Immigration tit for tat

September 2, 2009

Dear Sir,

When the American Government does not allow a Bermudian into the US because they have a conviction for a small amount of cannabis, why should the Bermuda Government allow an American a work permit to be in Bermuda?

If your report is correct that the person is allegedly the Worldwide Head of Excess Liability for Ironshore, is beside the point. It sends out the message to the young Bermudian who made one mistake and is barred from entering the United States, due to their laws, that it is good for someone with money to break the law but not them. OK guys, let us do it tit for tat. He should have his Immigration permission revoked. He would have known the laws prior coming to Bermuda and it is no excuse. Send Geoff Smith packing!

ANTONY SIESE

City of Hamilton

Moving the mailbox

September 1, 2009

Dear Sir,

This is in response to your request at the end of your news article today regarding the new mail regulations.

I have had a brass mail slot in my front door for 17 years and mail has been faithfully delivered through that slot falling onto the floor in my front room. Now I am told to "relocate" it?

My front door is 25 feet from the roadside with a flat pathway to walk on.

I would like to ask if the new regulations are being taken too literally, if the real reason is to expedite mail delivery or to allow the delivery personnel to stay seated on their motorbikes.

Are we to become like the United States where the delivery personnel have specialised vehicles so they are able to reach from the vehicle to deliver mail directly into a mailbox placed at the kerb (when it is snowing or raining)?

I would hazard a guess that mail will still not be delivered during inclement weather. They should take a page out of the book from the United Kingdom. Mail deliverers walk from house to house, they push a wheeled trolley and even deliver on Saturdays! Rain, shine or even snow. How about that!

Whilst in the UK this year I returned a package, using the local post office, to a company on the west coast, on a Thursday morning, requesting an exchange of goods. The exchanged goods were returned to me 48 hours later on a Saturday morning care of the Royal Mail.

I defy the local service to beat that timing.

On a further note, if mail is to be withheld by the postal service 'as they cannot deliver', isn't that against the law? I was always under the assumption that any sort of tampering with H. M. Mail was illegal.

If, as they say, they will be unable to deliver, then where are they going to store it if there is no return address on the envelope. Will they be opening the mail to see who sent it?

Again, illegal.

Recipients cannot be held accountable for the manner in which mail is addressed to them.

Just some thoughts for consideration as I do not expect any rational answers.

M.Y.D.C.

Sandys

We did Bermuda proud

September 1, 2009

Dear Sir,

Mr. Editor, please allow me to express a tribute to old friends. It has been 50 years since this event took place, Mr. Editor, but first, just allow me to say in the annuals of Bermuda football, a lot of recognition was paid to the British Army and the Local Forces in bringing about football in Bermuda. But there was another Bermuda group, that had just as much to do with bringing and making inroads into Bermuda football: let me set the scene for you, sir.

It was 50 years ago this year that a group of Boy Scouts set off from Bermuda to attend a Boy Scout jamboree in Trinidad & Tobago. At that time there were no high speed jet planes, we flew B.W.I.A. from Bermuda to Antigua to Barbados to Trinidad, the entire flight took over 12 hours of flying. We landed in the wee hours of the morning, and were put up in a hostel overnight. The next morning we were taken by bus to Valsayn Park, where we were met by the Commissioner of Scouts for Trinidad and other international commissioners and Scout leaders because they had heard how proud Bermuda Scouts are, and how proud of our marching.

Well, Mr. Brangman and Mr. Robinson did not let them down. We formed in two rows, facing Mr. B and Mr. R, the order was given to come to attention, we were inspected by the Commissioner of Scouts for the Jamboree, after the salute was given and received, we were ordered a right turn and a quick march, Mr. Brangman in front, Mr. Robinson carrying the Bermuda flag, with yours truly carrying the placard "BERMUDA", we marched proudly and swaggerly (taught to us by Mr. Mansfield Brock), we halted at our designated area, with what seemed like 300,000 Boy Scouts waiting for us to flop, on the other side of the road where 30,000 Girl Scouts, so you know, we couldn't flop now (smile).

Well, after all that and a few days later I met a patrol leader from the Jamaica Scouts, we got talking about football, so we decided to stage a game between our two Islands, I went back to Mr. Mark Robinson and asked if he would coach and manage us, and he did a wonderful job with his tactical game — we won the hard fought game 1-0 and celebrated with the Bermuda flag and a lap around the village, with free soda at the restaurant tent. Of course the game was witnessed by the 30,000 Girl Scouts and by at least half of the Boy Scouts there, this game was recorded in the Trinidad Newspapers and the village newspaper.

I would just like to say that I was and am still proud to have known those that have passed on and those scouts that are still around today. I will always have you guys close to my heart, Mr. Editor, we didn't need a racecard to play, when we left Bermuda, we were Bermudians. When we landed in Trinidad, we were Bermudians, when we played Jamaica, we were Bermudians and when we returned to Bermuda we were & are still Bermudians. We came together as one unit, we all had a wonderful time and a wonderful time making history as small as it was. I truly salute the following Scouts that filled my life.

They are as follows: Mr. Stuart Brangman (St. Albans), Mr Mark Robinson (Somerset), Mr Joseph Simmons (Somerset), Mr Charles Hutchinson (Rover scout), Wendall Emery (St. Albans) Neville (Butch) Bean (Somerset), Tommy Harvey (Somerset), Bobby Mello (St. George's) Jack Outerbridge (Hamilton Parish) Richard Darrell (Warwick), Melvin Ming (Salvation Army), Richard Pacheco (Bishop's Own) Ashley Raynor (St. Albans), Truman Tuzo (St. Albans), Robert Seaman (St. Albans).

Mr. Editor, we were all under the age of 16 years, We did an awful lot for junior football internationally for Bermuda. These boys should not go unrewarded. You and The Royal Gazette should present their names to the archives of Bermuda Football.

ROBERT SEAMAN

Superb performance

September 2, 2009

Dear Sir,

I am writing to congratulate the Bermuda Civic Ballet for the truly stunning performance of Hamlet performed last night at St. Catherine's Fort. It was a magical performance and the Croatian ballet troupe got a standing ovation.

I do hope that Bermudians take advantage of this rare opportunity to see such an excellent work of art. The role of Hamlet played by Svebor Secak was quite exceptional, as his facial expressions, plus his dancing, told the whole story vividly.

Let us hope that we will have the pleasure of seeing more theatrical events of the calibre.

E. RABEN

Paget

Mixed age classes

September 2, 2009

Dear Sir,

This is meant as a response to the request for commentary on the suggestion to have kids in school all year round, and reduce the length of the breaks. The suggestion in the paper was made in light of gang type activity, and the reasoning is that out of school for a long period of time will generate ganging and unruly behaviour. While this logic is reasonable, I believe there is a greater change we can make as well that will have a longer and stronger impact to our society. We need to review the common age classroom concept.

Under the Carter administration, a review was done of the academic abilities of 17-year-olds over a long period of time. As we probably all suspected, the results showed slowly weakening standards. This is shocking considering that we should be improving education and therefore expect better results. Carter asked for a suggestion to improve this.

Many years ago, schools were smaller, and in many cases did not have enough students for a common grade learning experience (i.e. same ages). So classes did not have the common age principle applied now. Society shifted to a common age classroom for efficiency of teaching, and have been managing the maximum size per classroom. On the face of it common age teaching would appear to provide only positive results.

However, what was suggested to Carter was that children learn their social and educational skills from either parents, teachers or other more mature support people. They learn very little of the life skills from other children of their own age. So as a consequence when they are committed to spend a lot of time in groups of their own age, some form strong bonds as protection, and sometimes these bonds are ganging type structures. The older kids now show similar traits, and so ganging becomes a norm for societal behaviour. Older kids have no respect for younger kids who therefore need to protect themselves.

So the suggestion to president Carter as he was leaving office was that a return to a mixed age classroom would reduce the ganging, and also would likely strengthen the education results. Older children would have tasks to teach younger children, thereby reducing teacher burden, and at the same time creating respect and bonding between the younger and older age children, they become more motivated, and invited to participate in other activities as a result of the role models which are closer in age to them than adults. A beautiful concept.

I don't think this comes without immense challenges, but I believe to take the plunge now will reap vast rewards for the future of our society. So I think we should have all year round school (kids are knowledge sponges at young ages), and change to a principle where older students spend some time teaching younger students.

JOHN BURVILLE

Pembroke

Making Bermuda ugly

September 2, 2009

Dear Sir,

I was wondering if the sneakers/boots which hang over power lines are being kept there for decoration or if the Police or the Government will take them down. Someone told me they are meant to be there to indicate drugs are in town. There have been two pairs hanging over the line outside Dub City for a long time now. Even my four-year-old daughter has started asking why someone put their shoes up there. It looks really dumb and tourists must also wonder why we have this on such a beautiful island.

DRIVER

City of Hamilton

Compare like with like

September 2, 2009

Dear Sir,

If we are to have a truly honest conversation about race, we need to start presenting the facts we have fairly. Saying whites earn 40 percent more than blacks makes for a sensational headline but implies that race determines income more than other factors such as skills, education and experience which is not clear from the report nor from your article.

We need to compare like with like: If we want to compare incomes based on race, then let us compare Bermudian blacks with Bermudian whites. Let us compare college degree earners in both categories. If we include the international workers we seriously skew the results. We are the premier international destination for the top global professionals in re/insurance and finance.

The highly skilled workers who are hired for the most complex jobs requiring the most experience are coming from countries where one is able to study and gain experience in those fields: namely Canada, USA and UK which have majority white populations. Hence the most highly paid jobs gained by foreigners will tend to be filled with whites. By contrast, we have a new, burgeoning underclass of workers who are low skilled and hired from developing nations where their labour can be bought cheapest and which are predominantly not white. So those workers will be earning bottom dollar.

This offers a plausible explanation of the gap but doesn't tell us that this is actually the reason. We need numbers for only Bermudians broken down by race, sex, education and experience to really give us hope at an answer.

This doesn't mean that racial preferences don't influence salary, it's just that these statistics don't tell us the answer.

JUST THE FACTS

Hamilton Parish

Calling Consumer Affairs

September 1, 2009.

Dear Sir,

I live in St George's and I was very pleased when White's supermarket opened at Southside. The supermarket was large and bright and convenient. However, ever since it opened it has had a big problem regarding pricing. The prices rung up on the machine seldom match the correct price on the shelves. I often found that three out of five items would be wrong, sometimes as much as a dollar, and never in my favour. When this is pointed out to the cashier she leaves the check out and walks a long way up the shop to check on the price, then has to call a manager to correct it.

I find that I have to always watch what is being rung up. I know it is not the cashier's fault. She is ringing up the price that is in the system. It is the fault of management. As a senior citizen, I cannot afford to pay more than I already do for the very high cost of groceries nowadays, as I am sure people with young families, struggling to make ends meet, can't either. I have phoned the managers at White's in Warwick countless times to complain but this still continues. Surely this is something Consumer Affairs can deal with?

SENIOR CITIZEN

St. George's

Race card is wearing thin

August 31, 2009

Dear Sir,

The recent, lowest on record turnout at the Pembroke East Central by-election suggests the electorate is ready for change. Recently people have become disillusioned at the way the country is being led and the direction in which we are heading. The fact that PLP supporters in one of their strongholds did not show up on polling day indicates that the constituents are not happy.

The constant use of the race card by the leader of the country is wearing thin. People are becoming more politically aware and now seem to want to be informed about what each party stands for and more meaningful debate on the issues. The constant allegations of corruption, cronyism and incompetence are taking their toll. The PLP has alienated some of its key Ministers who are disillusioned at Dr. Brown's leadership style. This is at a cost to the country as we now see inexperienced Ministers in key positions.

The UBP has not yet been able to convince the electorate that they have the personnel that are willing and ready to take over the Government. Perhaps if they were able to persuade new faces along with the older ones, they could bring about change which it seems the country is crying out for. Whatever happens, the next election result will determine whether we continue on the same path or go forward together on a new one.

POLITICAL PUNDIT

Warwick