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I spent my Labour Day weekend studying the employment survey (well after completing the draft for my Fantasy Football Team, the defending champions Dark’n’Stormy Knights). I felt like Claude Rains in ‘Casablanca’ – I was shocked! Shocked to learn that ‘public administration jobs’ (i.e. Government) are among the highest paid in Bermuda. The fact that MPs keep increasing their own salaries makes this a statistical certainty.

And while I don’t like the huge increase in the

number of Government employees under the PLP – Government should be the smallest employer in a community, not the largest – I think I’ve found the reason for it. It’s a ‘make-work’ programme for the unemployable – a latter day Tennessee Valley Authority that doesn’t actually do anything.

Government has to find something for the 48 per cent of school leavers who are illiterate and otherwise unemployable, and this is much better than welfare. At least while ‘working’ for Government these people have to show up somewhere each day for seven-and-a-half hours. Otherwise they’d be sitting on a wall somewhere and spending their unemployment cheque on who knows what.

I also don’t understand the PLP’s rationale for

setting term limits on work permits. By their own

admission, there aren’t enough Bermudians (qualified or otherwise) to do all the jobs we’ve got here. And at the rate the Department of Education is churning out illiterates there are

fewer and fewer employable Bermudians each year. We’re always going to need expats (at least until

Government drives the

insurance industry away), so why not find some good ones who want to stay and keep them?

After six years we’ve just about got these people

broken in to the point they stop acting like tourists. They say ‘good morning’ when entering a room, don’t start swimming until May 24 and refuse to drive ‘all the way’ to Dockyard for dinner and a movie. You just get them fixed and the Government wants you to send them back and start all over again with a new one. Why? Do they get a kick back from all the leaving island sales as well?

It’s clearly not about Bermudianization, since the percentage of jobs held by non-Bermudians has increased dramatically under the PLP. Obviously the

policy statement was just pandering to their radical support base – just another case of “we had to lie to you to get your vote.”

Conspiracy

The web site for the Bermuda Conspiracy

Theorists, www.youjustcanttrustthebastards.com, (not to be confused with the PLP’s Paranoid Conspiracy Caucus web site,

www.themediaareallouttogetus.com) suggests that the poor education results are deliberate on the part of the PLP. They point out that a poorly educated, barely literate population is easier to control and more likely to bow to the ‘greater

wisdom’ of their leaders who, after all, are only

acting in the people’s best interests. The fewer people who can actually read the BIC report the better they believe it will be for the

pro-independence

propagandists.

The theory concludes that Alex Scott wants to call a general election with independence as the only issue in order to confuse the ‘illiterate masses’. The plan, apparently, is to ask his ‘flock’ to make a simple choice between two

options. On the one hand will be the PLP, who he will be careful to point out ‘look like them’ and therefore are worthy of their absolute trust in all matters. On the other hand are the UBP, who, co-incidentally, don’t look like them (or at least not as much as they should) and therefore are not to be trusted no matter how sensible they seem. Throw in a few plantation references and there will be no need to even mention the actual pros and cons of independence.

I’m not much on conspiracies, but if I were Alex Scott and I wanted to take the country to independence, the last thing I’d want is an educated, well-paid population voting in a single-issue referendum free from the influence of party politics.[[In-content Ad]]

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