Last week saw the welcome return of the Ag Show - officially the Annual Exhibition - after last year's event was regrettably cancelled due to damage from Hurricane Fabian.

The event seemed to get a warm welcome back as thousands of people, from toddlers to pensions, came out in their thousands to see the livestock, vegetables, fruit, flowers, animals and livestock that had been entered in the show.

And thousands more saw the Cirque Magnifique and other entertainment laid on, watched the Island's equestrians compete, and ate cotton candy and all the other food on offer, largely for charity.

This newspaper continues to regret the decision taken some years ago to change the name of the Exhibition from the Agricultural Exhibition to the Annual Exhibition, a needless change to a name notably only for its stunning blandness.

The name change is all the more unfortunate because the show remains, to all intents and purposes, the Ag Show that generations of Bermudians have enjoyed. The name change remains the kind of government decision taken seemingly on a whim by politicians who should be tackling real problems. Of course, ending the drugs problem or raising educational standards takes years, and progress is bound to be patchy. Changing a name shows a politician doing something, and it costs virtually nothing once the new stationery has been paid for.

Much the same reasoning seems to lie behind plans - revealed by The Royal Gazette last week - to change the names of the three Government-owned middle schools.

It can be argued with some justice that Bermuda does not do enough to honour its former leaders. And students can be inspired by the leaders whose names are then lent to their schools.

The, for argument's sake, Dr. E.F. Gordon and Sir Henry Tucker Middle Schools might well inspire their students to greater things than Clearwater or Spice Valley might.

The same arguments apply to older place names: Few Bermudians today know who Governor Bernard, for whom Bernard Park is named, or Governor Reid (Street) are, and it can be argued that these names too should go. How about (Dame Lois) Browne-Evans Park or (Sir Edward) Richards Street?

And yet these names give a sense of stability and permanence to the community. There is some comfort in knowing that streets and schools retain the same names that earlier generations knew them by. And schools that were named for individuals have built their own traditions as well. The founders of the Berkeley Institute no doubt had very good reasons for naming the school after Bishop Berkeley, a great 18th Century philosopher who dreamed of establishing a seminary in Bermuda to train missionaries to convert native Americans. But yet he was also a slave owner.

In spite of all of that, and the possibility that a true Bermudian role model might be more inspiring to the school's students, it is unimaginable that the trustees of the Berkeley would change its name; by now, the school's accomplishments speak for themselves.

Clearwater, Spice Valley and Dellwood may not be able to claim the same kind of history as Berkeley. Indeed, the former two schools were formerly St. George's Secondary School and Warwick Secondary School, while Dellwood has been variously an all-age school, a primary school and is now a middle school. To some degree, all have been victims of previous well meaning attempts to give the schools fresh starts or a greater sense of identity.

It is for that reason alone that their names should probably be left alone. It might well have been better to have named them after great people when the schools were restructured. But it seems unfair to throw a decade's worth of tradition-building away now. Why not spend the time finding tangible ways to improve the schools instead?