Frustrated by local TV

February 12, 2008

Dear Sir,

I used to be a Cablevision viewer but due to certain reasons, I am a WOW customer and I have been one for a while, but I am getting frustrated. Way back, when I first signed up, they promised that they were about to add a bunch of more channels. I am still waiting ... Actually, I went to look at a channel I don't usually view, it wasn't there. So I looked on their website and it was still listed. Then I decided to look at other things on their web and thought, how does this compare to Cablevision?

WOW ¿ 76 Channels for Classic Pak, Cablevision ¿ 121 Channels for Variety Tier

Why did I pick those packages? Because they had all the "regular" channels the two companies offers, excluding the movies. WOW cost $68 plus $10.50 in equipment costs. That equals $78.50 for WOW. On the other hand Cablevision costs $73.00. I couldn't see any further costs for equipment.

Cablevision has 45 more channels than WOW and costs $5.50 less. Cablevision also has to maintain all those cables around the island, WOW doesn't. So why does WOW cost more? Only they know.

What am I going to do?. I will give WOW until the end of March to get competitive. More channels & less cost. Less cost, as they don't have all those cables to care for. After that, I will go back to Cablevision and I will advise all my friends to do the same.

STARVED

Pembroke

Open government

February 16, 2008

Dear Sir,

As a matter of curiosity, we went to the City Hall in Kelowna to do see what the Kelowna City Council does that Bermuda Corporation of Hamilton doesn't do.

We discovered a notice pinned up on the board indicating the time of council meetings and what would be discussed.

Agendas for each meeting were available.

They also have a Fast Facts sheet giving telephone numbers and e-mails addresses of the City Council members including the mayor.

Remuneration for the Mayor $81,000 annually ¿ Councillors $24,300 annually.

They outline the numerous committees.

"The public is welcome to attend all sessions; the Monday meetings are also televised on Cable 11.

We found this paragraph interesting: "In addition, Kelowna City Council regularly meets on Mondays mornings to discuss in-camera business as permitted under the Local Government Act".

TOPPY AND SAUNDRA COWEN

Kelowna, British Columbia

ECU is a disgrace

February 13, 2008

This was sent to David Hill, CEO of the Bermuda Hospitals Board and copied to The Royal Gazette.

Dear Sir,

Last week I visited someone in the Extended Care Unit at KEMH. It was shocking! It was degrading, and it was humiliating! The above unit is like something out of a backwater, third world country,

The moment you step inside this unit, your senses are assaulted with the suffocating smell of urine mixed with other unmentionable smells. It literally takes your breath away. I could only endure this assault for approximately five minutes and I had to keep coughing to clear my throat.

In the short time I was there, I sat with my friend in a little anteroom, which leads to what looks like a gathering room for the patients. This little anteroom was dark and dingy looking, and the room where the other patients were sitting, looked to be just a plain room, devoid of any colour whatsoever. There these patients sat, some with heads bent and chins on their chests, others just sitting waiting for time, and a few wandering around.

I looked at this picture of reality, and thought: "This is Bermuda, this affluent society, and our seniors are sitting here in this hell-hole of supposedly extended care. To me it was extended neglect! Neglect by our government and the Board members to make the last days of these seniors a more comfortable one. I say last days because that is exactly why they are there. The only comfort in them being there is the fact that 99 percent of them don't know where they are, but at this point, on a scale of one to ten, I rate this facility a big fat zero! It does not even reach the number one mark.

Granted, I do not know what sort of programmes they have scheduled for these seniors, but I do know that in other countries they try to stimulate the seniors with all sorts of activities ¿ they even bring in animals that are trained in hospital therapy visits.

Four years ago, my aunt was there in the Extended Care Unit. I went to visit her, and there she was, a 98-year-old woman lying there with nothing on but a flimsy hospital gown and a sheet, shivering. I went to the nurse's station to find out why she did not have a blanket, and was told there were no blankets. That's right! There were no blankets to cover a98-year-old woman!

Now is that shocking or not? I made my concerns and the next time, she was covered with a blanket. Also, I have visited her at noon, to find her in the most disgusting state, and was told they had not gotten around to bathing her because they were busy.

All of the above is not acceptable. We can spend $11 million on a cricket team that is an embarrassment to Bermuda, and more millions on other unnecessary things; surely we can take care of our seniors. The health and welfare of our seniors needs to be addressed because they are one of our greatest priorities and something needs to be done immediately.

In closing, I have also visited the main hospital and in the public ward that I visited, I found the conditions not much better than the ECU. The walls are filthy and in need of paint, and I do not understand why these facilities have been allowed to digress to such a shockingly poor, unhealthy state. Is it due to the lack of staff, poor management, lack of funds, or just plain indifference?

This is where "The Right to Know" comes into play. We as taxpaying citizens of Bermuda have to know why our one and only hospital is in this appalling condition.

P. FERGUSON

Warwick

Warwick was not first

February 13, 2008

Dear Sir,

We read with interest the Black History — Celebrate the Legacy column on page 14 of the February 7 edition of The Royal Gazette which speaks about Warwick Academy being the first school in Bermuda to become integrated — two years before the Government made integration of the schools law.

Our combined knowledge of Bermuda school history compels us to make the following observations:

1. In the face of all odds, a group of black (coloured) men — the founding fathers of The Berkeley Educational Society, supported by some white men, met in 1879 and dreamed of a school that would be for the education of black (coloured) children and white children; a school for boys and girls.

2. That integrated school opened 19 years later in 1897 and took the name of The Berkeley Institute — after Bishop Berkeley, an Englishman.

3. The Berkeley Institute has never been anything other than an integrated school.

4. To suggest that Warwick Academy was the first integrated school is simply a distortion of history.

To some, this may be a small thing, but left unchallenged will simply perpetuate an untruth. The truth is that Warwick Academy like all the segregated schools recognised that they had two choices — remain segregated and lose Government funding or integrate. The fact that Warwick Academy did it in advance of the passage of imminent legislation is, we suppose, laudable.

Celebrate the legacy? Legacy is defined by Oxford as material or immaterial thing handed down by predecessor.

While not wishing to take anything away from the excellent education facility that is Warwick Academy, it should be remembered that their legacy is one that required integration while The Berkeley Institute already enjoyed that status.

In addition, there are some who still recall how in the late 50s, Mr. F.S. Furbert, the then Principal of The Berkeley Institute recruited several white teachers from prestigious English universities in an effort to further encourage integration.

As unintentional as it might be, we do not think that Warwick Academy or any other institution which has a legacy of segregation should be allowed to take credit as the architects for integration. It is simply not true.

This community deliberately squandered an opportunity in 1879 — almost a century prior to 1962 — to embrace integration.

It is untruths or distortions such as this that often pass into the history books leaving young blacks (and indeed the white community as well) to believe that it was not because of our own struggles but the efforts of the white community and the passage of legislation that shaped where we are today.

Parenthetically, if matters such as these are left uncorrected, the history books will be rewritten to exclude the theatre boycott as the mechanism which led to the desegregation of the cinemas.

If we are to have an honest debate about race, we have to accept that there were racist attitudes and policies that discouraged the white community from attending The Berkeley Institute — a school which opened in 1897 and whose rightful legacy is not only one of integration and gender equality but also of academic excellence. Respice Finem.

AUSTIN THOMAS

Chairman, –The Berkeley Educational Society

CALVIN WHITE

Chairman, –The Berkeley Institute Board of Governors

Editor's Note: Mr. Thomas and Mr. White are quite correct. The story should have said that Warwick Academy was the first segregated school to integrate. To learn more about Berkeley, see The Royal Gazette's Black History page on February 28.

Regiment's good service

January 30, 2008

Dear Sir,

I am a person who enjoys a good debate and I think I am quite tolerant of other people's views, even if I happen not to agree with them. However, I do take exception to the practice of expressing one's opinion, where that opinion is based not on fact but on fiction, and where such opinion, when expressed publicly, slanders the good name of an organisation and the people that make up that organisation.

All too often, I am forced to endure the emotional tirades of Mr. Larry Marshall Sr. against the Bermuda Regiment. While I have taken it upon myself in the past to ignore his outbursts and not dignify them with a response, his latest piece in The Royal Gazette on January 30 has compelled me to put pen to paper in the hopes that the public will be misled no further, and hopefully Mr. Marshall will endeavour to actually furnish himself with some facts before he stands up on his soap box again.

Firstly, let me say that I have no problem with the argument against conscription. There are as many valid arguments to abolish it as there are many valid arguments to retain it.

The problem with Mr. Marshall's stance is that in attacking conscription he seeks to attack the Bermuda Regiment. The Bermuda Regiment and conscription are not one and the same. The Defence Act 1965 provides that a Regiment shall be raised by the Governor. The Act also provides that if "called up" you shall serve for three years and two months. Both the Bermuda Regiment and "conscription" are borne out of The Defence Act 1965. The Bermuda Regiment did not "create" conscription. It is merely an entity charged with carrying out its functions as mandated in the Act. Conscription is an entirely separate clause in the Act which is put in place to provide manpower for that Regiment. Mr. Marshall should start by limiting his arguments to amending the Defence Act. To criticise the Regiment for conscription would be as absurd as blaming the Bermuda Police Service for the existence of aspects of the Criminal Code or the Road Traffic Act.

As much as I loathe letting facts get in the way of a good rant, I shall respond to Mr. Marshall's attack on the Regiment.

He continues to refer to service in the Regiment as "forced labour". My ancestors endured forced labour. They called it slavery. It was slavery because they had no choice. There was no Exemption Tribunal on the shores of Senegal or Ghana when that ship took my ancestors across the Atlantic. Upon arrival in the "New World" there was no selection committee offering slaves the choice of whether they wanted to work in the kitchen or the field or the boats in the office or on the horses. There was no offer of free education to the slaves. There was no offer of training exercises to exotic parts of the world to enhance their skills. Finally, they were not paid for their efforts. So let us ditch the erroneous and, quite frankly, insulting term of "forced labour" when referring to the Regiment.

Mr. Marshall makes reference to soldiers being forced to endure 18-hour days of being "cursed and ridiculed". This is grossly misleading. During an exercise soldiers will have to endure 18- hour days for usually no longer than three consecutive days at a time. This is the norm in any military as operations and embodiments may last for weeks at a time. As far as I know, an 18-hour day has killed no one. Although the banter is sometimes more robust than in the civilian world senior staff are not there to ridicule soldiers. I would invite Mr. Marshall to present evidence to show that this is the norm as opposed to the exception.

Mr. Marshall states that soldiers are not paid to do weekends or parades on public holidays. This is false. Soldiers are paid for every occasion that they report to camp or to any military function.

Mr. Marshall takes aim at the role the Regiment plays in providing leadership and discipline to soldiers. Again, without any evidence, he implies that the norm is the dishing out of insults and abuse at Warwick Camp by senior soldiers. The Regiment like any other organisation is not perfect, but to isolate a few incidents that may or may not have happened in the past and to base an entire argument against conscription upon this is ludicrous. He also speaks about the "escapades" of officers and how they conduct themselves overseas. Does Mr. Marshall have first hand experience hanging out with the officers on their "escapades" overseas? How does he explain his presence during such alleged "escapades"? Or is this more hearsay?

Mr. Marshall speaks about racial integration, or lack thereof, in the Regiment, and rather conveniently conjures up the example of a white officer cursing to a black conscript. Did this actually occur or is this a hypothetical example? If it did happen, what was the officer's name? Who was the conscript? I know, having to back up statements with facts can be a real nuisance.

As far as the proportion of white officers to black officers, let me say that we live in a Country where we have a ways to go in terms of equitably empowering all races. However, of the approximately thirty serving officers, more than half of them are black, after having passed an extremely vigorous course at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. I challenge Mr. Marshall to point out any major company in Bermuda whose executive can boast such figures.

Mr. Marshall summarises by saying that his latest piece is not meant to be an exhaustive argument against conscription and "space does not allow (him) to do justice to this point. " The problem is that with all the media exposure on television and in the print media over the course of 18 months, he still has never done himself or his cause any justice. His words offer nothing more than a slap in the face to the hard-working and proud members of the Bermuda Regiment, black and white, who selflessly serve their country and whose service he and his family have directly benefited from.

His latest diatribe is no different from those he has spewed forth in the past in that it is based on nothing more than emotion and rumour and is devoid and any hard evidence. In fact it flies in the face of all the evidence. However, in order to know this, Mr. Marshall would actually have had to serve his country in the Bermuda Regiment.

B.A.D.D.

Bermudian Against Deception –and Distortion

City of Hamilton