the party worthies and giving some "new blood'' a say in Bermuda's future.

For far too long we have relied on the same people, some of them now quite tired, to form committees. The real problem for Vince Ingham will be in getting Government to pay attention and get the job done.

It will now be up to the committee to find a way to make money out of the base lands and replace the cash lost by the closure of the bases, while at the same time satisfying the desires of Bermudians for more space. That is a major challenge because it is a "damned if you do and damned if you don't'' situation. There are development proposals in hand. Bermuda can and must make a success of this last chance for major expansion.

It is important for the public to remember that the take-over and Bermudianisation of the Airport went very smoothly. Many people doubted Bermuda's ability to run the air traffic properly and that was not true. Far too often we sell our abilities short.

We hope that, where it is possible, the base areas will be used to relieve some of the pressures caused by crowding in today's Bermuda. The heavy usage of Clearwater Beach seems to indicate how much the East End needed a recreation area. Now there should be some effort to move very noisy and disruptive activities out of residential areas and to places where they will not cause so much stress. Today, stress is a real factor in Bermuda and the cause of more problems than we recognise. We each have to accept the need of others for residential peace and quiet.

On the other hand, we have all witnessed what disruption public greed can cause by the problems at Daniel's Head. Nothing would satisfy the demands of a small group except the use of certain areas of Daniel's Head despite an empty Long Bay beach and the proximity to the West End of major South Shore beaches.

We still hope that Daniel's Head will be put aside as public open space for a set number of years and designed to be a development reserve for future Bermudians.

It seems to use that the future of the old US Naval Annex is already settled and that it will basically be developed as a golf course associated with mixed housing for sale to non-Bermudians. The concept is that the people who occupy these houses become "regular visitors'' who contribute to the economy in any number of ways.

We have little doubt that there will also be provisions for some local use of the Annex. We can only hope that the local use will be imaginative and designed for young Bermudians of the future when shortage of space will be a real problem.

The Kindley Field base is a more complex problem. We already made a mistake in not using the base school as a third high school to go with Berkeley Institute and the new mega school, freeing St. George's Secondary for conversion to a middle school.

Clearwater Beach's return to Bermuda has been a success but further base usage will not be so easy, especially since building removal costs will be very high. Ideally we will find something which will attract "visitors'' to Bermuda for a purpose thus replacing the cash spent in Bermuda by base personnel and dependents.

The fact is that, so far, we have done very well. Now for the future....