Brace yourself

April 24, 2007

Dear Sir,

Here’s a little food for thought for those who take time to read:

I often wonder whether former Premier Alex Scott honestly has any regrets for nominating Dr. Brown for the deputy leadership post. If indeed he does, maybe he should have thought like Dame Lois Browne Evans when she stated in July 2003 that if she was leader, she would be more careful who she picked as candidates. I also wonder what Alex Scott meant when he stated that “...Bermuda will get the government it deserves”. Exempted company chieftains and leaders of legal and financial industries already have the ability to influence new policies and directions i.e. BIBA mentioning the impact the new law to restrict car ownership for guest workers would have on international businesses. Despite this, the PLP diehards may once again show their support based on party lines. They are entrusting their future in the hands of a leader who played a major role in misleading the electorate in 2003 in a desperate attempt to hang on to power, and ultimately forgetting the interests of the people who are left to ponder the question “What about us?” We must remember that according to Charles Caleb Colton: “No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.”

When PLP member Craig Clarke spoke of certain members of the PLP who have their own political agenda, did Premier Brown fit into that category? When Dr. Brown returned to Bermuda in 1992, after a 28 year absence, he had the mindset that “If you think I’ve come here just to practise medicine you couldn’t be more incorrect. I have scores to settle, accounts to pull even.” In the 1998 Election, he was elected despite a strong campaign against him. In 2000 he launched a bid for the deputy leadership of the PLP but was soundly beaten out by the late Finance Minister Eugene Cox. At that time, he vowed he would one day seek the top job. Dr. Brown’s persistence together with his political strategy in not divulging everything every time and his influence over the other rebels of his party in his pursuit to lead the country, may have been acceptable to the PLP delegates, however, his fate now lies in the hands of the electorate. Although he is known to be a leader who places great emphasis on achievement and getting things done, Dr. Brown is considered “too American” by some members of his own party.

How will he heal the party rifts and “make it happen” with his autocratic style of leadership should he attempt to take Bermuda to Independence? He did state that he would not stay in the hot seat for ten years because much of what he would like to achieve can be achieved within five years, whilst ruffling some feathers — so I guess that would include “Independence”. So brace yourselves for the hidden agenda and what Premier Brown has in store for us during his tenure in office, and remember five years is one term in office — so the other five of the ten years he mentioned is for prestige. In the 1950s he was exposed to Jamaica’s independence movement, so he is aware of what to expect, which may explain the need for beefed up security around his home and the bodyguards. Bermudians in their shortsightedness, however, are being distracted by the cost factor of implementing the security the Premier seeks (i.e. fencing etc.), when they should be concentrating more on the Premier’s ulterior motive. Although his ambition is not blind or aimless and has been fortified by many years of preparation — education, hard work, team work, deference, deferral and service; his hasty nature of making decisions that are not vetted fully may one day contribute to his downfall. On that note, he should be reminded that hasty climbers have sudden falls and that in Bermuda; the electorate prefers to be consulted rather than dictated to.

As Walton Brown stated in July 2003, “It’s not sufficient to say you’ve got your head in the trenches doing the people’s business, they have to know what you are doing and feel a bond with you.” He also said: “A victory for any party has much to do with the leader—” Does this also apply to Premier Brown, who obviously delegates many of his responsibilities to avoid direct contact with individuals, masking his true personality as seen in his management style, which explains why he chooses to surround himself with spokespersons etc.?

According to October, 2000 polls, he was the least popular choice of a leader with just 6.9 percent of the vote, however, he recently managed to convince the PLP delegates, when he crushed his predecessor Alex Scott by 31 votes, to allow him to fulfil his lifelong ambition of becoming Premier of Bermuda. Will the Honourable Premier Brown’s reputation of being a bad boss who can’t keep staff affect his ability to be an effective ‘leader’, or will his vision lead to further division? With Premier Brown now the ‘Captain’ of the ship he once described as ‘listing in the sea with no rudder’, has his party found the time to right the ship, sit down and have the ‘open discussion’ on ‘independence’ to decide where it fits in on their agenda or will they once again have to deceive the public to maintain their power?

At least Premier Brown was honest in one of his speeches when he admitted that under the PLP Government, we are no better off today than we were three years ago — neither is our neighbour and neither is our son or daughter. His objective to have every child of every PLP member and every child of Bermuda aspire to great heights has been partially achieved, as we’ve already seen some of the politicians’ relatives being rewarded with promotions etc. If every single vote was needed to secure their 2003 election victory, what will happen at the polls this time around? Will the electorate have the mindset, ‘once bitten, twice shy’? What about having a plan ‘B’ like Premier Brown, who hasn’t completely severed his US ties? After all, he married an American, so he can jump ship and leave Bermuda once again should his dream of Bermuda becoming independent turn into a nightmare. Considering this, when the election does roll around: ‘be careful what you ask for because you just might get it”.

VIGILANT

Devonshire

Start real traffic courts

May 17, 2007

Dear Sir,

Re: Front page, The Royal Gazette, “Scotsman cleared in road death”.

I am a retired Toronto Police Officer, now residing in Bermuda. I have a varied background and speciallty in the areas of, collision reconstruction, traffic enforcement, forensic photography, forensic mapping, vehicle dynamics, occupant kinematics, traffic engineering, etc. I cannot help but comment on the tragic case of the motor-cycle fatality that occurred on September 5, 2005 on North Shore Road. There are so many areas that need to be addressed in the area of effective policing in this country, that I do not have enough space to address each and every one. Suffice it to say, that I will concentrate on the key initiatives that need to be rectified in the area of traffic enforcement and effective road fatality prevention. They are as follows:

1. The immediate legislation to enact an effective Demerit Point System.

2. Legislation to empower judges and police to impound vehicles for serious offences under the Criminal Code, Traffic Code and unpaid fines.

3. The implementation of Traffic Code Courts. Assign and train Justices of the Peace to adjudicate all Traffic Code violations and assign Prosecutors, not necessarily lawyers, to prosecute those offences. The most noticeable result would decrease the case load for Magistrates Court.

4. Train a dedicated Traffic Enforcement Police Unit that can effectively reconstruct a Fatal/Serious Personal Injury Collision Scene for all types of vehicles encompassing all the latest Collision Reconstruction paradigms.

5. More effective liaison of police with the coroner/pathologist in road fatality post mortem investigations.

6. Motivate the police into subscribing to a: “ZERO TOLERANCE INITATIVE ON TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT”.

These are but a few of solutions that need to be enacted immediately in order to curtail the spiralling amount of road deaths and serious personal injury motor-vehicle collisions. If these systems were in place at the time of the North Street fatality, the appropriate charge(s) would have been laid with a certain expectation of conviction. There was no evidence to support the charge of Dangerous Driving. The reasons were evident, the police were not trained and the end result is a further lack of public confidence in the police to confront the present day, out-of-control, disregard for traffic safety.

TOTALLY FRUSTRATED-

Take care of our seniors

May 14, 2007

Dear Sir,

Now that we have such an active Dr. Brown, I am wondering what he will (or can) do with the age-old issue of “Age Concern”; being a doctor and having his way with the closure of the medical clinic at the hospital, he perhaps will apply his energies and conscience to the following:

1. There should be a 50 per cent discount for seniors, and free for some proven below the poverty level, for the following services — prescriptions, psychiatrics, optical, dental, physical therapy, podiatry, doctor’s visits, hospital stay, specialist visits.

It has been suggested that seniors should have saved for their later years to meet these contingencies, but being a senior myself, I can assure you my savings of yesteryear would not meet my financial needs (not even close) at today’s prices, the cost of living has risen beyond imagining.

2. The Government should now deal with the many hardships that many seniors face today due to the rise in the cost of living.

3. An identity card could be issued as proof of entitlement.

4. On another tack but related especially to seniors — a crime of violence against a senior should incur a double judgment as punishment, or community service for the aged under supervision.

5. Fordham University did a research report in 2004 on “Aging in Bermuda”, meeting the needs of seniors; a Charter of Rights for the aged is well overdue.

6. The Human Rights Act, should be amended to include the word “Age”, as it reads, if I am correct “Persons shall not be discriminated against for race, colour, gender, sexual preference, physical ability etc. the world ‘Age’ should be included. You only have to be old to know why!

I write this letter on behalf of the seniors of Bermuda, and hope that the Minister of Health and the Premier will give these matters serious consideration, and soon. Let us see if words promised and spoken on political platforms are synonymous with action and deeds.

DIANA WILLIAMS

Pembroke

P.s. The Government claims to give seniors on HIP 3-4 (used to be 2) free visits to the doctor a year. When you go to claim this ‘Bonanza’ you find it is not free, the Government will only pay a portion accompanied with a lot of red tape, that some seniors are unable to fathom. We all wish of course, that we were young enough to play football and cricket!

Build character first

May 7, 2007

Dear Sir,

I refer to today’s Editorial “Education Omissions” which very closely aligns with a philosophy I have unsuccessfully attempted to share with all of our legislators over a great many years. If we can somehow bring ourselves to accept the premise (as affirmed by the very successful University of Waterloo in Canada<\m> see attachment below) “first build good character and good results will follow”, then we will be well on our way towards assuring as many as practicable of our youngsters a very much more soundly based education.

However, at present this is regrettably comparable to the “inconvenient truth” that Al Gore also regularly attempts to educate us all on in relation to the environment, and therefore also yet still requires the critically essential political will to achieve. Thankfully, and at long last, he now appears to be making meaningful progress both internationally as well as at home.

In conclusion, (and providing that we too can somehow now grasp this “inconvenient truth” apropos education’s dependency upon first building good character and good results will follow), there would then also happily seem to be a very real impetus for the requisite political will to finally bridge all party lines. If so, this would thereby most helpfully bring the presently far too many of our ill guided youngsters back on to a far more “interdependently accountable” positive track, and for the obvious betterment of every one of us.

‘BERMUDACORPS’ — A SYSTEM OF YOUTH SERVICE RELEASING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF ALL OF BERMUDA’S YOUTH:

“First build good character and good results will follow” — The guiding principle of the founders of the University of Waterloo, one of Canada’s finest institutions of higher learning. A fundamental principle in any well ordered society is to ensure that every young person becomes properly equipped to take their place as a meaningful participant in the work or social environment. However, many young people do not recognise that they have a full responsibility to learn just as adults have a full responsibility to teach. Furthermore, many adults find themselves ill equipped to properly instil the requisite value structures in their children sufficient to lead them to maturity. As a consequence, it is self evident that in order for society to fully succeed and prosper, both ingredients of family understandably require the additional support of the community, which is simply the larger family of which we are all a part.

In essence therefore, significant additional progress in the development of our young people can be immediately achieved if the many established but purely voluntary extra curricular and positively oriented youth programmes presently in train instead become part of the required curricula of each school between the hours of 3.30 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. each school day. These programmes would start from as young as Cubs and Brownies and continue through secondary school involving other programmes such as Scouts and Rangers while also involving sail training wherever practicable. As a consequence, critically essential constructive character building would also automatically become the norm as part of the standard education of every youngster whereby only those relatively few who clearly yet still required extra attention would become the focus for a specialist highly trained and strongly disciplined youth service. After all, we already require all youngsters to acquire the requisite education skills to earn a living, so why do we not also reasonably require all youngsters to similarly acquire the requisite character skills to effectively cope with life?

In spite of wonderful successes in thankfully the very great majority of our young people, we unfortunately have too many others of all races and backgrounds feeling totally alienated from society. As a consequence, they are unable to cope with society’s reasonable expectation of conduct, and therefore pursue self destructive activities such as drug abuse, theft, promiscuity, gang warfare, foul language, speeding, mugging, hostility to any parental or adult guidance, and also total avoidance of any responsibility for their actions.

As a consequence, it is strongly recommended that positively oriented character training headed by paid, highly principled youth leaders be now made an automatically applied educational philosophy to bring about the broadest possible exposure to positive values for all. Indeed, if we can simply get this right as a society, then the following major benefits would automatically ensue:

(a) Racism would be substantially reduced by requiring all youngsters to constructively participate instead of only a select few, such as those whom the Bermuda Regiment so positively influences.

(b) Drug dependency would be substantially reduced by creating a self disciplined positive outlook able to avoid negative peer pressure instead driven by an inherent sense of worthlessness.

(c) Significant renewed support for existing currently poorly supported yet high quality youth services would result from those willing to volunteer rather than instead be conscripted into the more strongly disciplined Bermudacorps. However, the Bermudacorps would nevertheless have ultimate authority similar to that of the Bermuda Regiment over anyone not satisfactorily conforming to the other service’s standards if they had perhaps volunteered to simply avoid the Bermudacorps. As a consequence, for those presently far too many unable to recognise the true value of volunteerism, they would certainly be most strongly encouraged to do so before completing their service within the Bermudacorps.

(d) A greatly improved both school and work ethic as well as a ‘service above self’ philosophy would result from a positive reorientation of many youngsters’ perspective on life, thus greatly improving the ‘Bermuda experience’ for everyone contributing to our social and economic success.

(e) Promiscuity and ‘children raising children’ would be significantly reduced because each youngster would be taught to value others both before and as much as themselves.

(f) Cycle theft, speeding, mugging, handbag snatching, “gang warfare” and foul language etc. would be reduced because those currently perceived ‘rites of passage’ would no longer be accepted by their peers as such, and

(g) Littering and poor attitude generally in relation to the environment would be reduced because no-one who values others both before and as much as themselves would not similarly value and protect the environment.

TED GAUNTLETT, JP