Richards: 'No one owes us a living'

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17: Keen sailor and shadow Finance Minister says Bermuda has to get back on course or hit the economic rocks.

“The country has forgotten who our customers are — it sounds trite, but that’s it, ” he says.

Mr Richards was speaking as the OBA, a merger between the UBP and its one-time splinter party the BDA, gears up for a leadership election race — with the Bermuda Asset Management chief likely to be among the front runners.

His assessment of the current administration is grim: “The Government encouraged Bermudians to only think of themselves and entitlement instead of what we have to do to earn a living and we have to earn our living. It’s not owed to us by anyone.

“There is a sense of entitlement which is pervasive and that comes from decades of success. People got the notion this superior standard of living is owed to them by unknown, un-named sources.

“We started treating customers like pariahs, rivals or interlopers. It started with tourism — we started treating tourists like they owed us something instead of as valued customers.

“When the big boom in international business came and a whole lot of people got rich, instead of saying ‘how can we encourage this to continue?’, a lot of the politics of envy took over.

“What’s been lost is that we have this thing called international business — but that’s a misnomer. It’s okay for economists to call it international business, but our main business isn’t international business — it’s international business people. Somehow, Bermuda thinks we can have international business without international business people.

“They are the people who translate that abstract to dollars and they have left because of that attitude and this bad treatment has been condoned by the PLP Government.

“Just because a guy has X million dollars doesn’t mean he’s prepared to be treated badly by the Government and not react. Bermuda was a welcoming place — we prided ourselves on it.

Victims of success

“A lot of it was the result of decades of success — prior generations created it and subsequent generations have taken it for granted.”

He added: “Bermudians used to realise that people coming from abroad and spending money have made Bermudians wealthy. Now they think these people are coming here trying to take something off us and that’s not true.

“In the end, it’s all about people — and people in Bermuda are beginning to hurt. We have to import everything into Bermuda, from cars to corn flakes. We have to get that money, that foreign exchange, from somewhere and we can’t get it from one another.

“The money to buy our corn flakes has to be got from foreigners. That’s what makes Bermuda tick —  money from abroad.”

Mr Richards declined to say whether he would stand for election — but insiders said they would be surprised if he didn’t line up with other likely runners like Craig Cannonier and Michael Dunkley.

Mr Richards, 63, the son of former UBP Premier Sir Edward Richards, entered politics in 1997 as a Senator. He served in Senate until 1998, then again from 2004 to 2007, becoming an MP at the last General Election.

He was educated at Central Primary School and the Berkeley Institute before going to university in Canada. Mr Richards worked for several years in Toronto before returning to Bermuda, where he has worked in various high-powered financial roles, including a stint at the Bermuda Monetary Authority, before starting Bermuda’s first home-grown independent investment company.

He is married with two grown-up sons and lists boating and listening to jazz music as his hobbies.

Mr Richards — who was profiled as a potential leadership candidate in the Bermuda Sun earlier this month — was said to be strong on the economy, but perceived as aloof and stand-offish.

Nonsense

But Mr Richards said: “That accusation is thrown at a lot of people who have strong views and can articulate these views. The idea I don’t suffer fools gladly is probably mostly wrong – but not entirely.

“I have learned a lot of patience as I have got older, but you do have to put up with a lot of nonsense in politics. But I’ve learned to be more diplomatic than I was, say, 15 years ago.”

Mr Richards said he learned much of what he knew about politics at his father’s kitchen Cabinet.

He explained: “When I was first appointed to Senate in 1997, the first day, I was nervous giving my first speech. After one or two sittings, I realised I knew what was going on. I didn’t know how then and then it hit me. I knew because I had heard about it at the kitchen table. My father used to talk about his world at the kitchen table.

“My old man, above and beyond anything else, was a teacher and he was a fantastic one. I realise now he’d been teaching me how to handle myself in a Parliamentary setting and he did it without me knowing I was being taught.

“He taught me how to debate by picking fights with me, basically. He took positions he knew I’d find objectionable and sit back and listen. One I learned is you can’t win a debate if you’re angry. When people throw insults my way, I understand this is all part of the game.

“You have to have a thick skin – but when people start throwing insults, you know you’re winning the debate because they have to resort to that.”

Mr Richards relaxes on his boat — called Nefertari after one of the ancient Queens of Egypt. He said that he and family holidayed in Egypt in the 1990s and he noticed the statues of queens were usually tiny compared to that of their Pharoh husbands.

He said: “At Abu Simbel, they have these huge statues of Rameses the Great — right next to them is a temple dedicated to his wife, Nefertari. She was the only queen we saw who got a giant statue, so she had to be a pretty powerful queen. Seemed like a good name for a boat.”