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The new Minister for the Environment has launched his Cabinet Career by issuing a Special Development Order (SDO) to speed up development at Coco Reef on the south shore.

It appears that the government is 'fast-tracking' luxury housing for foreign fractional ownership, while affordable housing and other benefits for Bermudians are on the slow track.

Some examples: Never in my lifetime have I seen so many potholes, large and small cracks, lumps and ripples on our roads, in some places worse than some of those Third World countries and islands we think we're better than. Can we realistically expect to compete with them just by building luxury hotels while our infrastructure falls into derelict status?

Additional strain

Housing demand continues to outstrip housing supply, but the policies being pushed would increase the foreign workforce putting additional strain on housing supply and upward pressure on housing prices.

No matter how the statistics are being parsed in their presentation, there's no doubt in our experience that serious and violent crime in Bermuda is increasing. And two contributing factors, population density and xenophobia are on the rise, both being fuelled by the government's push for excessive, high-end tourism construction.

Education has tanked. It is those most badly served by local education who are most vulnerable. They are most likely to have difficulty getting adequate housing, most likely to caught up in gang-like conflicts and behaviour, most likely to have difficulty getting and keeping jobs, and most likely to feel alienated in their own communities.

We are overtaxing our roads, overstressing our peoples, outpacing local housing supply, creating more jobs than we have locals to fill, dumbing-down the public education system, more interested in fomenting racial discord than harmony, nixing original studies on education, hospitals and young black males in favour of revisionist studies, but our attention is focused on luxury hotels, high-stakes speculators and oversized vehicles and cruise ships.

Endless deception

Then there's the endless deception. Prior to the election there was a flurry of activity: tearing down the old St George's police station; bulldozer chugging around the site for the new Hamilton police station; Club Med demolition begun; ground-breaking photo-ops at the satellite health clinic sites; and several housing sites. Post election, we either see no activity or hear manipulated excuses for further delays.

Coco Reef in all its facets is an example of the worst our government is doing to us. Our government gave away the hotel-training facility of the Bermuda College to a developer who now wants to bulldoze the coastline and construct an artificial river in protected woodlands - a rejection of Bermuda's uniqueness - while building energy-wasting luxury units for foreign purchase.

And all this is supposed to make us happy? When I look at the faces of people riding or driving or walking on our streets I don't see them happy. I don't see or hear the cordiality, friendliness or good nature that made us the tourist destination of choice.

Doesn't anybody get it? We are being taken for a ride. Is all this haste for glitz worth the trashing of our culture, our island and our people?

Are we to be relegated to a Third World existence with buckled roads and homeless families and angry youth gunning each other down just so we can sell off our island to foreigners looking for the luxury life? That may be a harsh analysis, but will anything short of a shock wake us up?[[In-content Ad]]

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