(Clue: you will see flashing blue lights and scattered traffic)

The Royal Gazette’s article about Premier Ewart Brown habit of travelling about the Island with Police outriders and flashing blue lights has clearly hit a nerve in Cabinet Office. The Premier’s Chief of Staff Wayne Caines was soon explaining such ostentatious displays were done on rare occasions when the Premier needed a Police escort and that it was a decision not taken lightly. Which is all well and good until Hector discovered that on the very morning this paper published that account Dr. Brown, or at least the driver of GP1, was at it again. A reader, having seen our story, wrote that he had been cycling west at 4.30 a.m. near Devonshire Bay when he heard and then saw GP1 coming behind him at a great rate of knots. This time a Police car was actually forced to pull over to get out of the way. It prompted the reader to wonder what the hurry was given the un-Godly hour. With such wildly differing accounts on the frequency of such displays Hector think it is time for the readers to decide. Each time you see GP1 being driven in a manner to ‘big-up’ the Prem write in with details. Please explain if the manner was:

a) Suitable for the Premier of a small peaceful Island state

b) Suitable for the life president of a central Asian republic with a minor terrorism problem

c) Suitable for George Bush being rushed to an emergency summit to avert World War Three

Along with the grandiose travel the Prem also now insists on having a Policeman posted at Cabinet Office and heavies to accompany him on celebrity golf trips. And now comes the news that he will have a plainclothes Policeman accompany him after his “airport scare”. It seems a man approached Dr. Brown at a public event, shook his hand and told him he loved him. For this Dr. Brown said the man must be “mentally ill”. The affable interloper was led away by members of the Premier’s devoted entourage and found to have box cutters for which he is now likely to be quizzed by Police. Forgive Hector for being naive but aren’t box cutters an industrial tool? So a quick recap — the Premier had a personal interaction with a friendly member of the working class and became so alarmed that presidential pretension must now be stepped up yet further. And buried in the B/S was a surprisingly frank admission by the Premier that anyone who still loves him must be off his rocker. While Hector certainly won’t share the Premier’s rather tactless and unsubstantiated labelling of a member of the public, the wider point is well made. And the public must be warned — each time you make a friendly but uninvited approach to the Premier it could be another excuse to add another salary to the entourage. Each handshake could cost us all a small fortune. What if he gets mobbed by wellwishers at a PLP rally? It could bankrupt the country. Feel the Love or Feel the Fear? All very odd.Here’s hoping the Premier’s new full-time bodyguard does better than the press pack and certain other members of his entourage at keeping pace with his movements. Hector hears that Br. Brown set such a cracking pace on his tour of Bermuda College this week that half the journalists following him, not to mention Chief of Staff Wayne Caines and Chairman of the college board Larry Mussenden lost him in the labyrinth of corridors. They ended up staking out a quad, watching all the doors, in a bid to locate the missing Premier, who came sweeping back out again ten minutes later — with Education Minister Randy Horton hot-footing it alongside — to the relief of all involved.Hector tuned into watch the Milkman, or Michael Dunkley as he used to be known before he chose his own ludicrous nickname, deliver his first address to the nation from one of his own living rooms. While it may have been a bit more coherent than stumbling Wayne-speak, Hector was rather perplexed to see Milky fluff a question which seemed to have been thought up by an eight-year-old before being given to ZBM journo Gary Moreno to deliver. Mr. Moreno wanted to know why the UBP hadn’t followed through on its 2003 promise to build 100 low rent homes at Tudor Hill. “Good question” said the Milkman strangely, before failing to deliver a remotely good answer. Clearly emboldened Mr. Moreno came back on the same tack and it was left to Deputy Leader Pat Gordon-Pamplin to point out that it was in fact a rather silly question in that Oppositions aren’t allowed to run off and do their own projects unless they wanted to get into the business of squatting on Government property and diverting Government funds. However, given the Government’s inability to complete even one major house building project in nearly nine years of being in power, maybe the PLP are secretly hoping the Opposition resort to anarchy to help solve the housing crisis.