March 18, 2002

Dear Sir,

I 'borrowed' the following story and adapted it to reflect my feelings on the Government that I voted in. While the story may sound amusing, in my opinion it sums up our situation well.

A man in a hot-air balloon realises he is lost. He lowers his altitude when he spots a man walking below him. "Excuse me!" he shouts. "Can you help me? I promised a friend I'd meet him an hour ago, but now I don't know where I am."

The man replies, "You're in a balloon thirty feet above a ground between forty and forty-one degrees north latitude and fifty-nine and sixty degrees longitude." "You must be an engineer," says the stunned balloonist. "Quite frankly, you haven't been of much help."

"The man on the ground replies, "Then you must be our Tourism Minister." "I am," replies the astonished balloonist. "How could you possibly know that?"

The man on the ground retorts, "Because you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to your present position on a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep and you expect the people beneath you to solve your problem for you...

"But worse of all you're in the same position that you were before we met but now somehow it's all someone else's fault!"

Sound familiar?

DISGUSTED PLP-VOTER

Sandys