United Bermuda Party over the years.

His strong stands with the "rebel five'' over Independence and McDonald's, his refusal to take minor Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet posts afterwards and his seeming determination to row his own boat have earned him plenty of enemies among those who had different ideas about how to keep the UBP afloat in the run-up to the 1998 General Election defeat.

And his single-minded bid to have a Register of Interests set up for Parliamentarians has also caused dismay among members of his own party -- even though it has been an effective way of embarrassing the Government, whose passion for the register has visibly waned since its General Election victory.

But it is hard to understand why the UBP would now choose to suspend him, when there has been no single instance of him breaking the party whip since November, 1998.

Evidently, he has been criticised for sparse attendance at caucus and other UBP meetings in addition to not attending the House itself as often as the party would like.

With its slim majority before the 1998 election, suspending or expelling Mr.

Moniz or any of the other rebels could have brought down the Government; since then, three of the five rebels are out of the House and the fourth, C.V. (Jim) Woolridge has been a loyal member of the team.

It may be that the UBP is now seeking to bring discipline to its ranks and, with nothing to lose at this stage, can afford to punish Mr. Moniz as much for his past actions as anything he has done recently.

But the party needs to bear in mind that many members of the public supported Mr. Moniz' stands and felt it was the UBP's leadership that had lost its way.

Should Mr. Moniz be more of a team player? Yes. Arguably Gilbert Darrell, Austin Thomas, et al should have been better team players for the Progressive Labour Party in 1984. Expelling them set the PLP's chances of an Election victory back by at least a decade. The UBP needs to take care that it does not make the same mistake.

OUT OF TIME EDT Out of time Bermuda needs all the good publicity it can get -- or pay for -- but the recent "advertorial'' published in the European edition of Time Magazine at the end of last month was a poor use of public money.

The $275,000 spread seemed to be targeted at business investors, and to a lesser extent, prospective visitors.

And while Bermuda needs to raise its profile in Europe, it is not altogether certain that Time was the right vehicle for this. A business newspaper, like the Financial Times, or a popular European travel magazine might have been better vehicles to target two quite different and specific markets.

At the same time, the content of the advertorial was somewhat unfocused. Some of the content empasised the idea that Bermuda's business-friendly environment has changed very little since the change of Government.

But other parts -- "an investor friendly paradise but no longer lounging under shades of neglect and mismanagement'' may not ring true for investors who were comfortable with the previous government's management of the Island; nor was it a good choice for the second parapgraph of the section's first story.

Equally, the previous Government's "neglect'' of tourism -- an easily argued thesis given the decline in the industry since the heyday of the 1980s -- might have been a subject better left at home.

Why not focus on the notion that the new Government is focusing on building on the solid foundations that already exist?