Dear Sir,

This is with reference to the headline in The Royal Gazette yesterday, entitled “Rio trip: $5,500 empty rooms’ bill”.

No one should be surprised when politicians and bureaucrats squander the taxpayers’ money.

Looting the public treasury has been standard fare for centuries and Bermuda is no different. Mark Twain once remarked that the “only native criminal class in America are politicians”, and I am sure he would have said the same thing about Bermuda.

Politicians and bureaucrats believe, honestly — if that is not an oxymoron — that it is immoral for suckers to spend their own money because the rubes have such poor tastes. Much better for them to spend it.

Taxpayers should just relax and consider it to be a fact of life that these guys fritter away our hard-earned money.

ROBERT STEWART