FOR connoisseurs of exquisitely bad political taste, Bermuda's Government exerts the same awful fascination that, say, a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow with a shocking pink paint job and customised leopard-print seat covers might do in another context.

One year into his administration the Premier still widely referred to as "His Accidency" (at least behind his back) has seen a monicker originally conferred to describe his unlikely ascension to office now being used to pointedly highlight a record as strewn with small-scale catastrophes as Middle Road during rush hour.

Re-elected ? barely ? on a pledge that it would serve as the catalyst for bringing about economic, social and cultural progress in a community traditionally averse to change, the very first change the Progressive Labour Party made last July was in its leadership. But a new Premier was apparently not sufficient to alter some bad old habits acquired during its first term on the Government benches.

Ongoing (and not infrequent) excursions into the sleazier fringes of public life have damaged Government's credibility not just for fiscal responsibility but for responsibility. Period. Money and opportunities have been squandered with a sometimes reckless disregard for Bermuda's longterm well-being. Also in the process of being lost, of course, is this Government's continuing viability, its very electability.

With accountability far less in evidence than deniability these days, the current administration has attempted to deflect attention from mounting suspicions it is the best Government that money can buy by throwing itself on the mercy of the court of public opinion while simultaneously brandishing the finger of blame elsewhere in the time-honoured tradition of cornered politicians everywhere.

The Progressive Labour Party served what may well have been the longest apprenticeships in the history of the Westminster political systems. So continuing claims this once-and-no-doubt-future Opposition remains unfamiliar with the workings of both the legislative and administrative machinery of Government six years after first winning office, that it is still contending with the slope of a sheer learning curve, ring more than a little hollow. In any event, for lawmakers to begin pleading ignorance of the very laws they are responsible for crafting and maintaining is hardly an assured method of restoring confidence among increasingly sceptical voters.

Yet excuses for missteps and mistakes are what continue to be offered rather than any acceptance of responsibility. Footdragging seems to be viewed as an acceptable substitute for urgent remedial action.

The last year has witnessed scandals involving everything from Government's open-air storage of hazardous materials to its bemused disregard for standard tendering procedures.

There have been meltdowns involving the organisational and physical infrastructures of the hospitals and a surge in the cost-to-the-taxpayer-is-no-objective boondoggles of major capital projects.

The most vulnerable in society are warehoused in unalloyed squalor at the grotesquely misnamed Hope Homes, the most powerful continue to enjoy multi-million dollar grace-and-favour perquisites that amount to the political equivalent of insider trading. Such glaring instances of exploiting the spoils of office do not constitute patronage; they are not even the politely camouflaged cronyism that Bermudians came to expect (and, sadly, accept) under previous administrations. It is corruption on a scale normally only associated with cemeteries and charnel houses.

As a result Government's political capital has in fact depreciated at the sort of wildly accelerated rate experienced by investors in start-up firms during the dot.com bust.

Belated and contrived attempts to salvage its reputation for moral authority by, for instance, outlawing gaming machines have, not surprisingly, been met with bewilderment and outright hostility from Bermudians whose favoured vacation destination remains Las Vegas.

An equally manufactured attempt to divert public attention away from an ever growing catalogue of errors onto what was wrongly assumed would be the broadly popular issue of Independence were met with shoulder-shrugging indifference on the public's part.

adherence to the Grand Unification Theory of Independence proved to be hopelessly misplaced, an exercise in more than usually unrealistic wishful thinking.

A clumsily stage-managed confrontation between Government and Government House earlier this year over the question of Britain's remaining reserve powers in Bermuda was surely intended to be the curtain-raiser for a full-blooded Independence campaign, aimed at triggering a public backlash against the UK. In point of fact reaction to that altercation was muted to the point of inaudibility.

This turn of events, a surprise only to those who work in the Cabinet Office, resulted in Government having to hastily consider a raft of alternative scenarios for a campaign to take Bermuda to sovereignty, scenarios that might actually serve to bolster its standing rather than continue its ongoing downward trajectory. From an already disinterested public's point of view the subject is close to falling into what Woody Allen once called the Dead Shark category ? given no forward momentum, it expires. Public apathy notwithstanding, Government still believes Independence will reverse its declining approval ratings and provide the PLP with sufficient momentum to avoid another near-death experience at the next General Election.

Yet so far Government has not succeeded in crafting what it believes would be a winning Independence strategy.

Quite the reverse in fact.

The few, tersely worded Government statements on its stalled Independence initiative issued in recent months have only served to further dilute this administration's credibility rather than enhance it. For instance, reluctance on Government's part to even consider holding a referendum on the most important ? and only irreversible ? constitutional step Bermuda can make in its continuing socio-political evolution has undermined public confidence in the PLP's adherence to the concept of direct democracy (plebiscites are generally considered to be the purest expression of the one-man, one-vote, all-votes-of-equal-value concept). This unwillingness to go the referendum route also amounts to a tacit admission that Independence would likely be voted down for the second time in a decade and must instead be imposed on the island. What's perceived as the PLP's brand of discount demagoguery on the subject of Independence is simply bolstering its critics longstanding contention this Government adheres to the state-enforced, revolution-from-above theory of governance while further disheartening its own supporters.

A seeming lack of command and control capabilities at the Cabinet Office has allowed Ministries to operate like semi-independent fiefs, resulting in the steady accretion of moral decay that has accumulated on that building's doorstep.

The Premier's adept handling of a natural catastrophe in the form of Hurricane Fabian saw his poll numbers defy gravity for the first few months of his term. The fact is the Premier's once stratospheric standing has been undone because of a series of man-made disasters engineered by his own Cabinet.

Instead of demonstrating leadership in the face of unparalleled public anxiety about both the competence and direction of his Government, the Premier's first year in office has in fact amounted to little more than a 12-month exercise in denial. He has, it seems, become the king of wishful thinking rather than the master of his own always fractious party and administration.

the welcome if overdue departure of Ren?e Webb from Cabinet, the most reliably controversial of the Premier's Ministers, has deteriorated into a did-she-jump-or-was-she-pushed gabfest among the chattering classes, hardly boosting his next to non-existent reputation for decisiveness.

Longtime observers of Alex Scott can all too easily recall the days when his political reputation was based largely on a dubious talent for weaving conspiracy theories at once so flimsy but highly inflammatory they might even have given Michael Moore pause. From the United Bermuda Party orchestrating Bermuda's drug trade to apartheid-era South African secret agents infiltrating the Police Service, his cartoonish Chicken Little view of Bermudian political chicanery was the stuff of local legend.

His tenure as Works Minister and his early months as Premier suggested Alex Scott was possessed of far more substance ? and ability ? than had previously been believed.

Now it seems the vote-winning paranoid fantasies concerning the abuse of power he encouraged during his Opposition days (sometimes, it must be admitted, with a knowing wink at the TV cameras) are in danger of being superseded by the very real graft and political intriguing taking place on his watch.

If that is in fact the case, aficionados of bad political taste will continue to follow his administration's epically scaled charlatanry with delight and awe. Few others will, though.