Dear Sir, I am writing about the children convicted of fire setting at Harrington Sound School.

I have had to treat such children, both boys and girls, who have also been through the courts. Before I retired I was a consultant psychiatrist in UK, and worked both for the National Association for Mental Health and for the Home Office, dealing with adolescent delinquents.

In my experience, these children did not have serious personality disorders, and responded well to psychotherapy. The term `arsonist' is, I believe, usually reserved for adults with obsessive compulsive disorder, and these are very resistant to treatment.

The therapist will find that attention also needs to be given to the very natural anxiety and guilt that follows the court proceedings. This is unfortunately being prolonged by continued media coverage. I have hesitated to write before because of this factor.

In a materialistic society it is almost inevitable that the seriousness of the crime be judged by the size of the bill for damages, but this is not realistic. I consider that the matter is being correctly handled by the authorities, and I beg that there be no more spotlighting of this unfortunate happening.

EMILY LIDDELL Pembroke Professional envy February 14, 2000 Dear Sir, After waiting to cool down a bit I could not let your short piece regarding the upcoming changes to the Architects Registration Act pass without comment.

The current Act does exactly what is necessary to protect the public against misrepresentation by either local or foreign practitioners: If you want to claim to be an Architect you must first present credentials to the Council to pass Professional judgment on them. If you prove competent you are officially Registered and you may claim to be an Architect but in turn you must abide by a code of ethics which protects the public and requires you to behave in a truly Professional way.

This looks pretty clean and easy to me so I asked several acquaintances in the Professions and in the building trades what the problem was with this Act and then did a bit of thinking about their answers. The interesting thing was that none of them thought the Act was flawed! What they believe the problem is with the current Act can be summed up in a single word: money.

The Architects simply have a case of professional envy. They covet the high incomes of the Lawyers, Doctors and Accountants who also have their own `Acts'. But these other acts are somewhat different. When one looks at these acts, all of which had their roots in objectives just as simple and laudable as the Architects current act, one sees a truly dismaying distortion of the original intent into its twisted sister of greed. These Acts, and the "New and Improved'' Architects' Act, are clearly designed to deliver into the hands of those who qualify under them total control over who is allowed to work in those fields. No need to ask why either. Does anyone know any Doctors of modest means?; any Lawyers?, any CPAs? When was the last time anyone saw one of these `professionals' in a car more than a few years old?, or living in a smallish house that needed a bit of work? Has anyone felt that any of them really earned the super-premium salaries that are automatically credited to their investment accounts the way most white collar people do? (Much less by the `sweat of their brow' as do most blue collar people).

This happens only because these groups are allowed to insulate themselves from external competition and even from local competition (remember Dr. Brown's troubles?; Know many local Vets?) and ensure that there is always `enough to go round' and keep everyone fat and happy. Now that Bermuda is opening up to the world and now that Bermudians are returning home in larger numbers with qualifications in these fields, all of a sudden it isn't good enough to recognise those qualifications and impose ethical standards and allow these Bermudians to get on with their practices. All of a sudden we need to have compulsory insurance and continuing education and professional exams and periodic requalification and on and on...If we have a problem with foreign architects taking the food from the mouths of Bermudians, then the power to solve it should lie with the Department of Immigration, not by giving the power to the architects themselves! No wonder the architects won't talk to you about this. The simple truth here is that by some obscure means the architects have prevailed on a `Labour' Minister and his Cabinet to create yet another privileged class with the Parliament-given right to create its own rules-of-the-game in a way which can -- and most assuredly will -- be to its own benefit and most assuredly also at the public expense. The idea that we Bermudians need to empower 75 or 100 or so architects to triple or quadruple their current incomes in this way to protect ourselves from some kind of `bad architecture' is an insult to the intelligence of everyone who has ever built or renovated so much as an outhouse in this country. For this, shame on Minister Hodgson.

For allowing this to happen just a few months after the anniversary of the `New Bermuda' -- Shame on our Labour Government too. What on earth is happening here? This is exactly the opposite of what they were elected to do! PROFESSIONAL Smith's Parish Time to shift tax load February 10, 2000 Dear Sir, You printed two good letters today that said in essence that the Government is basically correct in subsidising the Castle Harbour development.

Bermuda is ready subsidising the ACEs and the XLs, and the Bermudian lawyers and the accountants, and the local insurance companies, by allowing them all to operate virtually tax free. Therefore, why should not the tourism sectors that after all employ far more Bermudians, be similarly relieved of tax so as to kick-start Tourism? This is especially relevant as most of these employees are in the lower income groups as a result of the Tourism sector's inability to pay both tax and proper wages at the same time.

Of course this argument is irrefutable; the only difficulty being that someone has to pay the tax Government requires to run the public services.

That the heavily expatriate International Business sector has overtaken tourism as the Island's number one earner should be no surprise. Operating with few employees, and to all intents and purposes tax free, it would be hard not to have done.

The Tourism sector, that employs the mass of Bermudians, and therefore via our consumption tax system pays the mass of our taxes, is failing, and failing fast.

It is time to shift the consumption tax load to those industries that can afford to pay it, starting with the wealthy local insurance companies, the lawyers and the accountants that are riding tax-free on the backs of Tourism's work force.

JUST ANOTHER BYE St. George's Why all the worrying? February 9, 2000 Dear Sir, Dr. Gibbons now `worries' that the Finance Minister might `turn the tax screw' on International Business, i.e., the lawyers and accountants. He `worried' just last week that we could have a `glut of high end rental accommodation'.

Would not a glut of any kind of rental accommodation serve to bring rents down as a whole? With a `high end glut,' the average renters will move up, into better accommodation, for less money. The disadvantaged will move into the accommodations thus vacated -- a win-win situation for all except landlords who have rushed like the Gaderene Swine after the $20,000 per month market.

Just who is Dr. Gibbons more `worried' about? So far as turning the tax screw on International Business' lawyers, accountants and other tax free-riders, he should be `worrying' instead about the tax screw he as Finance Minister turned so relentlessly on the Tourism and Retail sectors. They employ the voters, not the lawyers and accountants, and Mr. Cox is well aware of that.

SCREW St. George's