ANYONE still undecided about Independence should read, cut out and save your excellent on the subject. And they should also familiarise themselves with the misleading waffle and double talk on the subject that is emanating from the Progressive Labour Party Government.

I would have thought the Premier had plenty of problems on his plate that need to be solved before he embarks on the irreversible ? and expensive ? step of Independence. There's been an ominous spike in violent crime. Tourism continues to decline. Major economic uncertainty is being created by both John Kerry's Bermuda-bashing Presidential campaign and Eliot Spritzer's decision to go after the insurance industry bad guys operating out of Bermuda.

No new affordable housing has been created on the PLP's watch. The hospitals are filthy and dropping to pieces. The elderly cannot exist on their pensions. Yet there are no initiatives from the Premier aimed at addressing any of these immediate and pressing issues.

The Premier might also want to think about trying to reverse the general ineptitude of his administration before publicly suggesting this cadre that includes both crooks and cranks is the ideal team to take us to Independence.

Instead, though, the Premier is wasting precious time and resources trying to bamboozle Bermudians to give him a blank cheque for Independence ? a cheque which he will fill out only after he cuts Bermuda loose.

If my memory serves me correctly, the current Premier was most vocal in criticising Sir John Swan's Independence initiative during the 1995 debate in Parliament on this subject. What's changed?

At least Sir John allowed Bermudians to express themselves directly on the subject via a referendum and he accepted the result.

Imagine if the UBP had attempted to take the island to Independence through a vote in Parliament? Or argued that they already had a mandate for Independence as a result of winning a General Election. There would have been a riot!

In fact, if this Premier continues to ignore the people he may well find his Government facing civil disobedience. Ordinary Bermudians are getting very frustrated and fed up ? it won't take much to cause an eruption.

Independence advocate Walton Brown is disappointed that we are not having a visit from the United Nations on Independence. What advice can that scandal-ridden, toothless organisation that has botched virtually every crisis it's been involved in give us? The UN consists, in the main, of a bunch of posturing hypocrites.

I have before me a list of the UN's 191 members. Most are countries where the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are stampeding across the tortured landscapes. These countries suffer from disease, poverty, ethnic or racial conflicts and, in some cases like Sudan genocide (a term the UN has yet to apply to the mass slaughters going on there). Many are rich in resources like oil and minerals that remain untapped because of the endemic corruption and chaos.

All of the UN's members are, by definition, Independent nation states. Many are recently created nations. Yet Independence has certainly not fostered national unity ? or prosperity ? in most of these countries because corrupt, self-serving politicians won't let them!

Nearly all of Africa's 53 countries are in a mess, from Angola to Zimbabwe, with Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congo, etc. wracked by civil war. Independence did not solve their problems; it simply created new ones.

And such problems are not confined to that continent. Look at Afghanistan, Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Cambodia, Cyprus, North Korea and Myanmar (Burma). Lebanon used to be a successful country but tore itself apart when Christians and Muslim Lebanese took up arms against one another soon after the French departed. Virtually all of the people of the Arab world now live under either theocratic regimes that are throwbacks to the Middle Ages or brutal administrations that amount to miliary dictatorships.

Closer to home there are Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In Central and South America there are Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Argentina, which used to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The list is endless. These are the countries Walton Brown wants to help us decide our future? These are the countries who are going to lecture us on the problem-solving merits of Independence!

Former Governor Lord Waddington summed up Mr. Brown's Independence movement nicely when, as he was arriving in Bermuda for the first time, he said: "On the way from the Airport I passed a small group of protesters that included two children and a dog who were holding up a pro-Independence sign." Mr. Brown's one-man "Committee" for the Independence of Bermuda doesn't seem to have attracted any new members since then.

Mr. Brown is also wrong when he says the subject has never been thoroughly discussed in Bermuda. There were endless, exhaustive discussions in 1995 during the run-up to the referendum. He just did not like the results.

Bermudians pay attention! Because the Premier knows a majority are against going it alone, you will be subjected to a step-by-step approach using all of his Weapons of Mass Distortion to brainwash you. This is a man who to argue that "social engineering" will be good for Bermudians when every definition of the term I've found refers to this insidious technique as a form of state-sponsored coercion based largely around the type of propaganda techniques this Premier favours.

The regimented zombie populations in North Korea and Zimbabwe and Korea who have been brainwashed into believing that Kim Il Jong, Mugabe and Castro are gods in human form are examples of socially engineered societies. This is not a club that I think Bermuda would want to join.

How can we believethis Government has to say on a topic as important as Independence when Deputy Premier Dr. Ewart Brown said "we had to mislead you" in the run-up to the last General Election? If the PLP is prepared to put the pursuit of political power ahead of truth and common decency, how can we ever trust them on Independence? They are bound to mislead us all again.

Then there's former Senator Calvin Smith who had the audacity to admit that Mr. Bob Richards' arguments against Independence that appeared in the were so forceful and well reasoned, he hoped most Bermudians would never read them.

And Mr. Smith, before you take up your pen and repeat the same embarrassing mistake that you made in , assuming another letter writer was white, let me inform you that both black and white blood flows through my veins.