Hester hears there are rumblings of discontent rolling across the parade square of Warwick Camp<$> at the moment — and from a surprising quarter to boot.

No, it’s not the current crop of khaki-clad cannon-fodder calling for the Colonel’s head, but rather the Island’s leaders of the future — members of the elite Officer Cadet Corps — who are itching for a fight.

Hester understands that the Regiment’s very own hand-picked would-be Wellingtons found themselves in No Man’s Land last weekend over a glass or two of Port. Following a hard day of learning how to bark orders and accept salutes — and left unsatisfied by the military’s meagre daily rum ration — our young subalterns were in need of a drink. But where to go? As officers and gentleman, fraternising with the Other Ranks was a tactic that may have resulted in heavy casualties and so our daring band of brothers was left with only one option — the Officer’s Mess. Several hours and far too many toasts to the Queen later, the young lieutenants had successfully exorcised the tensions of the day — and simultaneously liquidated the Quartermaster’s store of Port and Bacardi Rum.

Not surprisingly the culprits were mentioned in dispatches the following morning — and told in no uncertain terms that the Officer’s Mess was strictly off limits until all cadets had passed a course in Mess etiquette.

****<$>

Keeping with military matters, Hester read with interest the words of Home Affairs and Public Safety Minister Terry Lister<$> in Monday’s edition of The Daily.

Responding to calls from UBP Shadow Patricia Gordon-Pamplin that there should be a referendum on the Island’s current conscription policy for the Regiment, Terry answered with all the authority of a be-medalled Sergeant Major with a war wound. Taking a swipe at his opposite number, the Minister said that the real question was whether or not “the army had a role to play” — and that the real answer was a resounding ‘yes’.

“Whether a referendum would support the army, I’m pretty confident it would, and I’m pretty sure people want it to carry on functioning the way it does”, the Minister told an attentive House of Assembly on Friday night.

Shooting from the lip, the modern-day Patton went on to lament the Regiment’s current recruitment crisis, claiming that a falling birth rate and the fact that many recruits were in education overseas had led to a dearth of young men willing to accept the Queen’s shilling.

But the would-be-warlord held back the heaviest weapons in his arsenal for an offensive on those lily-livered, draft-dodging conscientious objectors who failed to take up arms in the first place. “There’s no reason why someone who doesn’t want to fire a gun can’t serve in the Regiment for three years and leave,” he said. I don’t have sympathy for those who don’t want to be in just because they don’t want to carry a gun — I think they just don’t want to be in it.”

All stirring stuff, particularly in the current climate Hester thinks. Until... a check of the Minister’s own war record reveals that the reluctant recruit served less than nine months of his own three year tour of duty in camouflage before returing to Civvy Street. So tell us Terry, was it an overseas education or concern over a falling birth rate that made Private Lister prematurely de-mob happy?

And still with the Minister for Labour, Home Affairs, Public Safety — and Immigration.

Mr. Lister made it onto the pages of The Daily again on Tuesday, this time in response to complaints from two Bermuda-bound visitors and/or their hosts who had been kicked off the Island when their temporary three-week visas had expired — even though they wished to extend their stay by a few days.

Responding to the complaints, our compassionate Minister said that “the policy is ‘no’ until someone gives us a reason to say ‘yes’”.

Terry went on to say that each individual case would be judged on its own merits, before bizarrely conceding that, if our much needed guests were staying in a hotel, their application for an extension would be looked at “more favourably”.

Although not wishing to promote the flagrant flouting of the law, Hester has a simple question for the Minister. Just what does he expect his Customs officials to do when a pair of homeward-bound seniors turn up at the airport having out-stayed their visas by a few days? Frog-march them to the front of the line before they take their already booked and paid-for seats?

****

Tourism Minister David Allen may be failing to keep Bermuda’s profile more than ‘a blip on the radar screen’ of potential visitors, but it cannot be denied that the overseas media are doing a sterling job of keeping the Island in the international spotlight. Granted, recent write-ups in New York’s biggest selling dailies, along with articles in the UK’s Daily Telegraph amongst others, have hardly been positive — what with speculation over the whereabouts of ever-absent yet permanently sun-tanned Big Apple mayor Michael Bloomberg and scandalous talk about US companies locating to the Island to slash their own tax bills.

Hester is just curious as to how such stories manage to make it into print in the first place.

The recent Bermuda Insurance Symposium, held at one of the Island’s top hotels, should have been just the sort of shin-dig to cement our reputation as a top-drawer destination for international business.

Alas, after a hard day attending lectures, talks and seminars by business big-wigs, overseas reporters eager to file some very positive copy about Bermuda before deadlines and Rum Swizzles approached, slammed straight into a brick wall.

The hotel’s media and executive centre — complete with laptops and other high tech lines of communication — had locked its doors at 5 p.m. on the dot. Hester hears that one hapless hack was forced to write out her story in old fashioned pen and ink before faxing it through to head office. Is it any wonder that we sometimes get a bad press?