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Dear Sir,

The cries for independence from a colonial power are so sadly misplaced — it’s not Britain we should be worried about. We’ve already been invaded and are being pillaged under our noses. International business owns Bermuda and we are being slowly reduced to second class citizens in our own island.

International business came here because we have things they want: A low to non-existent tax regime, nice golf courses and politely compliant people. We fell over ourselves to facilitate them because we saw them as easy money, cattle for slaughter. We branded this complicity an ‘Economic Miracle’ and notched up our rents. 20 years on the cash cows are eating our lunch.

Hypnotized by the quick buck we have let our service industries die, allowed corporate money to bid us out of the housing market and dumbed down our schools to salve our withering self esteem to the point that they don’t feel pressured to hire us.

The best homes in the best neighbourhoods are occupied by foreign executives. The best schools are full of their children. They live lifestyles that neither we nor they could have dreamed of and all of it is financed by corporate money.

Bermudians at ground level compete for housing with the co-worker in the opposite cubicle who is entitled to a housing allowance simply because he wasn’t born here. Salary plus rent subsidy trumps basic salary every time and we are running out of suburbs to retreat to for affordable housing.

Bermudians pay two or three times what foreign nationals pay to attend their schools and universities because we are foreigners in their country yet we educate their children in our overwhelmed school system at the same rate we pay.

The existence of a heavily subsidized subset of the population only bids up the cost to all of us to house, educate, clothe and feed ourselves and our children. Some of us get rich but most of us just get priced out of the market.

The villain in this story is not the ghost of Queen Victoria, too distracted to bother with the few remaining pink bits on the map. It’s not the old white gentry renting the family manor to corporate aristocrats just to stay ahead of the maintenance bills. It’s not even the corporations, doing what anyone would do in their place.

The villain is our own greed and shortsightedness in allowing our home to be sold so cheaply and so completely.

Certainly we benefit from their being here but they benefit disproportionately more and unlike us, they can go home when it all burns out. The stresses and disparities that their practices have introduced to our economy and our infrastructure drive the invisible hand of the market in their favour and ultimately against Bermuda and her people.

Corporations save hundreds of millions, if not billions in tax just by being here. They won’t run if we require housing support policies to be applied equally or not at all. They won’t run if we double their school fees. They won’t run if we require that for every ‘indefinite’ work permit granted they must send a Bermudian overseas to get the same work experience and exposure they benefited from. They won’t run if we ask that they conduct their affairs with sensitivity to our finite resources and overheated economy.

Some may run if we ask them to help support the infrastructure we all benefit from but that probably just separates the wheat from the chaff anyway.

Sustainable development is not just about saving a few open spaces and some turtle grass. The economy has grown in ways that are unhealthy to the majority of Bermudians. International business is now the only business and this is seen as a justification for the liberties it is afforded.

What we need is a real collaboration between Bermuda and International business to get corporate money out of the housing market and into the infrastructure deficiencies like schools, roads, water, sewage treatment and energy. Without it Bermudians will only be further marginalized and forced out of the ‘Economic Miracle’ because it’s not our miracle, it’s someone else’s.

Jonathan Dyer

Hamilton Parish[[In-content Ad]]

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