At the core of the problemOctober 17, 2011Dear Sir,In the entrance road to the rear parking lot at Arnold’s Supermarket on St John’s Road in Pembroke are usually displayed good examples of an epidemic Bermudian disease the belief that they are entitled to do anything that they wish and that the rules don’t apply to them.This epidemic Bermudian disease is manifest at Arnold’s as follows: the entrance road is only wide enough for three cars and is marked for a lane of parked cars, a lane for cars entering and a lane for cars leaving. The lane for cars leaving is marked by several one-foot tall No Parking signs painted in yellow on the road surface. When cars park here “illegally”, a logjam of cars usually results and no one can get in or out. None of these facts deter some Bermudians and there are usually cars parked on top of the No Parking signs! Their fellow Bermudians are greatly inconvenienced, at the least, but these parkers are suffering the Bermudian disease described above.The attitudes displayed in this case (and in many other road behaviours which I have previously addressed here) can be easily and legitimately generalised to and recognised in many aspects of Bermudian society. I have concentrated on discussing the road behaviours because we all can witness them many times in a day and they are guideposts to the same attitudes in many other social and work circumstances where they may not be as obvious.For example, the sense of entitlement and the belief that the rules don’t apply to them is why some Bermudians have the poor work discipline well-documented in the work permit debate they show up for work at their own convenience and work at their own rate. They go to work under the influence of drugs and alcohol. When they cause an accident, their union acts like their parent(s) did and not only fails to discipline them, but perpetuates the epidemic by going on strike for them it’s the permissive, non-disciplining parents all over again. The same disease pervades the upper levels of the Government where no one is interested in finding out the facts and holding anyone accountable and no one is ever disciplined. Accountants General and Auditors General have been asking for this for years now and nothing ever happens!The other side of a sense of entitlement is a lack of discipline. You must have a sense of discipline to realise that the Arnold’s No Parking sign applies to you and not park there. If you grow up without discipline, you grow up with a sense of entitlement. Discipline is not necessarily corporal punishment (although many of we older folk had a good caning at school and we’re doing quite well). When parents are so unable to discipline their children that they can’t or won’t toilet train them, is it any wonder that those children will grow up with no sense of discipline in their lives? (The Minister of Education had to publicly announce not too long ago that children who are not toilet trained will not be admitted to preschool.)They will feel entitled and it translates into them thinking that the Arnold’s No Parking sign does not apply to them, or they don’t care. They don’t give a thought to the fact that their high speeds endanger the rest of us on the road. They will believe that no rules apply to them, and the daily lack of enforcement of any traffic laws reinforces this belief.Bermuda has too much bad behaviour and poor ethics, and it’s not only on the roads. Almost everyone from Members of Parliament on down ignore the rules, riding in the third lane or speeding, and not only on the roads. The roads would be a good place to start cleaning it all up because it would be very obvious there that there is a new wind blowing across the island. It would be a big help in changing the way Bermudians think about their sense of entitlement and discipline. This is what was done in New York in the 1990s they started to enforce all of the small laws vigorously and found that this lowered the entire misbehaviour rate. That is what we need in Bermuda.STREETWALKERPembroke