IN an unsolicited but not unwelcome example of Hollywood product placement, Michael Douglas worked a fulsome endorsement for Bermuda into the script when he played the title character in . While crafting his State of the Union speech Douglas' character, the glibly Clintonian and too-cutely named President Shepherd, remarks that Americans can no longer boast they live in a great society. Only Bermudians can make that claim, he muses.

Certainly there is now far more statistical evidence to bear out such an appraisal than when that film was released in 1995. Indeed, after a protracted lull owing more to negligence on the part of the former Premier than any significant deterioration in Bermuda's overall standing, Bermudians are once again being almost daily bombarded with facts and figures intended to remind them ? and the world ? that the island's name is a synonym for affluence and an unequalled lifestyle.

Every spike in Gross Domestic Product or Per Capita Income is duly trumpeted as further evidence that the island remains an economic world-beater; every new incorporation is heralded as yet another tangible example of Bermuda's enviable advantages as an off-shore business domicile. Bermuda is sounding its own praises so loudly and so incessantly that it could no more be accused of false modesty than Madonna.

Indeed, there is much to be proud of. The economy continues to speed along in a graceful and superficially unobtrusive manner, a turbo-charged surrey-fringed carriage that easily outpaces far bigger and more slickly designed wealth-generating engines. The per head income of Bermudians has risen to $53,000 from $44,000 in 2000, a 20 per cent spike almost certainly unparalleled anywhere else on the globe. Even the vestigial racial polarisation that was an unavoidable by-product of two-party politics in a bi-racial society has largely dissipated since the Progressive Labour Party came to power in 1998.

Ostensibly Bermuda remains very much the Little Country That Could. It is portrayed by admirers, boosters and media consultants as a treasure island crossed with Eden ? one as entirely devoid of socio-economic serpents as Ireland is of the slithering variety.

This message is being spread abroad as well.

The Premier, demonstrating the self-replenishing energy and indefatigable salesmanship of a sugar-coated Sammy Glick, has been barnstorming the US in recent weeks on Bermuda's behalf.

He has pleaded the island's case as an above-board jurisdiction to sympathetic audiences on Capitol Hill; told the reinsurance industry at its global confab in San Diego that Bermuda remains open for business and has the capacity and infrastructure to absorb yet another wave of companies; and wooed a notoriously Bermudaphobic American media.

Just last week the , not renowned for idly talking up the merits of off-shore business domiciles, found enough good things to say about Bermuda in a flattering pen-portrait to give pause to even the island's detractor-in-chief John Kerry. Even the putative Democratic Presidential nominee has grown uncharacteristically silent on the subject of Bermuda in recent weeks, less because of the Premier's blandishments than the fact that Kerrynomics remain as poorly understood by voters as the candidate-in-waiting himself.

Nevertheless, Kerry's cessation of hostilities against Bermuda in his stump speeches ? even if this truce proves to be temporary ? has provided the island with a welcome respite from the almost daily accusations of being the head office of the tax pirates of the Caribbean.

Candidate Kerry's latest attempt to define his fiscal policies notwithstanding, much of the credit for Bermuda's public relations resurgence almost certainly belongs to the Premier. His progression from Grand Inquisitor of racial rectitude during his Opposition career to well-liked if spendthrift Works Minister to centrist, business-friendly and publicly accessible Premier is less unlikely than it might first appear.

Given his background as a professional image- and phrase-maker, the Premier has successfully reinvented himself more often than any other public figure in Bermuda. Throughout his political career the Premier has drawn on his marketing training, shifting personas and emphases with a chameleon-like facility to suit changing circumstances, varying conditions.

latest incarnation, as persuasive CEO and spokesman-in-chief for a Bermuda Inc. that remains every bit as gilt-edged and free-marketeering as the one the United Bermuda Party instituted, seemed improbable when he emerged as the likely successor to an unmourned predecessor whose credibility was mortally wounded during last year's election night . But now the Premier's ascension appears all but preordained, the culmination of a lifetime spent successfully marketing both merchandise and political positions to the public.

While he has certainly restored much needed lustre to Bermuda's somewhat tarnished image, the Premier has yet to be tested on more substantial matters that belie the no-snakes-in-Eden image of the island. Persuading Bermudians they must uncritically accept their lot as increasingly marginalised residents in an insurance/reinsurance boomtown will prove a harder sell for the Premier.

Increasing dependence on what is collectively known as the off-shore financial services industry means that for the vast majority of Bermudians' upward economic mobility is restricted by a shatter-proof glass ceiling. Those without either the professional qualifications or overseas experience to land anything other than entry-level positions in the industries involved are being left behind at an ever accelerating rate.

While Bermudians earn an average of $53,000, the mean in the off-shore sector is $123,000 ? providing the largely transient, largely work-permitted staff with two-and-a-half times the purchasing power of their Bermudian hosts.

There is increasingly no contest between Bermudians and their guest workers when it comes to housing, school places and career advancement. Objectives the middle classes could comfortably aspire to just a decade ago are increasingly becoming luxury items, beyond the financial reach of an increasing number of Bermudians.

This galloping economic segregation is manifesting itself across the community.

Fees at two private schools, for instance, have jumped by more than 50 per cent in only 13 months.

The effect, intended or not, will be to cull Bermudian students whose parents cannot afford the increases (and who also pay a disproportionately large percentage of the tax bill that goes to support a chronically imbecilic public school system). More places in private schools will become available for the children of guest workers.

The knock-on effects are predictable.

If Bermuda hopes to remain competitive as an off-shore business jurisdiction, it needs to maintain its infrastructure. Chief among the amenities that make Bermuda almost as attractive to international investors as its overly lenient tax regime is a well-educated, industrious population that is generally supportive of the industry that pays the island's way.

But when Bermudians begin to find themselves filtered out of private schools as a result of what is already being described in some circles as "financial apartheid", when parents see dreams for their children's future success die a-borning, resentment and an eventual overall decline in standards will surely follow.

public schools are the recipient of the most generous Government largesse of any such system in the world. But the Premier and his Government are unwilling to confront both a powerful teachers union and decades of institutionalised sloth to make the root-and-branch structural changes necessary to salvage public education.

The results of such cowardice and neglect will make themselves felt sooner rather than later. Bermuda may be increasingly described by the Premier as a paradise in sound-byte terms but it can increasingly be seen as a fool's paradise, one that will systematically undermine some of the very foundations its success is built on unless long overdue remedial steps are taken.

Michael Douglas, who now lives here part-time, has commented at length on the runaway cost of living in Bermuda and the stresses this must cause to the island's social fabric. When even the American President cannot foresee any Hollywood-style happy endings in store for the island, it's hard to believe that the Bermudian Premier will be able to manufacture one unless he begins to place considerably more emphasis on substance as opposed to his winning style.