Dear Sir,

The photographs of sleeping MPs in today’s Royal Gazette (July 31, 2018) is worth more than a million words. Congratulations to the person who took them and to you for publishing them.

Most of the comments on your blog were critical of the MPs and several suggested that their salaries be reduced. I am all in favour of that as they are paid way too much for what little they contribute.

However, no one suggested that their slumbers were a good thing. Bermuda would be infinitely better off if the whole incompetent bunch went to sleep for 365 days each year, and became model Rip Van Winkles.

If we look at the big problems facing Bermuda, it is readily apparent that all, or most, of them are created or made worse by the dozing incompetents in the House of Assembly.

Let me mention three examples:

• The massive debts that we are foisting on our children and grandchildren, including unfunded pension and medical costs. Such debts amount to $5 billion — or about $100,000 for each man woman, and child

• The chaos that is euphemistically called public education, from which about 40 per cent of parents of young children pay $30,000 per annum to escape the horrors of public schools

• The recent report of the Auditor-General, which revealed sloppy financial management and gross incompetence in public administration

Clearly, responsibility for such matters — I could mention another ten, such as unemployment — rests with the House of Assembly, but each year improvements are impossible to detect.

May I suggest that if our MPs maintained the high standard of their slumbers, most problems would be resolved by the public without the 36 dead hands of the occupants of The House of Assembly? Please go back to sleep and make Bermuda great again.

ROBERT STEWART