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With Special Development Orders tied to computer generated plans linked to well-written business plans, we are getting pictures and schemes that may result in a brand new theme park hotel at Southlands and a ritzy-glitzy new hotel in Par-la-ville in Hamilton.

The Bermudian landowners who stand to make a big profit; the Bermudian building contractors who stand to make a handsome profit; the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce who see an opportunity for providing - and charging for - more services; and the politicians who see a chance to prove that they are doing something for the 'people'; all tout the two new developments.

Beneath all of that eagerness and marketing savvy, what is most likely to happen? What real benefits are most likely to flow? To whom will they flow?

Bermuda's Hospitality Industry [HI] is now based almost entirely on labour supplied by workers from lower income countries like Romania, Goa, Sri Lanka. This labour pool is either housed by the employer; lives in shared rented rooms; or in hostels of the kind run by SOS Limited for the 'temps' that they import.

Given the absoluteness of the laws of economics, Bermuda's HI cannot - absolutely cannot - go back to employing Bermudians at the higher rates of pay that Bermudians need in order to maintain a Bermuda standard, Bermuda style, lifestyle. A Bermudian who chooses to live and work and thus earn in the same way as the global workers in Bermuda's HI will be regressing.

He or she will be going backwards and will find themselves living at the standard that was unavoidable in the 1950s; and which is the standard of living that his or her parents and grandparents sweated and struggled and two-jobbed and three-jobbed out of.

So most Bermudians won't go there. Bermudians won't go backwards.

The two new proposed hotels will be foreign financed, foreign owned, foreign staffed, and, the way that Bermuda's construction industry has gone, foreign built with foreign materials - probably using foreign architects.

Bermuda and Bermudians are - and will be - mere tits on the bull of these proposed developments and development plans. Bermudians will be - and almost are now - as important as the tits on a bull. If the Southlands development goes ahead and the planned glasshouse is built, Bermuda and its people won't even be the 'destination'. Instead, the 'destination' will be this newest hotel. Bermudian 'friendliness' and all that stuff won't matter and won't even be necessary. If developed, the hotel will succeed and become profitable by keeping its guests totally enclosed inside its own environs - in exactly the way that all those Las Vegas hotels operate; and exactly as the Atlantis hotel in the Bahamas operates.

Bermudians will however, have to supply the essential services such as Fire and Police protection, keep the roads in good repair, keep the 'leckalight flowing to the new hotel developments, and not burglarize the hotels or bust in tourist heads. Yet when the hotel guests do deign to venture out, Bermudians will still be expected to smile and be sweet - even though they are no longer intimately involved with the 'destination'.

That's one end of the matter.

Sausage in the middle

At the other end, with more IB coming in, there's a need for more Bermudians to staff that better-paying industry. But IB requires high skill sets and, certainly, a sound or excellent education.

However, with about 35 per cent of our whole national output of students - or 50 per cent of our public school students - NOT graduating, Bermuda cannot, Bermuda will not, and Bermuda does not supply sufficient Bermudians to staff an expanding IB sector.

Simply? Bermudians are shut out of the HI by the low wage structure. Bermudians are kept out of the expanding IB sector by under-education. So Bermudians are being squeezed into the sausage in the middle.

Sausage?

Think of the planned expansion of the HI as one expanding end of the economy. Look at IB as the other expanding end. In the middle, like an elongating sausage, are Mr and Mrs Ordinary Bermuda trying to live their ordinary Bermudian lives in a narrowing, tightening, throttling, stretching national economic tube.

Try this. Take a long balloon. Blow it up. Tie it off. Now grip and hold it so that the air is trapped in the two end bubbles. Now pull so that the left hand pulls left and the right hand pulls right. Watch what happens in the middle.

Now think of Bermudians - in Bermuda - caught in that middle.

Keep pulling.[[In-content Ad]]

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