What is it about joining the PLP Cabinet that causes MPs to become ineffective and uncreative?

Maybe Works & Engineering should check the water, or the air quality. Perhaps the Governor is casting a debilitating spell over Ministers when he swears them in. Or maybe Dr. Brown has taken those 'PLP Surgeries' a little too far and is performing lobotomies on his colleagues.

There can be little doubt that entering the PLP Cabinet coincides with a sudden halt in critical thinking and productivity, look no further than Cuban convert Dale Butler if you're not convinced. The water, the Guv's spell, or something, evidently triggers a unique disease ? a Cabinet-induced dementia that interrupts MPs brainwaves and causes them to cease intelligent thought and become mindless parrots of the Premier's talking points: "Social Agenda, good. UBP, bad."

But don't despair. Whatever the cause, there's hope. Once you walk out the door of the Cabinet Office, and don't look back, the condition miraculously reverses itself, critical thought ? and dignity ? returns. Just ask Renee Webb.

The Government's spin-doctors have attempted to mask this dementia as collective responsibility, the system under which Westminster style Cabinets operate. Collective responsibility proposes that the creation of policy through consensus achieves a more optimal and workable result; dumb ideas are discarded while the good ones are adopted and supported unanimously, regardless of any individual Minister's original position. Bermuda's Cabinet seems prefers the inverse.

Renee Webb's PR offensive this past week confirmed the sneaking suspicion that collective responsibility has been replaced by a combination of collective irresponsibility, stupidity and dishonesty. Ms. Webb's critique of the Social Agenda, which complimented the Opposition's, came complete with a list of initiatives that presumably failed to find favour among her fellow Ministers.

The former Minister confirmed the obvious: that little in the Social Agenda was new. In fact, it was just plain old G-O-V-E-R-M-E-N-T, notable for its lack of creative policy initiatives and abundance of public relations hype. One thing that Cabinet quickly and collectively agreed on is that it's much easier to create an advertising campaign than effective public policy, so why bother with the latter.

So, undeterred by Ms Webb and that pesky Opposition, the Government's MPs persisted with their talking points: "Social Agenda, good. UBP, bad." But the question remains: why is Cabinet so dysfunctional that it produces no quality policy initiatives and ensures that the few that do emerge end up as disasters?

The answer is quite simple. It's easier than checking the water, patting down the Governor for a magic wand or even looking for that secret surgical ward under the Cabinet Office.

This generation of PLP MPs are interested in power and perks. Not people, not policy and definitely not principle.

So while seniors struggle to survive on measly pensions, housing is neglected, crime escalates, and Berkeley looks more and more like a companion tourist attraction to the Unfinished Church, the Government continues to find time and plenty of money to implement their real agenda: improving the quality of their own lives.

Collective irresponsibility is practiced with Ministers and MPs tending to their own housing needs - or real estate portfolios - first, before thinking about ways to assist in housing the people who elected them; collective stupidity is evident when a Minister tells a group of angry seniors who've marched on Parliament to attend House proceedings on a Thursday ? when Parliament is not in session; and collective dishonesty was seen at the BHC, the Berkeley project and in attempts to implement Independence by stealth and discuss it only with foreigners on foreign soil.

Perhaps the most enduring image of all that is wrong with this Government was on display at the partially washed out 2005 Bermuda Music Festival. This year's event included a new feature, a VIP section, and not just your regular garden variety VIP tent.

This was an exclusive 'PLP Lounge', an elevated platform for partying Progressive Labour Partying, where MPs relaxed comfortably on ivory leather couches, sipped bottomless champagne and looked down on the rest of us.

It's tragic, not funny, that the only initiatives which see successful implementation are of the self-serving kind, while housing, seniors, economic empowerment and education go by the wayside.

But that's all part of the dementia that had taken hold in the Cabinet Office.