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Wayne Furbert’s shuffle of his Shadow Cabinet has removed a Gibbons from Bermuda’s political power centre. Now, in all of the whole mechanism of Bermuda’s elected politicians, there is only one old money, old family name left on centre stage. All the other prominent UBP players are new money or new people or black.

My cousins, the Talbot Brothers, used to sing a calypso about “Mr Trimingham and Mr Trott”. Bermudians used to talk about the ‘Forty Thieves’ and ‘Front Street’. Families like the Cox’s and Spurling’s and Tucker’s and Astwood’s used to loom large on Bermuda’s political landscape. I think they’ve gone. Gone the way that Trimingham’s has already gone.

South Africa has actually changed since 1994. All South Africans, black and white, acknowledge that change. Here in Bermuda with all the change that has happened, I still hear many voices shouting and several pens scratching that things haven’t changed. Yet when I look and listen around me, all I see and hear is change.

In fact, while waiting in the queue to pick up my tickets for the Sunday performance of the Soweto Gospel Choir, I looked east and saw two signs. One said ‘Gosling Brothers’, the other, much higher up and farther back, said ‘Trimingham’s’. This time next year that high up Trimingham’s sign will have gone. Only the Gosling’s sign will remain.

Still there are those amongst us who seem determined to refuse to acknowledge any change whatsoever. I reckon that these unchangers are people who have their heads stuck so far into the sands of ignorance or obstinacy that their normally lowest orifice has become their highest.

If, in ten years South Africa can undergo radical change and then acknowledge that change, why can’t we in Bermuda?[[In-content Ad]]

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