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What's with this Government?

Do they always wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

Can anyone give them some happy pills?

They could use them because this is easily the most bad-tempered bunch of politicians I've ever seen.

Look at their statements and actions over the past month and you can't help but feel that they need a new source of drinking water. There has been nothing but an unrelenting stream of irritation, anger and sourness with splashes of intimidation here and there.

David Burch's threat last Friday to arrest Senator Gina Spence-Farmer for her "borderline criminal" work supporting squatters at the Club Med staff quarters is the latest outpouring of negative energy from this Government.

Words fail me

And then for him to call the squatters "monsters", when they have provisional approval from his own Ministry to be there, well words fail me.

Sorry, I stand corrected. Burch's rant was not the latest diatribe from the Government. Hours later, during a marathon session in the House of Assembly, Premier Brown launched an early morning assault on Louise Jackson for representing people opposing his planned closure of the Medical Clinic.

Mrs. Jackson and others have raised legitimate questions about what kind of medical care patients at the clinic can expect once it is closed. The answers so far have not eased their concerns.

That didn't stop Dr. Brown, who is driving the plan to close the clinic, from describing the work of Mrs. Jackson - one of the most trusted politicians in Bermuda - as being based on "misinformation, skullduggery and outright lies."

It strikes me that the Government really likes to go after Opposition representatives such as Mrs. Spence-Farmer and Mrs. Jackson because they obviously care about the people and are closer to them than the Government itself.

They are, in other words, too effective; and it clearly puts the Government in a bad frame of mind.

But the bad vibes didn't start there.

Finance Minister Paula Cox launched this latest round of bad temper with a finger-wagging Budget lecture to international businesses for not doing enough for Bermuda. She accused companies of insincerity, profiteering, lying - there's that word again - and failing to do more for the people. The ironies of her tirade were too rich, even for me.

But I can't leave you this week without also mentioning the dynamic duo of PLP MP George "Do you know who you're talking to?" Scott and Immigration Minister Derrick "Watch your step" Burgess, who together became the poster boys of the month for bad-tempered Government.

My theory about all this venom and anger is that Government members know they have failed to meet the needs of the people, and that they are now playing catch-up in virtually every area of public policy. It makes for desperate politicians with bad tempers, especially when they realize they will not be able to run on their record in the next election.

Regardless of the reasons, this is not the kind of behaviour we want our children to adopt, and it's really not the face of government we need to see.

Not many role models there these days.

Someone needs to set a higher standard of behaviour and more people need to get up on the right side of the bed.

Shawn Crockwell is the Chairman of the UBP.

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