It made me angry to read the article Michael Weeks published recently, criticising the Government for making budget cuts to the services on which he said the ordinary Bermudian depended.

Constructive criticism is welcome, and I can assure Mr Weeks and his supporters that the One Bermuda Alliance dislikes cutting services as much as he does.

What offends me is what his remarks suggest — that he and his colleagues either still have no idea how much economic trouble Bermuda is in, or they don’t care.

In his Budget statement this year, the Minister of Finance, Hon ET Bob Richards, spoke of the importance of focusing on reduction of our debt and the consequences of defaulting on our debt payments — I can’t imagine there could be a clearer indication of how deep is the hole we’re in.

The Government is already on record as admitting it is looking at ways of broadening the tax base so as to raise more revenue.

If we aren’t able to get it right ourselves, as Bermudians, we are eventually going to have to go to an organisation like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank to ask for help.

Is there anyone naive enough to think they would accept that our economic woes were caused by the global recession and that we should now simply continue to borrow our way out of trouble?

We all know they would not, and the medicine they would prescribe for our illness would be even more painful, and we might lose, for example, the ability to keep all our civil servants on the payroll, or to choose for ourselves where best to make our budget cuts. And that is to say nothing of losing our ability to hold our heads high in the world community.

“It is my hope,” Minister Richards said, “that the urgency of working the annual government budget deficit down to zero is clear to all Bermudians, because each year we carry a deficit adds to a public debt load that imposes a dead weight on our ability to meet needs.

“A large and rising debt service will crowd out spending in critically important areas such as education, social services and national security.

“Paying debt service has to be the top priority of any borrower because if you default on your debt service, you are by definition insolvent, regardless of whether you have other assets. So all other types of spending have a lower priority than debt service.”

Obviously, not all Bermudians are clear about our economic woes. There are still people who would prefer to believe it is part of an OBA scheme to do favours for foreign friends at the expense of ordinary Bermudians.

More to the point, there are still people who hope to gain political advantage by persuading those people that they are right in what they think.

People like Michael Weeks, apparently.

That’s what irks me — Mr Weeks and his associates seem to have no sympathy for Bermuda, no clear understanding of the mess their mistakes have caused, that have precipitated such suffering for people and businesses in Bermuda and that threaten ever more suffering if not dealt with comprehensively and expeditiously.

Their purpose is entirely cynical — manipulate the sympathies of their supporters in order to regain political power.

If they succeed, and if they continue on the path they are following, they will surely accomplish a second extraordinary political feat.

Having first delivered Bermuda to the edge of an economic cliff, they will so vigorously have resisted the OBA’s attempts to undo the damage that they will push us over, into the unknown.

• Nandi Outerbridge is Junior Minister for Community, Culture and Sports