This is a growing Bahamian trend for family disputes over a deceased person's affairs to be played out in public particularly where the deceased has two "families" - a current spouse or live-in partner fighting with a former spouse and/or adult children. It is worse than sad, it is disappointing. If he were alive, Sir Arlington would be highly disappointed to see his survivors fighting over his body and his assets in public like this.

URCA's letter makes no sense and is laughable in the extreme. If the application was "ineffectual" as the licence was granted to 2 individuals instead of an incorporated company as required by the Communications Act then URCA has failed to comply with its own law and the licence was no licence so there was no licence to sell. An "ineffectual" licence is no licence at all. And the nonsense about having the power to "vary any licence granted to a licensee if it is necessary to comply with the laws of the Bahamas" is just that, more nonsense. If the 2 individuals supposedly owning the licence was "ineffectual" in law then they could NOT be licensees and URCA has no power to assist their breach of the law. Makes you wonder if these people know what they are doing.

If only Bay Street's decline was as simple as tee shirt shops and low end merchants. Due to poor traffic design and parking issues, many stores and businesses moved away from Bay Street. People only came out there to bank, go to court and go to work; they stopped coming out there to shop except maybe when John Bull is having a sale. Stores like the food store, pharmacy, shoe store, hotel, movie theatre, hardware store, clothing store, night clubs, restaurants and others that used to be on Bay Street closed down due to declining sales, crime, high rents, high renovation costs, high import costs, real property taxes, changing tastes and changing demographics. Bay Street property owners don't get the kind of tax evasion breaks from government that hotels, manufacturers and certain industries get. Then the bumsels moved in, sleeping around the courts and other buildings. The government itself is one of those guilty of neglect. Look at the state of the Rodney Bain Building (formerly the E D Sassoon Building), the Royal Victoria complex, the General Post Office building. Pollution from the smoke generated by cruise ships has added to the decline coupled with the general dirtiness and congestion downtown. What the Minister should do is put a few "secret passengers" on one or more of the cruise ships that dock here and let them report and/or record their experiences when they get off the cruise ship in Nassau. He will be surprised at what he learns. Tourists have to be given a reason to spend their money because they are getting something of value or memorable in returrn. It's expensive to shop in Nassau. What are cruise passengers getting when they disembark in Nassau? From what I've seen hanging around the dock on occasion, I would not get off the ship when it docked in Nassau.

Congratulations to both of these ladies for making it to the final. Not everyone in a final is going to medal but those that do can only do so because they are in the final. Ms Gaither is young enough that she has opportunities to return to more finals in the future and hopefully medal then. Mrs Uibo has added to her cache of medals and hopefully will return to future finals and win medals of other colours. They are both to be congratulated for the fruits of their hard work and their coaches congratulated for preparing them to get to this position. Well done and much future success.

No he's just distancing himself from the PLP in case some new idiot in the government is prepared to hire him as a "consultant" and until he's best able to determine how strong the wind is blowing in its current new direction and whether it's for more than the next 5 years.

Shane Gibson, Frank Smith and Kenred Dorsett have not been treated any differently from any other person charged with a crime in a Bahamian court of law. For those that have memories long enough to remember, the "perp" or "Bank Lane" shuffle came about after the girlfriend of a defendant on his way to court on Parliament Street some years ago threw him a gun which he used to run away from his police escort. I've seen the handcuffs and manacles used to transport other men and women to court, some of whom had foot, ankle or leg injuries but not crutches. What makes Gibson, Smith or Dorsett any different from any of these other defendants other than in many cases the others did not have all the high priced legal talent that Gibson, Smith and Dorsett have and the other defendants were not former PLP parliamentarians? I guess being an ex-MP or ex-Senator entitles one to different treatment than every other criminally accused person who has appeared before the courts? To coin an old phrase, who died and made these men kings?

As one of the architects of Resolve, Chummo ought to know what he is talking about. Maybe that's why Perry Christie only went after this half heartedly because he realised or was advised of the negative impact. The problem that with this whole thing that the Minnis administration has inherited is that it's government that allowed this mess to happen and so now they have to find the least messy way to bail us out. When the USA had the subprime failures, there was all the talk about certain banks being "too big to fail". Well the government is in the position of of not being able to allow BoB to fail, particularly when all of the Canadian banks are downsizing and reassessing their position in the Caribbean. Royal Bank pulls out of Bimini; who else besides BoB is going to go in there? The Bahamians there deserve a banking system the same way as the Bahamians in Nassau. Aranha as the new chairman already realises that, which is why he's trying to set it up whereby the government covers the bank's costs of going into unprofitable or marginally profitable locations. If BoB is to continue and comply with banking laws, then these debts will have to be taken off its books through the Resolve PPV. Not the best solution but the best of a bad set of circumstances.

They can file all of the lawsuits that they want but they will need to prove evidence of malice and bad or no intent on the part of the police and the complainants if they hope to be successful. By the time their cases come to civil trial in 3 or 4 years time, his former parliamentary colleagues probably will have been tried in a criminal court by then and we will know if they are innocent or guilty. A civil court is unlikely to try these cases before their criminal trials occur.

There has to be a penalty for the unlawful, unjustified killing of one person by another. A life sentence or long sentence in jail might seem more humane than hanging but does not bring the deceased person back to life. It's unfortunate that the Privy Council has foisted the European/first world decision on us regarding hanging without regard for the opinions of residents of these islands. While the Brits may have decided in 1965 that abolishing hanging is the direction that they wanted to go, none of their former colonies in the Caribbean elected to follow suit. That should have told the Privy Council something. Leave us to decide for ourselves whether hanging is an appropriate penalty for some, all or no murders.

The whole work permit application process is nonsensical and devoid of any long term strategy for the growth, development and employment of Bahamians in replacement of so called foreign specialists. As I have said before, the work permit is not issued on condition in specified cases that the foreign specialist must train and mentor one or more Bahamian understudies to take over his/her position within a 3 to 5 year timeframe with measurable milestones involved so that Immigration and the Bahamian(s) can ascertain that training and mentoring is actually being provided. Then we have the pay disparities between Bahamians and work permit holders. Bahamians get their regular salary, maybe a pension plan, maybe a medical plan, maybe a bonus system. The work permit holder gets the same things PLUS moving expenses both ways, annual airline ticket(s) home, work permit fees, spouse and children residency permit fees, maybe a company vehicle or a vehicle loan, gasoline allowance, house/apartment rent, children's school fees, airline passage coming and going, and other benefits. I live from pay check to pay check while some of these folks live off the non-salary monies that they get while banking their monthly salary or sending it to their home country. Then there is all the secrecy and mysticism in the whole application process. Other than want ads large and small in the newspapers, some of which one can clearly understand what skills and specialties the potential employer is looking for, there are other ads which obfuscate who it is the employer is looking for beyond the applicant being fluent in one or more languages other than English. I was in Turks & Caicos some time back and was amazed that persons that persons there who were applying for residency permits (seemingly the foreign spouses of Turks "citizens) had to publish their names, nationality and other information with a photo in a local newspaper so that locals who might wish to object were aware of who was applying for what. It struck me that the Bahamas should have similar requirements for citizenship, residency and work permit applicants in this country. So Senator Henfield's proposal is not so far fetched as some people would like us to believe.