not have referred to the law lecturer and should have simply stated my case regarding the fanatic, Leon Trotsky, therefore an apology is owed to Ms. Akinstall and to Mr. Radlett and I duly offer my humble apologies for this error of judgment.

7. On a last but one note, I am indebted to Ms. Akinstall's profound knowledge of The Law and her lucid description of our rights of Protection of Freedom of Expression, as defined under The ECHR Article 10: "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."

8. On a final note, Ms. Akinstall, I would not dream of entering a debate with you in matters of the existing laws and how they are interpreted, since clearly you are a master in this arena. I would like to read your objective ideas (especially as you have not mentioned him in your letter and yet he was the whole point of mine on the relevancy of Leon Trotsky to the rule of law in respect of freedom of the press.

TACITURNUS

Warwick