AM sure that at least once in our lives all of us have pondered over an irony of some sort. None of us is perfect; therefore it is perhaps fair to assume that we have all at some point in our lives been guilty of exercising double standards or have acted contrary to what we proclaim to be our own standards. I wonder, however, if there is an acceptable limit to this seemingly everyday occurrence.

I wonder because what I have recently discovered is mind boggling to me and perhaps underscores one of the greatest modern-day ironies.

I was not around during the 1920s when Tucker's Town was caused to be sold by compulsory terms. Similarly, I do not proclaim to know all of the circumstances surrounding the issue but, I am told that the alleged rationale was that the sales were in the best interest of Bermuda's economic well-being (the development of our tourism infrastructure).

I am a young man in my early 20s. Therefore, although I was alive at the time, I was not entirely conversant with all that was involved when, in 1983, the Middle Town was declared a General Improvement Area. My understanding is that the rationale for (what I will mention hereafter as) "The Middle Town GIA" was supposedly to better Bermuda and the welfare of its citizens.

In both cases there is a surface value that, it can be argued, justifies the plausibility of these actions.

But at a second or third glance the issue that becomes increasingly more unsettling is the method used for acquisition and the net results that were very similar (if not precisely) the same in both cases.

Tucker's Town was a primarily black-owned area, the value of the real estate forever gone from the hands of its former owners. Locals today call what happened there an historical travesty.

One of the reasons why people argue it was a travesty is because the original owners had no choice in the sale price; rather they were forced to accept the terms laid before them.

It has been suggested that perhaps other terms of engagement might have been more equitable for the original owners, such as long-term leases or some form of incorporation which would have preserved their interest in any future value of the properties.

The Middle Town GIA project region was also an area primarily owned by blacks who faced compulsory purchase.

The sale prices were not set by or negotiated with the existing owners. In fact, owners in the area argued that the prices offered were far below reasonable. But in the name of creating an improved residential area (like Tucker's Town), the future value of the properties were forever (and forcibly) taken from the original black owners.

They were systematically denied the improved value of their properties. We may well be happy with seeing Government housing and rental units and perhaps an area looking less rundown. But did we ever consider that this could have been achieved while maintaining the original owners' interests?

Let me put it in clearer terms. The United Bermuda Party Government, under the GIA legislation, had the power to enter into joint ventures. But the UBP, which the Progressive Labour Party would claim had no interest in empowering blacks, saw no value in improving the value for the owners of Middle Town through joint ventures.

Instead the UBP used the GIA (Housing Act) to deprive those landlords of their property while earning political kudos for handing back rental units to a community in need of affordable housing.

Would the current PLP Government have done the same? Or would they have considered that this was a seriously depressed black neighbourhood with primarily black owners, therefore needing Government to provide a "hand up" to the landlords to improve their properties?

Here is where irony comes into play.

I read a newspaper article / commentary written by Larry Burchall about how Government should, in fact, embrace the attitude of providing a "hand-up" approach to blacks because of the history of economic disadvantages suffered by blacks.

In this article he argues that, with respect to Pro Active and the Berkeley Institute project, Government should not have been acting at an arm's-length and using strict business acumen when it came to the new senior secondary school but, rather, they should have been acting with sensitivity and making no secret of the fact they were going with a "hand-up" approach (for the record, I somewhat agree that a hand-up approach would have been suitable in this instance).

But why then does Mr. Burchall reverse his position when he becomes the chairman of the Bermuda Housing Corporation?

His position becomes dubious in perhaps one of the most glaring episodes regarding the Middle Town GIA. If he, as chairman of the BHC, really took the ethical position he advocated in his column about Pro Active, then surely he could have led by example. But instead he took an opposite position, playing (and advocating) the same approaches which he criticises in his own writing.

Upon research you will discover that in many of the Middle Town landlord cases, individuals in and around 1984 sold their property to BHC while many others were compulsorily purchased.

In one of the larger family properties, the man who stepped in to prevent his family's property of approximately two-thirds of an acre (consisting of six houses and a commercial premise) from being compulsorily purchased for a meagre $100,000, became the target of attack by a BHC led by Mr. Burchall.

The case of this particular landlord revolved around the fact he agreed to rebuild and modernise the family property according to the BHC design. Under the GIA scheme he would have been required (by law) to take all the existing tenants in addition to any other proposed BHC tenants.

As I understand it, initially it was okay because the BHC entering (as it was their right to do) into a joint venture, promised to manage the property until the debt was retired (something which they mysteriously reneged on).

Without the now famous, private sector rental guarantee or the promised management relationship, the landlord falls into arrears (like the rest of Middle Town and Fenton's Drive but without the benefit of taxpayer support). But did Mr. Burchall take his own expressed position that Government should be assisting this (in his own words) "historically disadvantaged" black landlord?

Why did Mr. Burchall, as a PLP appointed chairman, instead take the view that Government, in these circumstances, should be doing business as strictly business? No "hand-up" approach to be applied? What of his role of attempting to foreclose (as chairman) and take that family's property as a BHC possession?

I would find it interesting to hear how Mr. Burchall might attempt to rationalise his "hand-up" views on economic empowerment with the position he took on this issue. History has its own unbiased way of pinning the tail on the donkey.

The Middle Town fiasco presents us with a classic paradox. While many of our contemporary political pundits and activists condemn what happened in Tucker's Town in the '20s and say that, if given the chance, they would have stopped (or at the very least mitigated) what happened there, the 1980s Middle Town "land grab" passed by virtually undetected.

And the supreme irony is that here we have a "would-be" black activist / columnist and a Government which purports to support affirmative action but is involved in a battle to snatch Middle Town black-owned property for the BHC through the strictest, pro-business interpretation of the GIA Act.

The biases and grudges involved with contemporary politics can often obscure and blind from the public, for a short while, some horrible truths and atrocities. However, we can take comfort in the fact that truth crushed or crumbled to the ground will one day rise again.

The UBP handling of the Middle Town GIA will one day be known for exactly what it was . . . a 1980s version of Tucker's Town. And Mr. Burchall, as a PLP appointed chair of the BHC, put the icing on this particular cake ? belying all that he and the PLP has ever publicly advocated about empowerment.

He supported a "hand-up" for Pro Active and Berkeley. But he voted "thumbs down" when it came to one of the only persons who fought to save his family property from compulsory acquisition. If Mr. Burchall were honest with himself, he would admit having made a mistake.

I would wish that every Bermudian shows up to the current tribunal between BHC and Raymond Davis (Khalid A. Wasi) resuming on April 26, 2006 at 9 a.m. The issue is bigger than just political discrimination; it represents the current PLP-led BHC administration's defence of their earlier actions and an attempt to continue the saga of acquiring a family property under the GIA scheme.

Because this attempted land grab occurred during the same period when the BHC was riddled with scandalous graft and perks being afforded to Government members (followed by the sacking of many of its officials and the replacement of board members), this tribunal will address the whole question of who the PLP truly deems worthy of empowering.

I am just a young observer. I view my family history and estate matters from the vantage position of an inheritor. Like matters of race and politics we have to ask simple questions like how did I/we get here? I have learned that some old sayings ring true . . . sayings like the more things change the more they remain the same.

I look back at the overall saga of slavery and Emancipation and ask whether in historical truth who was more responsible for my mixed heritage: the one who sold me into slavery or the one who enslaved me?

When looking at my family Middle Town estate history, I have the same question: who was worse ? the people who led us down the garden path and abandoned us or the people who discovered us in our abandoned state and attempted to annihilate us wholesale?

Time to worm out the truth

HROUGH your weekend newspaper I should be grateful for the space to clarify the following for our clients, many of whom have been calling us asking so many questions, and very worried about the press releases concerning heartworm in dogs. It is difficult to do them justice and get on with our work at the same time.

The Hanover Veterinary Hospital is not a member of the BVA (Bermuda Veterinary Association), which only represents the interests (and views) of Endsmeet and Ettrick animal hospitals, and possibly also the Department of Environment protection. Depending on the topic.

Sporadic, rare cases are nothing new in Bermuda. When I first returned home in the summer of 1981 to do a locum for Dr. James (founder of Ettrick), having no experience of this parasite, I was mortified by the sudden death of a boarding dog. So was the owner, staying at the Hamilton Princess at the time when I had to break the news to her!

A post-mortem showed the pulmonary artery and larger lung arteries crammed with the long adult worms. Discussion with my senior colleagues on the island at that time put me more at ease, as they were able to confirm that this did crop up from time to time in animals imported from various heartworm enzootic regions - usually the US. Indeed this dog was one of a household pair, which originated from Florida.

The next three cases I saw originated from the Base covering the decade from the mid-1980s to '90s, while the USNAS was still here. The dog-owning personnel on Base were not subject to import and export controls as Bermuda residents were - an obvious break in bio-security at many levels.

As training in Europe dictated, I brought these and other concerns to the attention of the Department of Agriculture, both in writing and during one of our meetings of veterinary practitioners and the Director. I recall the subsequent institution of a one-off, high-level meeting, involving local veterinary surgeons and two USNAS officers. We discussed various problems, many stemming from the fact they provided an occasional veterinary service to the Base - a USN veterinary officer.

Because I lived in the East End, during the rest of the time when he was not on Base, I had to deal with many sick animals, whose case histories I did not know, and had little hope of obtaining. The most important issue was the gaping hole in trying to control enzootic diseases, so back then we frequently tested for heartworm, even though it was a tedious procedure.

Somewhere around that time, one of the practices had also picked up a dirofilaria case in a local dog, which reportedly had not left the island. Our practice had not seen a single case in the last decade, and for this reason perhaps had stopped doing the more frequent checks of the previous decade. The newer antigen / antibody test is, however, available to our clients at a cost of $45.

Three weeks ago, we diagnosed heartworm in a dog originating last year from the SPCA, which showed severe, acute right-sided heart failure and the canal syndrome. We cannot trace whether this dog travelled. Every dog we have tested since then has been negative.

I have discussed this issue with David Kendall, entomologist in the Department of Environmental Health. He has been a wonderfully rich source of information about the habits of possible vector mosquitoes (), and in summary proposed the possibility of very localised micro-environmental conditions.

As I understand him, these micro-environmental conditions may favour the possible transfer of from a dog infected with adult worms to the obligatory mosquito host/vector in which an essential maturing process follows before vector transfer to a new canine host. We need to collect female culex mosquitoes and look for the presence of dirofilaria L3 larvae. If there are any willing university students looking for a project, please contact David Kendall directly, or call us.

When reviewing the sporadic pattern of the incidence of this disease in Bermuda, and taking into account the complexity of the life-cycle, including this maturing period in a mosquito above a certain temperature, Bermuda does not appear to be able to provide all the conditions this disease requires to become entrenched.

Seventy different species are capable of supporting the maturation to L3 infective larvae, but apparently, members of the family are the 'preferred' vectors. Dr. Kendall is a wealth of information on culex and its habits in Bermuda.

Literature on the subject states: "Once heartworm is introduced into an area, its transmission is virtually assured."

However, I keep asking myself the same question. If the ecological factors were highly contusive for its development as an enzootic disease in Bermuda, would heartworm not have already taken a firm hold on the island? I think so.

We used to have many stray dogs until the early 1980s and there were gaping holes in our bio-security and USNAS transport of personnel and animals was completely exempt from local regulations, unless personnel used civilian air transport, which was rare. Perhaps our evening temperatures are not hot enough consistently enough in the summer (yet). Perhaps mosquito control is more effective here. Perhaps the earlier preference (in the days before the PBT) for a crossbred that had thick hair protected many dogs from successful transmission.

These days many clients are already using topical or internal biological products, which are effective in blocking any transfer of infective larvae from a culex mosquito. These are the available prescription pharmaceuticals: Advocate (Bayer), Heartgard Merial and ProgramPlus Novartis. Simply bringing your dog indoors is one less risk factor.

Nonetheless, we should, however, be requiring a higher level of vigilance from the Department of Environmental Protection. The public should know, for instance, that the practice of ear cropping was (is still?) was made available to the breeders pursuing this mutilation of their puppies via an exceptional export licence to the US. The Department has allowed, and quite probably still allows the administrative circumvention of regulations relating to (re) import of canines into Bermuda. (I was instructed in a very heated and adamant manner by the relevant Government official - he felt it was an issue of 'personal choice'. I presume he meant on behalf of the 'owner' that is naturally not the poor pups.)

The sort of breeds involved in this purely cosmetic and cruel practice are thin-skinned, short-haired animals such as Dobermans, miniature Pinschers; the very animals most susceptible to multiple successful bites from mosquitoes containing the infective L3 larvae. Where are these ear-cropping clinics located? Yes, heartworm regions of the US.

If we cannot expect our civil servants to do things for the right moral reasons, can we not at least expect them do behave in the broader interest of the environment we all share?

Turn it down, please

AM a status Bermudian of some 35 years' residence here in Bermuda, originating in the UK, a retired pharmacist. I live within the vicinity of Whitney Institute, a school which appears to be quite well regarded in the local community.

Today, the school mentioned above is holding its sports day; at least I was awakened this morning by sounds identifiable as a PA system for such an event but being operated at a volume more suitable to the PA system of a warship. It was at least three or four times the necessary volume for such a purpose.

Having put up with this intrusion for maybe half an hour I called the police (fool that I am!) and reported the facts to a police officer (at least, I hope he was an officer!) who apparently spoke only rudimentary English, keeping the details as short as would allow some precision.

He assured me that something would be done but some two hours later the noise from the east was unabated (maybe even increased in volume) so I called back only to be told that I was the 'only one who had complained' and offering to switch me to the police inspector to whom I had spoken earlier.

I agreed to the transfer but the inspector (if that was indeed the person with whom I spoke) there was no satisfaction to be found with him, even to the suggestion that many retired people live in the area and they deserve some peace and quiet.

I am sending this letter to you because I have heard discussion around bars and similar places of assembly, indicating that many people in the community feel that the current membership of the police force have little concern for the aspects of police work which are generally thought of as essential to the public interest.