February 19, 2012Dear Sir,After 36 years of party politics in Bermuda the national debt was at approximately $120 million and reducing under the stewardship of Eugene Cox, the Progressive Labour Party’s first Minister of Finance. After seven years of stewardship by Paula Cox, the debt has increased to at least $1 billion, excluding the current financial year, 2011/12, which is likely to bring that figure close to $1.2 billion or over twelve times higher than when she took over from her father. The cost of servicing this debt is killing Bermuda and the PLP haven’t the slightest idea how to stop the spiralling rate of borrowing or how these enormous sums all Bermudians now owe can ever be repaid. Why does it cost the PLP more than twice as much as the bad old UBP, in real dollar terms, to operate Government?The PLP appears to see nothing wrong in spending $200 million more than Bermudian and resident taxpayers give them every single year, as they have done for the last four audited years. In one year alone the PLP increased the debt by $270 million and what do we have to show for it? A few poorly constructed projects, a few unsustainable 2007 general election giveaway social programmes and a very happy, underworked and overpaid bunch of civil servants and Government workers who have hardly been touched by the reality of this mostly PLP-generated recession. Their time to share must come, probably as soon as the general election is over.People in the private sector are losing jobs. Charities are trying to sustain the unfortunate with empty pocketbooks. Grants are being withdrawn and Government services are being cut. Tens of millions of dollars are sent overseas annually to pay the interest on the PLP-generated debt, money that should have been used to support the unfortunate and the many good causes that now go wanting. Apartments built by hard-working Bermudians to help pay their mortgages and to provide for retirement are lying empty. People are hurting badly and wry smiles are becoming more common than happy ones among Bermudians.The PLP were advised and have known for at least four years that the world was changing and that their policies and new laws were hurting Bermuda and Bermudians. They have done little to address these failings except reverse some of their ill-conceived legislation and introduced too-late half measures that achieve little that is positive.A Government should protect all its citizens, provide for their well-being and in general provide satisfaction for the cost they charge us. Happiness is perhaps asking too much from any Government but all decisions coming out of Alaska Hall now are to do with maintaining power for the PLP, not doing what is right for Bermuda. Can I appeal to any altruistic character traits among the PLP membership and ask that they vote their own incompetent Government out of power so that people who have the knowledge and business abilities to run a country can be given a chance? We need to generate wealth, not more debt, so that money can be shared by all based upon their contribution. It’s not going to be easy, but we need some financial experts who truly care about Bermuda to try and get our people re-employed and our debts addressed and to be given the chance to undo the God-awful mess the PLP have gotten us into.WANT TO SMILE AGAINPembroke