Progressive Labour Party

"What cares these roarers for the name of king?"There are no hurricanes at this time of the year. Instead, we have winter storms. Recently, the Island has been receiving a ferocious battering from wind and waves. So many flights to

Bermuda is Britain's largest remaining colony, and by far its richest. Embarrassed by its imperial past, the administrations of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have done their best to ignore the colonies, except for using the Bermuda Governorship as a bribe when close parliamentary votes need a push in the Government's favour. Bermuda's governing Progressive Labour Party has enjoyed the neglect Britain has shown. The PLP would not have been able to get away with much of its agenda had a socially-conscious parent been paying attention.

After an exceptionally mild spring, summer heat suddenly erupted in Bermuda late in June. Almost simultaneously, the fabric of society fell apart. The prognosis for this summer and fall is at least one general strike against our supposedly labour government, with the potential for riots. And that's before the rise in gasoline prices drives our gas later this year beyond $10 a gallon, our bread beyond $8 a loaf, and our electric bills beyond our reach altogether. Change is coming to the Bermuda economy, and it's going to be ugly.

One of the key promises made by the Progressive Labour Party in the 1998 General Election campaign was that, if elected, it would bring transparency to government.Thirty-five years of United Bermuda Party government had been characterised, in the minds of many, by secrecy and a lack of openness. The vow to provide transparent and accountable government struck a chord with the electorate.

Dictators consider the media in their countries as either a tool or a thorn in their sides. Throughout history, repressive leaders have taken control of the media to shut down opposition and the forum they provide for public discussion. The state of a country's media is usually representative of the degree of freedom enjoyed in that country. Bermuda has a daily newspaper, a twice-weekly and a weekly newspaper, all publicly owned. It has three TV channels attached to the US networks, and a number of locally operated channels pump out music videos and travelogues. Four or five radio stations are on the air. More than a dozen magazines are published routinely, year round. A handful of Bermuda-centric books appear every year.

How confident is our governing Progressive Labour Party that it will win the general election on December 18 of this year? So confident that it has used the campaign weeks to carry out acts of breath-taking arrogance that are unconstitutional and unethical, and maybe unlawful. Our combative leader, Dr. Ewart Brown, has chosen the campaign period to continue his harassment of our Auditor General, the constitutionally appointed arbiter of Government's financial activities. Dr. Brown has been trying to force out the longest-serving Auditor General in the Commonwealth, so that a crony of the Premier's can be appointed to the position.

In recent weeks, our premier, Dr. Ewart Brown, has set new lows in the standards of local governance. Sleaze and anger have become his hallmarks, the abuse of power his weapon of choice. He arrests his enemies - coincidentally, he says - without charging them. He throws writs around like confetti, especially against the media, trying to delay publication of details of his alleged misconduct until he can be elected to the office he inherited last October. He accuses unknown white people of a “supremacist oligarchy” and has all but shut down the notion of justice in a country that not long ago had a proud record of integrity and stability.

A little over eight years ago, when the Progressive Labour Party took office for the first time in its 35-year history, we were promised a "new" Bermuda. It was exciting for a lot of people, especially those who had always felt that they were denied access to the halls of power. Blacks especially thought that the new millennium would bring unlimited opportunity.

In some European countries, gay marriage is legal. In the US, the battle is being fought to allow gay marriage onto the political agenda. Even the most committed foes of gay unions would probably admit that being gay ought not to be a crime.Bermuda is a long way behind the most backward countries in the world in this area of human rights. It only created a Human Rights Commission (HRC) a few years ago, but in our racially-charged environment, it has lately become a black rights commission. The message the HRC has been sending on rights is that if it's black, it's right.

At the end of March, Bermuda convicted a man for his part in a $10 million government swindle. That fact, which is hardly earth-shattering, is surprising on several counts.The man convicted was employed by the Bermuda Housing Corporation (BHC), a government-funded, yet supposedly independent, body whose job, as best anyone can tell, is to collect rent and carry out repairs on houses owned by government. It might be responsible for housing those who cannot house themselves, but if so, it conspicuously fails to do that. In the past few years, it has evicted more people than it has helped.

The “debate” over whether Bermuda should go independent has always been a waste of time, but now it has descended into farce. If the possible financial ruin of a successful country could ever be said to be funny, what's going on here would be hilarious.

Imagine if you had an excuse for everything bad that you ever did. Imagine a society in which half the people had the same excuse. Would you rather be in the group with the excuse that exempted them from the

Bermuda's schoolchildren and people, its largest industrial union, and the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) all simultaneously suffered devastating blows late in August, when the PLP Government of Bermuda cancelled its contract with ProActive Management for the construction of a secondary school, the Berkeley Institute.

What is government for? Protecting citizens would surely rank high on the list. Lately, however, the Bermuda Government has decided that the most important of its functions is to guard the moral well-being of the nation. Gambling, in the form of one-armed bandits in our bars and potentially casinos on the island, has been banned. Government in this instance is protecting us from ourselves.

Ever since its formation in the mid 1960s, Bermuda's governing Progressive Labour Party (PLP) has placed Independence at the centre of its political programme. The PLP's unwavering pro Independence stance is its defining characteristic.For the first five and a half

From a financial perspective, the legacy of the first seven years of a Progressive Labour Party government will amount to a handful of projects. Whether, looking at this legacy, the PLP glass is half full or half empty depends on your view of the components of their legacy.

Starved as we are for entertainment in Bermuda, the 2003 General Election has been the greatest show on earth. Even those who thought the Progressive Labour Party would be unable to manage the economy believed that they could at least manage themselves. How wrong we were.

The main topic of conversation in Bermuda today is the next general election. It looks as if the governing Progressive Labour Party (PLP) may have turned what could only have been a straightforward victory into something of a contest.When the

No one who lives in Bermuda is ever surprised to find a local newspaper filled to the brim with the odd, the weird, or the downright bizarre. What passes for normal behaviour here would often result in the application of a straitjacket and a lifetime locked away almost anywhere else. But a story that ran in one of the local rags late in April may just take the all-time wackiness cake.The headline only scratched at the surface. It said: "Premier told: 'God is angry with Bermuda'." The sub-head read: "Prophetess tells Premier that Bermuda should brace itself for God's wrath, unless island repents within 30 days." An accompanying photograph showed "Prophetess Alicia Perry, pictured leaving the Cabinet Building after her meeting on Wednesday afternoon with Premier Jennifer Smith".

Although our internal differences are often put down to economics, the theme running through Bermuda society these days is racism. No one plays the card better or more frequently than members of our first PLP- controlled black Government, elected in 1998 after what we constantly refer to as "400 years of abuse" at the hands of whites. The first PLP government set out to change the economic order by favouring blacks in the awarding of government contracts. Such behaviour is entirely illegal under our Constitution, but we don't worry much about that. Just this week, our Minister of Transport, Dr. Ewart Brown, who is black, said that Government was embarked on a policy of "compensatory economics — compensating for the injustices of the past."

The greatest achievement of our first experience of a Progressive Labour Party (PLP) government was supposed to be the $68 million construction of a new secondary school, the Berkeley Institute.We already have a Berkeley Institute, which has produced almost the entire black professional cadre that runs the Civil Service and the government. Building a new school a few hundred yards up the road from the first one was considered important by the new government.

In 1998, when Bermuda's Progressive Labour Party (PLP) took office for the first time in its 34 year history, the general view was that a generation or two would pass before the party would be unseated. The self confessed black

A political situation is building in Bermuda that could lead to the collapse of the ruling Progressive Labour Party before its first term of office is fulfilled. The party's backbench, routinely ignored when important decisions are being made, has openly

Statistically, Bermuda's losses from the events of September 11 dwarf those of any other country on the planet.Two Bermudians died in the World Trade Center attacks. With fewer than 60,000 Bermudians in total, on a per capita basis, that's twice

The wave of euphoria that Progressive Labour Party Premier Jennifer Smith and her followers rode back in 1998 has all but dashed itself against the shore.Since those heady days, Government has delivered on all, or none, of the promises it made back then, depending on your point of view.

In announcing its decision to relocate from Bermuda, STW Fixed Income Management, which employs 18 people on the island and managed about $10 billion in assets, was highly critical of the PLP government. The company's CEO, American national William H. Williams, issued a news release in which he essentially accused the PLP government of not understanding the needs of international businesses and of implementing policies which he said would be "disastrous" to the economy. 

There are signs that the relatively new Bermuda government is in the early stages of antagonizing international businesses in a scenario that is eerily similar to the Bahamas of 30 years ago. Over the last six weeks, the Progressive Labour Party has raised payroll tax from 12 to 12.75 per cent and announced plans to restrict the length of many work permits to six years and make employers report the racial composition of their workforce and of people interviewed for job vacancies.

Liquidators of First Cayman Bank reach settlement with former Cayman government minister McKeeva Bush, First Nevisian's Keith Leslie King testifies at civil trial in the Isle of Man, Jordan Bionda denies he is a fraudster, conman Keem Kalfon promotes his Global Heritage Asset Protection 'fund', attorney Julian Hall is declared bankrupt in Bermuda, Bermuda's international business sector voices concern over Government plans to introduce tougher new work permit rules for foreign workers, offshore crook Marc Harris compares himself to Albert Einstein, Florida judge orders Harris Organization to pay costs after losing a libel action against OffshoreAlert's publisher.

The PLP has only been in power a month but there are already signs that the party's stance on work permits for foreign employees might be tougher than previous governments. A permit has not been renewed for Paul Rowlerson, a Senior Vice President with J&H Marsh & McLennan, after 14 years on the island in the insurance sector, according to a story in The Royal Gazette newspaper.

Offshore regulators apparently uninterested in scams exposed by OffshoreAlert; NimsTec's 3-D cameras offered for sale as "collector's items" over the Internet; Marc Harris has t-shirt with the slogan: "David Marchant is alive because killing him would be a crime"; As General Election looms, Progressive Labour Party tipped to win power in Bermuda for the first time; Dominion of Melchizedek offers a variety of fraudulent products and services; and Little Switzerland contemplates legal action after proposed purchase of Colombian Emeralds International falls through.

Church minister Trevor Woolridge has quit the opposition Progressive Labour Party after being convicted of sexually assaulting a woman parishioner.

Bermuda's Progressive Labour Party has written to the island's international companies asking for contributions towards their campaign fund for the next General Election.