politicians that they spend much more time talking politics than people in other countries. Sometimes that is a result of small island living but in Bermuda it seems to result from a complex and not always pretty political heritage. Just about every event in Bermuda, many of them very innocent, turns into politics. Somewhere or other you will find a line drawn from the event to the UBP or PLP.

It is certainly healthy that people are aware of the politics of their country but in Bermuda politics have become almost an obsession. They have also become a divisive factor in everyday life. In most countries people have little concern about who does and does not subscribe to whatever political party. In Bermuda people are not only very interested in which party other people belong to but to which split or faction within a party they subscribe.

People are actually watched to see how they behave in the presence of people from opposing parties. A group of hard core UBP followers were "horrified'' recently to see a newer member of their group give Opposition Leader Jennifer Smith a peck on the cheek. Intermingling followers of different parties at private gatherings can be a minefield. And then, of course, there are those people who don't want to be invited anywhere politicians will be in attendance and that too is a division.

Separation on the basis of politics is just as divisive as separation by race and, we think, more often practised in Bermuda. Because the PLP is largely a black party and most whites subscribe to the UBP, the divisions motivated by politics are often taken as purely racial. Sometimes, they are purely political.

On another level, we have little doubt that many people who openly subscribe to the PLP have problems in the work place where many managers are UBP. There is an automatic scepticism among business leaders where PLP members are concerned. We think that has held back any number of qualified blacks and is often taken as racist when, in fact, it is motivated by a lack of political trust...the cry goes out, "Watch him, he's PLP you know''. Whites who subscribed to the PLP would probably receive much worse treatment than blacks.

The political divisions are often emphasised by the parties themselves when they spend so much time attacking one another. Between the parties and among factions within the parties the attacks too often turn personal.

People outside the parties know they will be viciously attacked if they cross the parties. The United Bermuda Party has henchmen who will go to extraordinary lengths to discredit people who disagree with that party in even small ways. They will even go to extraordinary lengths to discredit their own members who dare to disagree... just ask Ann Cartwright DeCouto. All of that only serves to deepen the divisions in the Country.

Then people sit around and wonder why there are divisions, distrust and anger in the community.