spending sprees are going to take the shirts off everybody's backs, energetic Opposition MP and dairy king Michael Dunkley is busily putting shirts on people's backs. Not one to miss a commercial opportunity (or let ACE Ltd. take all the limelight with their garish handpainted logo plastered across the pitch), Mr. D's dairy supplied those sporty Dunkley's Dairy-Tropicana Cup Match shirts seen on the backs of Somerset players this year. But it seems the cheeky MP couldn't resist ordering a few extra tees in the Tropicana batch of his own design. Unlike the official version, these ones, which Hester came across while doing her social rounds at The Game, said: `Don't Blame Me, You Made It Happen!' Freud once said the only folk who couldn't be helped by psychoanalysis were the Irish. But perhaps the late, great Siggy would have found more fertile ground at Bermuda's smaller organ. In the introduction to an interview in the Bermuda Sun with perennial Cup Match interviewee `the woice of summer' Jim Woolridge , the MP is described as "a member of the former United Bermuda Government''. Hester wanders if the Sun, even subconsciously, is suggesting that Bermuda has become somewhat disunited since the PLP's November victory at the polls, or is it simply that they have the inside scoop on a new name for the UBP.

Share and share alike is a fine political philosophy -- but it appears Bermuda's politicians are reluctant to put their mouths where their money is.

A noble bid to set up a public register of MPs' interests, as they have in all other British islands, has stalled, Hester can reveal, due to a cross bench reluctance by MPs to admit their finances. You may recall the idea flew through Parliament just before the November election, with MPs on both sides okaying it. Forms were drawn and printed and should have been mailed out to MPs in the spring or at the latest summer, but it seems, having seen the list of questions they will have to answer, our Elected Members have suddenly lost their stomachs for the Register. It's been languishing in committee, but Hester hears UBP backbench maverick Trevor Moniz is still determined to push it through by the summer break, either with a softer approach or as is. Hester understands the prickly questions being asked of MPs include incomes, debt, expenses, directorships, clients, sponsorship, "gifts and hospitality of both the MP and spouse'', overseas visits including where, when and who paid for each trip, land, shares...Should make interesting reading! Reported attempts to stamp out "overfamiliarity'' by civil servants towards their elected chiefs appear to be a tad premature. In the Ministry of Home Affairs and Public Safety, the bureaucrat brigade appear to be having difficulty with the sex of their Minister, let alone the name.

Hester came upon a typed copy of a statement to the House of Assembly by the eminently capable and undeniably feminine Paula Cox on the settlement of the Police pay dispute, and someone had billed her as "The Hon. Paul A. Cox''.

And -- unless there's yet another member of the Cox dynasty in the Cabinet and a reshuffle no-one's been told about (these days not beyond the bounds of possibility) -- it's a case of `some mistake, surely?' Of course money is no object if you're as rich as resident billionaire Ross Perot , who may lose the 2000 Reform Party US presidential nomination to Donald Trump or Jesse Ventura , according to Hester's favourite political talkshow. But Hester wanders what on earth the wannabe prez wants with a fleet of half a dozen pleasure boats. Out yachting over the holiday, that is about how many boats she counted moored outside his posh Tucker's Town pad! There was the speed demon he likes to purr about on, as well a luxury motoryacht, a Boston whaler, a funky looking ski boat perched atop its own floating rubber platform, a Zodiac, a hobycat, three jet skis and a host of other toys.

Speaking of the filthy rich, mysterious John Deuss may be a megabucks oilman, but his public relations are far from slick. A dodgy VSB report that Deuss was set to quit this Island paradise ran early last week -- and, apparently unlike the hacks on radio, the mighty The Royal Gazette thought it prudent to check it out. The VSB `tail' was apparently based on the fact that Deuss' prized stable of horses was set to leave the Island, but Hester has established straight from the horse's mouth that Deuss has no plans to follow and the horses were only flown out for a show in Canada. Several days after the Gazette's original inquiry (which was greeted with laughter), Deuss' Transworld Oil replied on the rather odd grounds that it was now old news and Deuss didn't wish to comment -- except to confirm the Dutch-born mogul was staying put. A clear case, Hester contends, of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.