This is the final edition of On The Money, which began its weekly run in July 2005. Its predecessor ran in The Mid Ocean News for eight years before that. The Government has issued me a non-renewable work permit under its term limits policy. I must leave Bermuda permanently by November and have begun making the necessary preparations to do so.

I believe in the spirit of the work permit term limits and in the need for Bermuda first. Bermuda should not create a class of guest workers who feel entitled to stay here beyond their welcome. The key word in that sentence is "guest". Say I came to your house at 6 p.m. for dinner and at midnight, you said: "One last drink, then perhaps we should call it a day". I wouldn't stand on ceremony and demand that I be allowed to stay at your home, playing loud music until the wee hours, disturbing your family, until it suited me to leave. I'd say "Thanks for having me", and head home.

While I believe in the spirit of the policy, I do not believe in the way it is being executed. My opinion is that a society should run on the rule of law, not on the rule of Ministers' discretion. Passing every case by an individual Minister - be he or she Minister of Immigration or any other Government Department; this is not personal - is the antithesis of good governance.

Thousands of us are being sent away, so this is not about me. I am lucky enough to have another life waiting for me elsewhere, better in some respects, but notably worse in one: it won't be in Bermuda.

Now consider this from the perspective of Bermuda. I've been doing that, in my head, non-stop since the news presented itself. Unable to see how the decision benefits Bermuda, I find myself drifting into mixed feelings, which is why I am stopping the column now. My editor might have let me continue, were I able to mask my feelings, but if you've been reading this column, you'll know that I don't mask my feelings. I tell you exactly what I think.

I think that I have made a useful contribution to Bermuda. I arrived back here in February 1993, after a few years away, right around the time that the "Class of 1993" insurance companies began to file into Bermuda, bringing with them unrivalled prosperity. I have been lucky enough to enjoy a front-row seat at one of the greatest movements of capital in the history of mankind and have watched it change every corner of Bermudian society.

When Kevin Stevenson died, I became, de facto, the doyen of Bermuda's international financial press corps. A week or two back, Premier Brown claimed that the publicity value to Bermuda of two articles published in Forbes and the Robb Report was $150,000. Since 1994, I have written more than 2,000 articles published in Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and more than 60 other overseas publications. I mention this not to boast - it was Bermuda that people wanted, not me - but to make a point.

No one else will pick up much of the work I have done in this area. Bermuda's other financial journalists, an excellent crew of seasoned professionals, mostly work at the newspapers. Those are gruelling full-time jobs that don't leave much room for extra-curricular activities. The Gazette has for 14 years allowed me not to hold such a position, but to work for them wherever I could find the space to promote Bermuda.

No one else will pay my rent, because my housing is dilapidated and untenable. No one else will buy my sandwiches at The Hickory Stick, or my chicken salads at Portofino's, or my groceries at White's. They'll have to do without my trade, just as Government will have to do without my payroll taxes.

How is that good for Bermuda? If you know, tell me (crombie@northrock.bm). How is deliberately shrinking the economy for no benefit, at this perilous time, of advantage to Bermudians? How is silencing Bermuda's main international business editorial voice not a negative for the economy?

There must be answers to those questions, but I can't find them. I understand that Government does not want me to feel or become entitled. I don't and couldn't. Since I first arrived here in 1975, I was told that my work permits were annual, that they accrued no longer-term rights, and that they required of me a standard of behaviour equal to, or better than, that expected of Bermudians. I have tried to live up to that requirement.

People have asked why I don't qualify for a long-term residence permit. Apart from the fact that I don't believe in such permits, in 1986 I took what subsequent changes in the law have rendered bad advice from the Immigration Department and went away for some years. I was told that leaving was akin to paying off a credit card in full, that it would only improve my chances of coming back, should an employer ever want me to. Then the rules changed. I thus do not qualify for long-term residence.

Others have asked why I don't "pull strings" or lean on my friends in Government and other sectors. Because to do so would be immoral, that's why. And I don't have any friends in Government or anywhere else who would countenance such behaviour.

So, because of all this, I can't continue in good conscience to write this opinion column. I have always said that I would not want to work in a country where I could not say what I think. I still can, and I just have, but before my balance might be upset by even greater confusion, I must stop.

There are a couple of other things I'd like to say.

Bermuda first implies that there's a second. The idea behind work permit term limits has somehow been transduced into a political punishment, almost exclusively visited on local employers.

It is said that books find us when we need them. I am usually too busy to read books, but yesterday, I'd run out of newspapers and magazines, and so plucked a copy of Aesop's Fables from the shelf. I opened it at random and found myself reading Fable 161 (there is no agreed numerical system for the Fables, but a standard of sorts has been formed using Chambry's 1927 translation).

Fable 161 is "The Jackdaw and the Ravens". It goes like this:

"A jackdaw who grew larger in size than the other jackdaws disdained their company. So he took himself off to the ravens and asked if he could share his life with them. But the ravens, unfamiliar with his shape and voice, mobbed him and chased him away. So, rejected by them, he went back to be with the jackdaws. But the jackdaws, outraged at his defection, refused to have him back. And thus he was an outcast from the society of both jackdaws and ravens."

That tale was told 2,600 years ago. It has survived because of its continuing relevance. We fear what we don't understand and we shun it. We learn nothing from history. And thus do we guarantee that we will not grow.

Trying to assimilate my feelings, I found I couldn't. And then, again by chance, I happened to be listening to a superb reconstruction of some of his finest tunes by Ray Davies of the Kinks, this time with a full choir behind him (the album is illiterately entitled The Kinks Choral Collection). The first track is a swansong, called Days. It contains the following lines:

Thank you for the days,

Those endless days,

Those sacred days you gave me.

Hey presto, I knew exactly how I felt: eternally grateful, but not nostalgic. And I knew that no ill-considered government policy could ever rob me of the days I have spent as part of the community on this crazy little rock in the middle of nowhere.

I'm thinking of the days.

I won't forget a single day,

Believe me.

Not every job can be trained for. Some people are no longer the products solely of their skill set, but of that and experience. If a person has decades of unique Bermuda experience, and his or her employer can turn that into profit - and, crucially, no Bermudian wants or can do that job - what profiteth it Bermuda to lose that person?

I don't want the right to live here; I want the right to be considered as the best man for a job that no Bermudian can do. I would gladly sign away any such rights that might accrue; these words have probably done just that.

Never a sentimental or a religious man, I listened further to the song, and the next verse said it better than I ever could.

I bless the light.

I bless the light that shines on you,

Believe me.

And though you're gone,

You're with me every single day,

Believe me.

Ah, that Bermuda light. It may not be unique, for all I know, but it might as well be, because it shines on Bermuda, unlike the light anywhere else.

You took my life

But then I knew that very soon

You'd leave me.

But it's alright.

I'm not frightened of this world,

Believe me.

I'll be leaving later this year with that thought uppermost in my heart. I'll do fine elsewhere, although I hope I'll have the economic courage to turn down the offers that are already coming in from Bermuda's competition.

Every other country in the world is desperately trying to hang on to talent, because the competition for the best is intense. Bermuda doesn't seem to want the best any longer. In the long run, that can only mean one thing: Bermuda second.