May 8, 2014

Dear Sir,

Consumers in Bermuda are being taken advantage of on an almost daily basis. It wasn’t always this way. I remember 50 years ago, when I worked building docks in the summer, going into Dismont Robinson’s on a Friday night and cashing my pay cheque along with all the longshoremen.

I would buy a bottle of rum, a carton of cigarettes and a case of beer. All this came to about £2, 10 shillings, or about $7. Since those days, successive governments in Bermuda (and the rest of the world) have developed this insatiable urge to spend money wastefully. Now we are at the point where hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year with very little oversight. This has to be paid for with taxes which by way of duty on everything, are added to all that we buy.

We have the highest airfares in the history of aviation, the most expensive pasta on the planet when dining out, exorbitant gasoline and electricity prices and our pharmaceuticals, to name a few. When there was some area where the consumer could help themselves to a break, you would think they would avail themselves of it. Not so.

Cigarettes are a great example. Every Finance Minister since the inception of party politics has increased the tax on cigarettes (and liquor) almost yearly and called it ‘the sin tax’. There is still a ‘thruppence a pack tax’ on cigarettes placed to aid in raising money to build the last new hospital. Now cigarettes are up to $80 a carton and people are still smoking and always will. The price is probably creating criminals out of some folks. You did an article recently on a Bermudian who makes his own cigarettes here and will soon be growing tobacco in the Island.

He has the Smoke Shop in the Washington Mall, and charges $45 a carton. With that type of difference in cost, (almost a 50 percent discount) you would expect a line up pretty much all the time, but although he has an increasing following, it is not a madhouse in there yet. I have a hard time understanding this, or are Bermudians so used to being ripped off that they won’t help themselves? Just asking.

DUNCAN MORAN