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Ten years on, what has the PLP accomplished?

First, the PLP in power has freed almost all black Bermudians from a feeling of being unassailably dominated by white Bermudians. Some - many? - white Bermudians now feel marginalized.

However some old-line bangers in the PLP still bang on about the racial past. These old-line bangers are self-blinded to the fact that in 2008, Bermuda has tribalized. The new demographic is a tribe of black Bermudians (about 33k), white Bermudians (about 17k), and a globally mixed tribe of non-Bermudians (about 15k). For all Bermudians, this social shift has been the biggest real change in those ten years. It's the new reality; and with the non-Bermudian tribe the only tribe that's really growing, black Bermudians are heading for minority-hood.

Under the PLP regime, Bermuda's national workforce grew from 35,323 in 1998 to what looks like about 40,000 in November 2008. That's a healthy 13% overall growth, with about 4,700 new jobs in ten years. But within that overall job growth, there was a hidden growth.  The hidden growth saw about 4,000 of those new jobs taken up by the growing tribe of non-Bermudians. That's right. Eighty-five percent of all those new jobs went to non-Bermudians. But you cannot fault the PLP for that. Truth is, IPC (*) has resulted in Bermudians - black and white - being in damn short supply. Bermudians come down the birth canals too slow to keep up with Bermuda's economic growth. [(*) IPC = Insufficient Productive Copulation.]

Crime is up. Way up. Ten years on, the sight of gun-toting police is a regular phenomenon.  So is the incidence of criminal gun-play with drive-by shootings, gunshot killings, and violent murders. Police seem scarcer now than in 1998 - but they weren't highly visible then either. Drugs? In ten years, no positive change that I can see.

Genuine tourism has continued its decline.  All the hype over Music Festivals with big-name stars hasn't improved tourist numbers. Since 1998, the hotel industry has shrunken and changed into an industry offering time-sharing for well-heeled elites. Bermudians are generally out of the Tourist industry, with most hospitality jobs becoming sinecures for lower paid non-Bermudians from Less Developed Countries.

Education was in a bad state in 1998, but at least in 1998 Berkeley Institute was still offering its students the same kind of opportunity as in the private sector. However, by 2002, that too had stopped and all of public education was wallowing, even deeper, in its own muck. Ten years on, there are noisy noises about improving public education, and the public education payroll has mushroomed to almost 1,200 teachers+staff+administrators looking after a tiny group of less than 6,000 public school students.

In these ten years, there was a huge growth in private schools with a plethora of Home Schools and Somersfield Academy starting up. All five other private schools expanded to meet the community demand for a better quality of education.  In ten years of PLP stewardship, public education has continued to decline and still awaits resurrection.

Except for retail, business and the economy generally have stayed strong and healthy. However, the shift to International Business and Financial Services has caused a huge change in the cityscape. It has brought in a new national bird in the form of the L-shaped 'cranus towerus'. Like Orwellian monsters, these birds sit astride the skyline, building their concrete nests. This nest-building happens despite the PLP, and would happen under any government that maintained an acceptable level of social, political, and legal stability.

Changing social landscape

The social landscape has definitely changed. The growing tribe of non-Bermudians now make up over 35 per cent of the private sector workforce. In the past three years, all new job growth has been by non-Bermudians joining the workforce. Non-Bermudians are now indispensable components of Bermuda's economic present and future.

The roads are still smooth, the ferries and buses still run on time, it still takes far too long to re-enter Bermuda at the re-named airport, and the taxi service is worse now in 2008 than it was in 1998. But it wasn't all that good then.

In all, in ten years, the PLP hasn't done too bad. After all, like the Americans and as Obama has frequently pointed out, we could have had ten years of a 'Dubya' type governance. And that would have been disastrous.

So PLP guys and PLP gals in gummint, look hard at the way that Bermuda has already changed and will continue to change. Make sure that you understand what has happened, what is happening, and what is most likely to happen. Make sure that you study this island and its people and don't assume - as happens too often - that some jiving fast-talking American gunslinger will be able to fix our Bermudian problems. Remember that it is America and Americans who precipitated this current global meltdown.

Above all, fix Education! There is little time left before the still being added-to mass of under-educated under-prepared and mostly black Bermudian males - currently ganging up, shooting up, carving up, each other - reaches critical mass and upsets everything.

Fix Education and fix it faster! Get on with it! Or get out![[In-content Ad]]

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