My God. How on earth did they mess this one up? It's so easy. Just read the Cayman Enterprise City website. They even got a syndicate to do their homework for them. It has taken at least 6 months to do the simplest thing from that report.

*"Spouses/partners should not get work permit status unless they are also employed by the company in a technical area."*

Tech workers are not emigrating if their partners can't work (it's not the 1950s). This is so stupid it defies comprehension. Not to mention flat-out xenophobic.

*"Imagine if we had 10,000 of these high-tech persons coming to Freeport. They make on average $86,000 to $90,000 a year," Mr Rolle said"*

- They are not "persons". This language would be detestable to any of them.
- There are not close to 10,000 in any tech zone, anywhere. And precisely none of them are coming to Freeport, or to work for tax-dodgers there.
- They are white and asian. They would be driven out as an "invading" force.
- They do not make that salary. It's much, much higher.
- Not a single part of this addresses the enormous list of disincentives and inhibitors, which are overwhelming.

At the GB Outlook conference, Rolle also floated "solar boats" and "floating deckchairs", along with comparing the GBPA to a car dealership. The guy is a joke, and a greedy, malevolent one at that.

Immigration cannot link NIB cards and passports, and the immigration system is not close to paperless. At some point, Bahamians have to say enough is enough with the Emperor's New Clothes ideas.

No, it won't. The blockchain is a decentralized system, and the Central Bank is, ahem, a centralized one. They are diametrically opposite conceptually, and practically. Blockchain tech is designed to completely replace and remove centralized fractional reserve banking as a person-to-person transactional network. A central bank cannot produce a decentralized digital currency - the nearest it can get is a shared private ledger, which is essentially a clearing system (RTGCS) which should have been in place 20 years ago.

If the Minister of Finance thinks that, or the Governor of the Central Bank, they don't understand the basics of the banking system, or finance, or accounting, or anything the job entails.

Blockchain certifications? A single point of entry to reduce corruption? What idiocy is this?

This airline is debt-ridden, bureaucracy-obese, doesn't make any money, 70% of its fleet are available at any given time, can't afford any new inventory, flies to few international destinations, and its reputation for abysmal lateness is so infamous, the advice is only the first morning flight is guaranteed. But it's all going great?

The last two times i flew on *BahmasNightmAir*, the 6pm flight to Exuma arrived at 10pm; and the 11.45am flight to Freeport arrived at 7pm.

This is a badly-managed welfare program, and the typical kind of mess which results when a government tries to run a business. Competition increases choice, and drives down prices. International carriers here would blast the regionals away, and rightfully so - that's the free market.

1. An island archipelago needs fast, frequent air-taxi (smaller) services for trade and transit - 20-30 times a day. A unique new commuter model designed specifically for the geography is needed where we get rid of any and all taxes/charges on domestic tickets whatsoever. Keeping airspace and international taxes.
2. People fly at night. Services are needed after 7pm.
3. Incentives for carriers servicing remote islands.
4. Fast ferry services from remote islands to micro-hubs (e.g. Acklins to Exuma/Provo).
5. Subsidise the FAA-certified training of 500 pilots a year with a new flight school on each of the bigger islands. There are no schools in Nassau.
6. Forget Florida. Let the US carriers have the routes - focus on the Caribbean where Liat, Carib Air, and Copa don't service well (e.g. BVI, Belize, St Lucia etc). Make Nassau a gateway.
7. Online booking for all the airlines is abysmal, as is ticket-handling.

BahamasAir needs to transform into a new different, form of air travel for such a unique set of islands so dependent on air transit, not just try to be a "look we have an airline too" of aviation. What is needed is vision, not a cheque.

The starting pay for Googlers is circa $120,000. The industry seeks out the top 1-2% of the Western countries, and a disproportionate amount of these people are a) gay (imagine how that will work here), b) obsessed with healthy eating (all GB has is polystyrene junk food), c) are used to technology doing everything (even the locks on their doors), d) gentrified to the point of pretentious ("artisan coffee shops" being a prime example, and finally e) incredibly liberal and left-leaning. There is absolutely nothing culturally in the Bahamas that is not entirely antithetical to their values and beliefs. That's before you even consider the Bahamian dislike of second home-owners, foreign "progressive" values, and the "colonialism" paranoia. You're entirely right there could be violence.

The Port is another thing entirely. The evidence is right there waiting to be published by the newspapers. There needs to be a serious enquiry and eventual prosecutions into that senior management team - for stealing other Bahamians' ideas and investors, colossal negligence, monopolising licenses, protecting launderers, skimming/grafting licensees, retaliatory Mafia behaviour against whistleblowers, and holding the shareholders virtually hostage with the threat of a race war. It needs to be reformed or removed (although the government would be entirely worse).

The Blockchain is an extraordinary concept which is revolutionary, but it's not going to produce a single job here. The vanity money could be spent on the ailing childrens' home, fixing the Lucaya sewage, or a basic TV station with a mandate of educational content.

(Bullet points are in the main editor window btw!)

@banker - I may well be the speaker you are referring to. It was on ZNS.

I can't speak for all the individuals who gave talks in November, but i know a lot of them felt the same way i did; which was incredibly uncomfortable (and slightly deceived) as being billed as "the greatest minds in the industry". Those would be Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk and co. No-one i met would be that arrogant. At least 2 had been messed around so much in the past they refused to speak without being paid for their time.

This event is idiotic. And cynical - dozens of brilliant young Bahamians who are genuinely skilled and knowledgeable Blockchainers were snubbed. The idea of GB being a tech "hub" (whatever that is), or any kind of "Silicon Valley" is so ludicrous it defies belief. There are a million reasons, but the biggest are:

- Tech is private enterprise. Governments are never welcome, and invariably useless. The Bahamian government is so obsessed with controlling everything when it has no role in business at all.
- Tech people want gentrification. GB is Haiti. Abaco could work, maybe.
- Where are they all going to live? There's no housing.
- The work ethic of tech people is completely incompatible with the Bahamas. The national educational average is D-minus. All but 2-5% of the population are unemployable. AI is there to automate the low-end: it doesn't "create jobs", it removes them.
- The power issue is real. It's horrifying.
- The management team at GBPA are literally some of the most corrupt in the Caribbean.
- In an electorate this appallingly xenophobic, how exactly are the FNM going to import 1000 middle-class white people without massive backlash?

There is absolutely no possibility - and i mean NONE - of this happening. The Emperor isn't wearing any clothes. The "tech" companies - all 4 of them apparently making this a massive "success" - are almost certainly tax dodging (corporate inversion). Kwasi needs to be called out for the total, utter failure it already is.

My own take is these events are largely political theatre; politicians wanting the pomp and ceremony in order to "wow" less educated Bahamians, and equally to snub the younger, more intellectual younger ones (those crabs at the bottom of the bucket). Governments all over the world are so useless at technology it doesn't bear thinking about. The "work permit" site was a Wordpress install. It's shockingly worse than a teenager's attempt.

This country has basic, basic needs which are incredibly urgent: at least several hundred billion dollars in infrastructure for roads, power, drainage, hurricane defences, and more; governmental departments which can be lost in a flood or fire; a national airline, with planes, who can fly on time; transit and facilities within the islands; intellectual leaders who understand the WTO. The list is endless. A "tech hub" is idiotic when the beaches are strewn with trash.