refusal to consider a plan by the previous Government to offer free Bermuda College tuition to top students.

Sen. Scott was criticised in this column last week after refusing to look at the UBP plan which would have given free tuition to students with a B average, good school attendance and a clean drug test.

It is to be hoped he will at least follow CedarBridge PTA president Patricia Basden's advice and honour the plan for the coming year.

The proposal, made by then-Education Minister Tim Smith last year, has hung in limbo since the Progressive Labour Party's election victory in November, but it seems likely that some students have presumed it is going ahead.

It is not clear how many students from CedarBridge and Berkeley would be eligible for the honour, but given that some will not be going on to the College, the cost is likely to be fairly small.

This seems probable as some of the students, as Sen. Scott has pointed out, will be eligible for other scholarships and awards at the College which are under-utilised now.

This would have a dual role: It would honour good students, whose achievements are often overshadowed by the failings of a few of their fellow pupils and it would also steer good students towards the College, whose homegrown excellence is sometimes ignored by students and parents who end up spending far more money for an inferior education at unaccredited and largely unknown colleges abroad.

STRETCHING THE POINT EDT Stretching point One part of Finance Minister Eugene Cox's defence of Sen. David Burch's role as chief of staff to the Premier may have done more harm than good.

Mr. Cox, who claimed in the House of Assembly on Friday that Sen. Burch enabled Premier Jennifer Smith to do two days work in 24 hours, revealed that he also served a useful role as a bodyguard -- not in Bermuda, but in Dallas.

There, the Premier's party made an unscheduled stop in their stretch limo to enable Ms Smith to buy something. While Ms Smith, escorted by Sen. Burch, was in the shop, a crowd gathered, believing the car contained celebrities.

It's not clear what role Sen. Burch, despite his previous military training, would have played had Ms Smith been "mobbed'' by the hopeful autograph hunters. At any rate, Ms Smith showed during and after the General Election that she can handle crowds pretty well.

But surely the answer to this particular problem is not to have a chief of staff-cum-bodyguard on hand in case Ms Smith again runs into crowds of celebrity seekers, but to stop using stretch limos. A sedan can be dignified and would do the job just as well.

It might have saved the public some of the $20,000 that has been spent on behalf of Ms Smith and Sen. Burch for their overseas trips.