wonder if anyone in the PLP has even the simplest ideas about the economy. A close reading of the PLP reply indicates that this major statement is both sloppy and juvenile. It is not of sufficent standard to have been prepared for a secondary school debate. For years there has been a feeling in Bermuda that the PLP was ill-equipped to handle the Country's finances and this Budget reply in an election year proves that point to an embarrassing degree.

The Government Budget was a people's Budget and designed to give individuals and businesses a break so that the economy can recover from the recession.

Because it fuels the economy by not raising taxes while at the same time protecting services to those who need help in tough times, the Government Budget is hard to fault. The PLP's job is to be a critic of Government policy and in that regard the reply to the Budget is woefully inadequate and fails because it is inept. The PLP should have been asking generally what the results of this "easy'' Budget might be if things do not improve. What might the public have to face in next year's Budget? Instead the PLP said it would move to increase borrowing at exactly the time when Bermuda should learn from the United States that borrowing leads to enormous financial trouble. Dr. Saul's Budget is calculated very cautiously and sensibly on low increases in tourism and the international company sector.

The PLP says that is wrong and that Government should have inflated those figures and the future Government income and produced a pie-in-the-sky Budget based on guesses. Heaven forbid individuals should run their cash that way.

No-one can know what 1994 will bring and this is surely a time for caution for everyone except the PLP. If Government's cash flow should increase as the PLP suggests then Dr. Saul and Bermuda will be in a very happy position but if Bermuda recklessly used the PLP formula and things did not get better, we would be destined for chaos. The PLP suggestions are very disturbing coming from a party that likes to call itself the "government in waiting''.

There are enormous contradictions of the PLP's own policies in the PLP reply which seems at one point to suggest that the PLP would have stopped building at the new prison having argued correctly for years that conditions for prisoners and prison staff were woefully inadequate. Stopping at this time would also throw construction workers out of jobs. The PLP even seem at one point to oppose protecting jobs for Bermudians having always argued for Bermuda for Bermudians. The PLP opposes cuts in Police, correctly we think, but last year it argued for cuts in the Police Service. The PLP even manages to appear anti-St. George's when it complains about reduction of the arrival tax on yachts which largely benefits the Old Town. It notes that the reduction could cost Bermuda $70,000 but fails to note that this may be a boon to St.

George's where it hopes to win in an election. From a PLP point of view that makes no sense. Maybe it is simply that the reply is so poorly worded that it is difficult to understand.

The PLP reply clearly indicates that it would increase taxes and borrowing in this recession and that it has no real idea where the Country's money comes from. But the reply is most interesting for what it does not address and that is what the public would most like to know. Does the PLP support income tax?