this newspaper, is a great supporter of the environment, does not appear this week to be good for tourism. He has dumped all over Bermuda in a major international travel magazine, Conde Nast Traveller. While we might have sanctioned Mr. Hayward's views if they had been expressed in a proper place like an environmental magazine, they came as a shock when quoted for consumption by millions of potential visitors to Bermuda and by travel agents for Bermuda.

Conde Nast Traveller is powerful and respected in its field. It has a circulation of just over a million copies which means many more millions of people in terms of readership. Mr. Hayward has put his Country down in a way none of us needs, especially at this time. By all means debate the environment in Bermuda, this newspaper does it all the time, but let's not wash our dirty linen in travel magazines whose readers are all potential visitors.

Mr. Hayward, the MP for Pembroke West Central, told Conde Nast Traveller: "Bermuda is an island in crises. Not crisis, crises.'' Do you want to visit a place with "crises''? Mr. Hayward: "Bermuda used to be the isle of rest. Now it's the isle of stress.'' Do you want to visit an "isle of stress'' on your holiday? Mr. Hayward: "Bermuda is probably the number one polluter on the globe per capita and has developed itself to the point beyond where there is practically nowhere else to develop.'' Doesn't that sound like a terrible place? Mr. Hayward: "We consume more energy per capita than the United States, we produce more garbage per capita than the United States, we out consume our local fish production by three to one ...'' He also told the author that Bermuda is building a giant new incinerator and will not put scrubbers in its smokestack and breeze will shoot the soot elsewhere. Mr. Hayward said: "We have a lot of fresh breeze coming through here to blow it somewhere else.'' That all makes us sound like a lot of careless and profligate wastrels who are bent on destruction of ourselves and the globe. There is a whole generation in the United States devoted to conservation and the environment. This is the era of conservation. Basically Bermudians are very conservation minded yet Mr.

Hayward, for overseas consumption, makes Bermuda and Bermudians sound like outlaws in a green world.

In any case, Mr. Hayward usually confuses people with figures. He quotes "per capita'' usage when usage of anything by a major visitor country cannot be quoted per capita. Much of what we consume is not consumed by Bermudians but by visitors on holiday. Bermuda does not have a static population of 60,000 but a much larger population of floating consumers ranging through visitors to ships' crews to the military. While Bermuda Inc. is a large consumer, it is not fair to make it appear that Bermudians are wanton consumers.

It is sad that Mr. Hayward, an elected parliamentarian, would paint us all, and his Country, in such a bad light in a magazine devoted to visitors. There are problems with Bermuda's environment, of course there are, but we should not inflict our environmental problems on our visitors any more than we should plague them with labour problems.