July 17, 2014

Dear Sir,

Perhaps the time has come to put us out of our misery, or should I say really set misery in fast motion.

Way too many on this Island, have been slowly draining the life out of Bermuda. Whether it has been through greed, hate for their fellow man because they don’t look like me (personally, I only want my offspring to look like me) entitlement, blindness to the facts as they are, or any of a multitude of other blames that we so easily place on others.

We all know that the agony of a slow death can for all intents of purposes be extremely painful for all concerned.

So why do we continually inflict pain and suffering on ourselves.

Is it not painful enough when the pain that is inflicted on us is done so without any of us being able to do anything to avoid the pain and suffering. So why do we continually look to shoot ourselves in the foot?

There are those among us who for whatever their reason or reasons think that it is okay to bite the hand that literally feeds us all.

1. We want jobs, but we do not want the people who provide us with those jobs to live among us.

We want them to provide us with top positions for which many of us are not qualified for, but that’s okay we should have them anyway because we are Bermudian.

A real smack in the face for those Bermudians/Residents, who with the support of their parents and family members, who have worked hard to attain the qualifications to assist them in working (yes working) towards that goal.

Then there are those who are fortunate enough to find a job until they earn enough money for whatever it is they require, and then do not show up after being paid.

Only then for them to bemoan the fact that people are being brought in to fill the positions, that some Bermudians just don’t want and will not do.

Again a slap in the face to those hard working Bermudians who are out there in some cases working multiple jobs to help take care of their families needs.

2. The Government hires people to advertise Bermuda, and spends untold amounts of the taxpayer’s dollars to try and attract visitors to our shores and when they come here they are treated like intruders in our homes by some with poor and rude attitudes.

Why don’t we just use some of that advertising money to post signs at our gateway cities and their airports and cruise terminals?

Why not ask those potential visitors to just place their hard earned vacation money in barrels for shipment to Bermuda, and then they can either stay at home or travel to someplace where the people will appreciate and welcome them.

Why not let them travel to places where the residents do not think of them as ‘those tourists who clog up our roads with rental bikes, take up our seats on the buses and ferries, clog our beaches and crowd our restaurants’?

This may also solve the problem of any potential visitors disrupting us while we down tools for any reason whatsoever when we feel the need to (good reason or not) after all these are things that we are entitled to as Bermudians. By speeding up the misery process, we can attain all of these goals for ourselves much quicker than doing it by the old tried and “proving” slow method.

The one big downturn as I see it is that if there are not enough barrels arriving with loads of US dollars in them, then we will not have need of our buses, ferries and restaurants.

No money, no need, after all, we shall not have the Bermuda Dollar to fall back on as it is not able to buy us anything overseas. We shall however still be able to visit the beaches. Speed up mission accomplished. Or is it!

The best time to change course when you are looking at being shipwrecked on a reef, is to avoid the reef before you hit it.

KENNETH G STONE