WHAT about the long-term residents? Some voice in Westminster no doubt asked that question while the Progressive Labour Party Government was being given carte blanche to rewrite Bermuda's Constitution.

What about the long-term residents indeed? Whether they have lived in Bermuda more than half their lives or since birth, their tenure is as devoid of fundamental rights now as it was on entry.

Their status recently reconfirmed as "Bermuda's guests'', they are long accustomed to remaining silent and uncritical of their "hosts''.

By inviting such "guests'' to comment on a hospitality which all but rejects them, their questionable and untrustworthy host can go back to Westminster with an answer: "We held a series of meetings with long-term residents, whose opinions were truly superfluous because they were met with an array of Government supporters not only deaf to `guest' proposals but deafeningly resolved to prevent any long-term resident from crossing even the narrowest threshold of advantage.'' STRAIGHT TALKING Southampton One mistake that is not reversible October 11, 2000 ONLY a half-witted simpleton could fail to see through the transparency of the Progressive Labour Party Government's cellophane-wrapped package designed to reduce the seats in Parliament.

This formula, of course, will result in full-time politicians being paid full-time salaries sure to make the recent luxury perks the PLP awarded itself look picayune by comparison.

After 30 years in Opposition and two years in power, the PLP has manifestly failed to produce any practical plans for solving our major problems. Problems with crime, education, housing, out-of-wedlock births, industrial relations, tourism, etc. have not only not been solved under the PLP, they have grown worse -- markedly so in many instances.

For instance, the PLP approach to tourism is to try to link Bermuda to its Caribbean competitors and compete that way when really Bermuda's charm -- and certainly its only hope for future growth -- is the fact it's not in the Caribbean.

Instead of solving problems, Ministers are always off the island or unavailable for comment. It would appear that they are primarily concerned with what to wear in Parliament, what size car to drive or which overseas conference they should next attend at the taxpayers' expense. Surely the Bermudian taxpaying dog can only support so many PLP fleas! Barren of any ideas of substances, they now want to reduce the size of Parliament. The real reasons for this move are: 1) To create a distraction so the public will not dwell on the resounding non-success of PLP policies, and 2) A blatant attempt to entrench themselves in power -- the scenario they propose in fact borders on totalitarianism. What's wrong with the present system? After all once the PLP assumed a veneer of respectability under the leadership of the late Frederick Wade, they got elected with a handsome majority. And since they are joined at the hip with the Bermuda Industrial Union, they have all the power they need.

Reducing Parliament to 20 or 30 seats will effectively kill any Opposition party and, indeed kill, any opposition within the Government party itself. If we must get rid of some politicians, why not start with the Senate? As a legislative body, it's largely redundant. With skilled and principled politicians Bermuda could survive under a unicameral legislature.

But, on second thought, given the shortage of skilled and principled politicians in Bermuda, maybe we are better off with an Upper House that acts as something of a brake on legislation thrown together with peddle-to-the-floor haste by the House of Assembly. Does the CURE legislation ring a bell? Sir, if the PLP Government insists on forcing the reduction of democracy down the people's throats without even a referendum, then the Opposition must boycott the debate in the House of Assembly where the proposed legislation is to be rubber-stamped.

They should not be party in any way, shape or form to such an exercise in mendacity and they should announce their intention to abstain from the PLP butchery of our Constitution now. And the people must express their outrage on a wholesale basis.

Let's be honest, if the United Bermuda Party had devised this system (a massive reduction of seats) and somehow forced it on us, there would have been riots in the streets.

Many mistakes made in the "New Bermuda'' are reversible -- this one is not.

There is no retreat! The loss of rights and the climate of fear that will follow will prevail for a very long time.

WAKE UP BERMUDA City of Hamilton PS: Q: How do you turn Bermuda from a First World country into a Third World one? A: Elect a PLP government and wait five years.

Three funerals -- and a question...

October 6, 2000 MY mind has been running on funerals. There have been several notable funerals in our part of the world lately, one in Antigua, one in Nassau, and one in Canada.

In Antigua was buried the head of the local Bird dynasty, widely regarded as corrupt drug profiteers, gun runners and money launderers whose stranglehold on politics in Antigua is tantamount to dictatorship.

In Nassau was buried the long-time Premier of the Bahamas who led the people of his once prosperous group of little Islands first to Independence, then to racial "score settling'', and finally to relative poverty.

In Canada was buried a great leader of a great democracy, a charismatic man mourned by both his political supporters and his opponents. His funeral was attended by leaders of the great democracies of the world.

At the funeral of the dictator/drug profiteer and at the funeral the discredited and rejected Lynden Pindling in Nassau, Bermuda was represented by our Premier and her "Chief of Staff''. At the funeral of the Prime Minister of Canada, Bermuda was not represented.

If anything demonstrates the ideology and political intentions of our present Government better than their obsequious attendance at the funerals of those "leaders'' whom they obviously have so ardently admired, I don't know what it might be. The Premier's appearances at those funerals represent yet more of the taxpayers' money that has been flagrantly misspent.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER City of Hamilton Feel pride -- and not shame October 7, 2000 I WISH to express my appreciation to Mr. Ira Philip for his article on October 6 in the Mid-Ocean News . I was surprised and perturbed by Mr. Walton Brown's answer.

It implied both denial and rationalisation. The first Portuguese were brought to Bermuda specifically to do Government work so that the Turn to Page 11, Col. 1 Letters Continued from page 4 newly freed blacks would not have to be paid.

I was surprised by Mr. Brown's response although I am all too aware that many black Bermudians still carry a sense of shame at being the descendants of slaves and having experienced, or are experiencing, economic segregation and exploitation as if they were the perpetrators of the evil rather than the survivors.

They not only indulge in denial and rationalisation concerning the experience with all its cruelty and brutality but they also often feel real anger towards those of us who insist on rejecting the shame and placing it where it belongs as well as refusing to deny, or to ignore, the extent of the evil of racism and its long term impact on the black community.

I understand that sense of shame and the desire to hide from the realities of segregation because throughout my teens and early twenties I carried the same shame as a result of the miseducation of Bermudian education.

Those black people who continue to feel this way, and who feel compelled to defend those in the white community, are lacking in the most basic historical education. This Government should be doing far more informal public education of the Bermudian people in general.

We will never be as creative as we might be until black people rid themselves of this shame and take pride in who they are and what they have survived.

They must be cured of this denial, rationalisation and misplaced anger which results from the injustices of an oppressive system which they would rather pretend does not exist and never has existed.

They must be reeducated. I am surprised that even someone like Mr. Walton Brown felt the need for rationalisation and misrepresentation.

Thank you, Mr. Philip.

EVA N. HODGSON Bailey's Bay