Taking Hector to task

July 9, 2007

Dear Sir,

I have been the target of more than a few angry pens on this page. I consider it par for the course now that I'm Press Secretary to the Premier. It's perfectly appropriate for any writer to state a case of disapproval here.

In that spirit, sir, I hope you will allow me use of my pen in a like manner.

Occasionally page 4 is used to express the views of Hector, a curmudgeonly character who laments the hardships and cruel humour of reporting. I assume Hector's role is to provide perspective to readers, a peek behind the scenes perhaps.

Not long ago (June 22) Hector's perspective was a complaint. He seemed unhappy with my predecessor, the previous Press Secretary. According to Hector, the man I replaced would aggressively instruct reporters to stand as the Premier entered the room for press conferences. My approach is different and Hector is apparently relieved he no longer has to rise to his feet in deference to the office.

The truth is: Hector always has a choice whether or not to stand. And it seems that he chooses not to. Fine - but how out of step and out of touch Hector must be.

Around the world reporters stand up when heads of state, or in this case heads of government, enter a room. It's commonplace. No one has to demand it. It's expected. And the expectation is widespread.

When the Premier makes public appearances around the country — at schoolhouses, at community centres, at boardrooms — people stand as the officeholder arrives. I have witnessed it. There's no announcement to do so. It just happens — quite rightly and quite respectfully.

In my former life as a reporter I covered a press event where President George W. Bush was the keynote speaker. When he came out to speak, I stood. When former President George H.W. Bush walked into a charity event I was covering, I stood. When Vice President Al Gore made a campaign stop I was covering, I stood then too. I figured a heartbeat away from the Presidency also deserves a degree of respect.

Respect for the office, no matter who occupies the office, is the reason people (reporters included) stand when a head of government enters a room. I think it's fair to expect a likewise show of respect from "our reporters".

Perhaps it also bears mentioning that I stood in those aforementioned examples for US elected officials even though I am not an American citizen. I assume Hector is not Bermudian given the typical hometown origins of "our reporters". Nonetheless, Hector should not hide behind, or in this case, sit on, his nationality to justify disrespectful behaviour.

I hope you'll have a word with Hector about this, sir.

Oh and while I'm Hector bashing, maybe I should mention one other logical conclusion. Hector is not a real person. I don't think I'm divulging a trade secret, the public understands the column is the veiled mutterings of "our reporters".

You will never hear me complain that these pages are filled each day with letters penned above pseudonyms. I think that is fair. But for a reporter to write from the shadows strikes me as less than professional. When reporters work, if they can't see fit to stand up for the Premier, surely they can stand behind their own names.

GLENN JONES

Smith's Parish

PLP letting us down

July 8,2007

Dear Sir,

I have kept my mouth shut up until now, but no more. I am appalled by what I heard tonight, and on previous Sunday nights on the new Magic 102.7, (Bermuda Speaks Sunday with Col. Burch — 8-10 p.m.).

Let me add at this point that I have really enjoyed this new channel during the daytime with it's wonderful selection of oldie-goldie, Motown, music which I grew up listening to here in Bermuda. (Let me clarify, in case it matters, I was born in Bermuda in 1958 and have lived here ever since). However, I have decided that I will no longer tune in to this station because of the one-sided programme, mentioned above. That makes me sad, as does much of what I have to say below:

Let me start by admitting that when the PLP came into power in 1998, I was disappointed. I am a UBP supporter at heart, but have voted outside of "my party" when I've thought another candidate stood up more for what I truly believed in. I state this because, although I was disappointed that the UBP lost the last two elections, as far as I was/am concerned, I am for Bermuda, and the welfare of its citizens and the country as a whole, above and beyond any party politics. When the PLP won, I held out hope that their platform would actually be observed, and that maybe they could, in fact, change things to the benefit of everyone, especially the voters who had put them in to power. I actually entertained the thought of voting for them in the future if I saw they were doing a good job of taking care of everyone. Sad to say, not any more.

It was no more than a year after our present government first came into power that I really, truly, started to feel very badly for those PLP voters, many of them probably grassroots, who thought that finally they would be "delivered" and "taken care of" by the new leaders they had voted into power, based on their leaders' various promises. The PLP voters rightly expected that their interests would have a newfound ear, and representation. When I say I feel very badly for those people, I couldn't be more sincere. They must feel so let down!

It's one thing to point fingers and say how things were under a UBP government. The new PLP government had a magical opportunity to show how things could/should be done differently. They were going to make government more 'transparent', and really start to take care of the grassroots Bermudians they portrayed they were representing. However, I am dismayed at how the PLP government are treating (or, more to the point), not treating "their own people". Never mind how they seem to be taking our unique, beautiful, irreplaceable, Bermuda homeland, and turning it into a race-driven society (which, I might add, is not based on my day-to-day observances of the interactions of people I've worked with and lived with over many, many years. Most of us don't even know what the heck you are talking about!!)

It is my feeling that the PLP are letting their people, and all of us Bermudians, down big time! I have to believe that all of us, no matter what our political feelings are, should be thinking Bermuda and Bermudians first, in order that our little island can be preserved! Surely, Bermuda must come first!

To those PLP supporters who are ignoring the shenanigans of their leaders may I say, what goes around, comes around. If you support ill-will, surely you will have ill-will thrust upon you ... without your permission. Your supposed leaders have turned some of your ideals into self-serving, pernicious, and just plain outrageous theft in some cases! Right is right, and wrong is wrong. In this area, some things never change.

Keep your eyes open, your wits about you, and choose your own path of goodness.

LIZ

Pembroke

P.s. If a UBP government is elected next time around, may their elected candidates please be of the mettle that can withstand the scrutiny of the public eye in a way that the previous government was never able to. Someone's got to do it in order to save us all.

Smoking ban is welcome

July 6, 2007

Dear Sir,

My jackets and the other types of need-not-be-washed-after-every-wear garments are now doing a hopeful victory boogie.

So too is my hair. Add to that my always-penniless wallet.

If you've ever had to turn the washing machine on — ruing your escalating electricity bill — or re-drain your shampoo bottle, simply because you happened to have had to pass a bunch of cigarette puffers cluttering the sidewalk by Hog Penny, or wherever, you will understand why news of the spread of smoking bans in the UK has me in gleeful wiggle mode.

With the number of UKers who live in Bermuda, us non-smokers could yet see better days!

Successfully making it through a day when my dry-clean-only jacket has missed blobs of ketchup from lunch, or coffee from my minimum three cups a day, and then finding that a simple trek home has me facing a hefty dry cleaning bill — just because I had to pass through a sidewalk group that's still being allowed to expose innocents like me to their private nicotine addictions, is probably the only experience that has me resorting to the belief that freedom of choice should end now!

Picture this too.

The sun is pelting overhead and the bus stop I am making my way towards, on foot, has a properly built stone shelter. Hooray!

But alas, some puffer beat me to the coveted shade - opposite the hospital, might I add!

So. Either I choose to bake solidly for fifteen minutes in the sun, some distance from the shelter — adding layers of perspiration I don't need soaked into my clothes before returning to office — or I suffer in the shelter, breathe in the fumes, and have only my knickers and shoes missing the delirious absorption of nicotine perfume.

I immediately curse the gods that started all this smoking putridity in the mid-1700s.

But we are three and more centuries on! Isn't that enough time for change?

I next deliver my best scathing glower to the puffer who is comfortably ensconced under the shelter.

And I fan my hand vehemently, and pinch my nostrils in my best a-la-Mr-Bean fashion.

But the puffer, in what I thought was a public bus shelter, ignores me.

So, with a couldn't-care-less glance from my bus shelter nemesis, I banish myself to the sweltering sun, some feet away.

Now to put my deodorant in to overdrive, I sigh.

After years of dragging along an unhealthy detest for smokers, along with overwhelming derision for lawmakers around the world who have paid lip service to the smoking problem by not properly defining the terms "public spaces" and "outdoors", I feel there is now greater hope of unloading my sickening venom.

So, congratulations you Union Jackers!

Maybe now that you have given augmented definition to public spaces with the all-too-welcome smoking ban laws, fuller recognition that some outdoor areas are still "public spaces" will take root among a greater number of people.

It's time to make something else contagious throughout the world; and knowledge of sidewalks, bus shelters and other such spaces, being public areas is one that I don't mind at all!

Any news for us, on this front, Mr. Perinchief.

SMOKE BAN PLEASE

Warwick

What is free press?

June 27, 2007

Dear Sir,

Please enlighten me on this concept of "freedom of the press?" What does it really mean? From my observations over the years it has simply meant, license by the owners of the media to destroy anyone who disagrees with them, maintaining the status quo and vigorously supporting "white interests" in Bermuda.

When did this so-called "free press" decide that slavery and its sister evil, segregation were virulent evils? Did this revelation occur on the road to "Tucker's Town", like the apostle Paul's did on the road to Damascus?

When I was maturing in Bermuda, I cannot ever remember this "free press" standing up for the rights of the downtrodden in South Africa, during their travails, or the rights of the citizens in its own backyard, Bermuda. When did this "free press" decide to support the concept that segregation was an evil method used to suppress and restrict the rights of a large segment of human society? When did this "free press" decide that human rights mean human rights for all the citizens in a country and not just a chosen few?

Mr. Editor, explain to me how a "free press" is accountable? From my observations, it seems to be accountable only to its investors, and just who are they and what are their interests over and above "the bottom line?" In any event, it is the investor or investors who have the most shares, who really control the organisation, and these are not the little people who own 100 or 1,000 shares!

In conclusion, Mr. Editor, how do you do "due diligence" on anything that is sent to you which you decide to print? For example, if I send you a copy of an original item which I purport to hold, and you print whatever is in that document, how do you verify that the copy is authentic?? In this day and age, I can alter any document and the receiver would not be able to detect any changes!!

So Mr. Editor, how do you do your "due diligence?" Or do you just invoke "freedom of the press" like authors and poets invoke "poetic licence?"

GATHA'S SON

Devonshire

What about the blacks?

July 25, 2007

Dear Sir,

I have had just about enough of the question "Where were all the white people at Dame Lois Browne Evans' funeral?" Now let me get this straight. Are you trying to tell me that it was only white people who did not show up and pay there respects? What about all the black people who never showed up? What about them? Are they excused because they are black?

Michael Dunkley wasn't here, so what! He was represented, which is more important. He sent his condolences what more do you want he isn't the first and will not be the last person to go away on business. The fact of the matter is people do not put their lives on hold anymore for anything not weddings, funeral, graduations it just doesn't happen. Times are changing and they are not always for the better. Welcome to the real world.

SERW

Paget

More space for letters

July 3, 2007

Dear Sir,

The political issues always rearing their ugly heads on Page 4 at times,why not put the letters on Page 5 instead? That way those who are stuck in that political way of thinking can still read their political bit while those who'll rather read more of the letters instead can look at page 5 (any extras can go on to page 6 of The Royal Gazette).

MORE LETTERS NEEDED

Pembroke

Bad taste in my mouth

June 28, 2007

Dear Sir,

After reading that letter submitted by Michael Fahy and published today in The Royal Gazette) it truly leaves a "bad taste in my mouth" and it's something we should be seriously thinking about.

"Are these facts?" (this list of negative consequences) with our present Government (former as well as present day) because if so; "bye, we lot in some serious doo-do". For the sake of anyone that may have missed reading it, I'm asking you "Mr. Editor" to please reprint that bit of vital information, so others may read it as well.

RAY RAY

St. George's

Editor's Note: Mr. Fahy's letter can be found on the archive of www.theroyalgazette.com

Letter was a disgrace

June 30, 2007

Dear Sir,

Disgraceful letter in today's Royal Gazette Saturday June 30, signed by a Gryneth Robinson JP decrying Louise Jackson, a lady and her husband, so revered for their contributions to the welfare of this island, in so many ways, unfortunately not enough space in this letter to describe them all.

I write therefore an open letter to "the Grinch" answering yes or no is all you need.

1. Do you have a telephone?

2. Do you have a car?

3. Do you have funds?

4. Do you have relatives, friends, support, who will come at a moments notice and stay with you?

5. Do you have mental health?

Your lack of identification and compassion reveals you ignorance, a small but very significant line in your letter, and I quote "Just go to the Doctor's office like everyone else?" The trouble with that is, that they are not like everyone else - so to use your own expression - Pray on that!

DIANA WILLIAMS

Pembroke