---

About 1,600 days ago there was another election with the same result as this one - 22 to 14. Since then there has been an equal number of sunrises and sunsets. The sun's unchanging ways are not matched by human fortunes.

In those 1,600 days Education slipped further downhill; the employment of non-Bermudians went uphill; revenue from tourism actually declined; the 'big conversation' deteriorated into a slanging match; and some Bermudians turned to the bureaucracy of rules and regulations in an attempt to hold their place in the sun. The turn to bureaucracy was a significant shift.

According to the Tourism Department, in 1987 Bermuda recorded 630,000 tourist arrivals producing a tourist revenue of $430,000,000. In 1987, $430m would have paid for about 1,700 Bermuda cottages [in 1987 cottages were selling for about $250k each]; or 285 million loaves of bread - in 1987, bread was $1.50 a loaf.

According to figures released just before the election, Bermuda had 635,000 tourist arrivals in 2006 producing tourist revenue of $449,000,000. In 2006, $449m would have paid for about 450 Bermuda cottages [in 2006 cottages were selling for about $1m each]; or 100 million loaves of bread - in 2006, bread was $4.50 a loaf.

Reality? Tourism's 'bumper year' of 2006 produced less than half the benefit that was produced twenty years ago. But no one admitted to that truth.

Going forward, we have to deal with that reality.

Since the 1920s, foreign capital has always fuelled Bermuda's economic expansion. Since about 1996, for every one new Bermudian worker, two foreign workers have entered Bermuda's workforce. In 1996, about four out of every sixteen [25 per cent] workers was a foreigner. In 2006, five out of sixteen [31 per cent] were foreigners. So now Bermuda's expansion is maintained by using foreign labour as well.

The people who come from overseas to man Bermuda's 'hamburger flipper' fast food operations are high school graduates who have gone on to post-secondary vocational training and who arrive in Bermuda able to speak two languages.

Bermuda graduates about 50 per cent of its total national school output at a level far lower than that reached by the imported 'hamburger flippers' employed in Bermuda's lowest paid sector. The other 50 per cent - the other 400 - of Bermuda's total national output of students who graduate at a higher standard find themselves competing in a group containing over ten million university graduates from the U.S., Canada, U.K., India and all those other countries whose work-seeking workers compete with one another in order to get into Bermuda's expanding economy.

Competition

So under-educated Bermudians are placed at a distinct skills and readiness disadvantage - and then end up competing for housing in a housing market where transient workers can and do pay higher rents than can a Bermudian worker.

Going forward, we have to deal with that reality.

For three hundred and ninety-one years, black and white Bermudians have used the '3-C' method for national problem resolution. Compromise. Cooperate. Copulate. On rare occasions we fought. Our worst direct death toll was the ten people who were killed between March 1973 and December 1977. Apart from that we Bermudians 3-C'ed our way to one of the world's highest per capita incomes and a world economic record of now eighty-seven years of unbroken economic success.

Bermuda is unique.

Bermuda, today, is the richest black run black majority country in a world where the term 'black run country' is often synonymous with undeveloped, under-developed, or failed-state. Bermuda and Bermudians got to this economic peak by 3-C'ing - not fighting.

As an isolated island nation, we have a habit of being polite and humanly decent. Of course, we can always stop 3-C'ing and act like everybody else. But if we abandon our unique historic Bermuda method, we'll probably get the same non-unique result that the world's other 199 countries - our economic competition - have gotten too.

Going forward, we have to deal with that reality.

After fewer than 1,800 more sunrises and sunsets, there will be another election. Before that next election we have to deal, and deal successfully, with the now visible social pressures that have been created by the style and speed of Bermuda's economic expansion; and that has been exacerbated by Bermuda's sustained educational under-performance.

I acknowledge the vast amount of energy and talent expended in the just past election. I hope that the same amount of energy and talent will be expended, just as successfully, in fixing education, in stemming social pressures, and in keeping Bermuda balanced on its delicate high-wire of economic and social success.

To all my readers, have a happy Christmas![[In-content Ad]]

---