insights into how politics is played, even on the shallowest of issues.

The majority report of the House of Assembly's Rules and Privileges Committee calls for male MPs to be able to wear Bermuda shorts or ethnic dress, including Nehru suits or "Caribbean'' business suits or safari suits. Women MPs would be allowed to wear trousers or shorts instead of dresses or skirts.

It is unlikely that the level of performance will decline in the House of Assembly if clothing rules are relaxed; cynics will say that that is impossible in any case.

But then this debate may have less to do with fashion or comfort than it does with political identity.

Leaving aside the bungled effort by the Government to slip the majority report through as a report of the whole committee, the proposals to allow "ethnic dress'' is a smart political move, because it puts the Opposition, which supports Bermuda shorts for men and trousers for women, in a box.

Bermuda shorts, long socks and blazers may be the closest thing Bermuda has to a unique national dress, but the whole get-up carries with it colonial overtones, and certainly is a style of dress which is more popular on Front Street than Court Street.

So the United Bermuda Party finds itself representing the establishment by supporting Bermuda shorts alone, while the Progressive Labour Party's promotion of safari jackets could appeal to its grassroots and demonstrate its Afrocentrism.

When this question first arose, Opposition MP C.V. (Jim) Woolridge said, rightly, that by dressing respectably, Members of Parliament are in effect showing their respect to the people who represent them as well as showing that they respect the seriousness of the task before them.

Whether that will happen now with Nehru jackets and "shorts'' in the House remains to be seen; some people will like them and others will not and the business of the House will go on.

The problem for the Government is that, having scored a political point by widening the dress code this far, it will be difficult to draw the line anywhere else. Royal Gazette cartoonist Peter Woolcock may not have been stretching the point too far when he drew a man in a kilt after all.

It might be better to leave the rules where they are now, or throw the whole thing wide open and let the parties or the individual MPs make up their minds how they think they can best represent their electors.

Needed review Health Minister Nelson Bascome should be praised for launching a review of how St. Brendan's outpatients are supervised in the wake of last week's "siege''' in Hamilton Parish.

While, mercifully, no one was hurt in the siege, questions should be asked about how the man involved did not receive treatment in the days leading up to the incident when it was clear to neighbours that his condition was worsening, apparently by the hour.

It is to be hoped that the review will be made public and the general public advised on how best to deal with situations like this should they occur in their neighbourhoods.