Only in this country can people get away with operating illegally for umpteen thousand years, not be prosecuted or go to jail, make money hand over fist and then be rewarded with licenses to make even more money. None of them who operated illegally for all these many years should be eligible for a license or allowed to operate a webshop. This guy, Brown, is trying to jump on the bandwagon and get some of the gravy while he can. The government's plan for webshop licensing will only cerate a monopoly or cartel out of the illegals. How can that make any sense? We don't need any more of these philanthropic millionaires because eventually, through their wealth, they will have more political clout in this country than anyone else. If the government is so hellbent on legalizing and legitimizing the numbers business then I say tax the hell out of them as there is nothing socially beneficial about what they are doing.

The title the newspaper gave Ms Johnson's letter was a misnomer; it should have been titled "Misuse of Power of URCA". The point of her letter was that the fine money was not URCA's money to donate to NEMA but fine money that should have gone to BTC's customers as compensation resulting from its 2014 island-wide network outage. If the fine money was surplus monies after end of year external audit, URCA could have asked the government to pay it over to NEMA for hurricane relief rather than into the Treasury/Consolidated Fund. But the fine money was neither surplus monies or even URCA's own money but compensation payable to BTC's customers. Ms Johnson asked under what authority did URCA make this decision and URCA's chairman in his letter fails to answer that question. Ms Johnson's plea was against the misuse of power by URCA as the regulator of an important sector, whether deliberately or in ignorance, a plea which URCA's chairman would do well to keep uppermost in his mind.

This is what I call "rubbish statistics". What is she saying? What are we to make of this? That perhaps as many as 56 persons charged with murder made 183 bail applications for 2015 and of those: 8 applicants were granted bail; 30 applications were denied; 9 who were on bail got variations of their conditions; 1 applicant for a variation of bail was denied; 1 applicant had their bail revoked; and 7 applications were dismissed (i.e., denied)?

What she does not say is what happened to the other 127 applications?

What she should be telling us is that so far for the year "X" number of PEOPLE have made 183 bail applications; how many of them made multiple applications that were either approved or denied/dismissed, withdrawn, not proceeded with, etc. Separately, she could tell us about the numbers of persons who applied for and got/were denied variations of their bail. applying for bail is way different from applying to vary bail or the prosecution applying to have it revoked as the first is in jail trying to get out while the second is not in jail but doesn't like or is finding it difficult to comply with the bail conditions. It's wonderful that they are now keeping statistics but the statistics have to provide the public with meaningful information which this story does not do. It amounts to an attempt to provide statistics simply for the sake of appearing to provide information without doing any structured analysis of that information.

@Jlcandu - Sorry, I disagree with you. The way that the legal system works is that a crime is technically only a crime if there is a formal complaint made to the police. The police only investigate complaints made to them. In certain cases, a law might stipulate that it is a crime not to report a particular matter to the police. However part of the disparity between the PMH stats and the police stats might arise because the victim first seeks medical treatment but fails or refuses to make a formal complaint to the police instead of the other way around of complaining to the police first and then being taken to the hospital for medical treatment. I've known of situations where a person's premises was broken into but they did not report it to the police or the police never came. Yes, that person was the victim of a crime but not a reported crime, which is what the argument between the COP and Dr. Sands is really all about.

Let me give Mr. Christie and his newly formed committee some free and simple advice - tax the living daylights out of these web shop jokers. Seeing as these guys claim that they are already licensed under the Business Licence Act and that makes them licensed, legitimate businesses, then if the Government is not prepared to bring them within the terms of the Gaming Act then all they need to do in the short term is to amend the Business Licence Act, create a special category of "web shop" or whatever name they use to describe their "business" and tax them at 85% or 950% of their turnover as defined in the Act. Let's face it, these webs shop guys are not in "business" for any altruistic reasons, they are in "business" because there is easy money to be made from the "service" that they supposedly provide. If Bahamians want to gamble, let them. Just make sure that the Government gets the lions share of this easy money in the form of taxes. Don't leave the potential tax money sitting out there whereby these guys become multimillionaires for doing nothing; do the right thing and turn this situation to good use for the benefit of all of us. Some of the tax money can even be allocated specifically for sport development, arts and culture, education and antiquities.

@ rory - Yeah but on the Hanchell statement issue, some years back Hanchell stuck his nose into another court case where it does not belong. Back then a Supreme Court judge had to rap him over the knuckles for talking to a witness in a sex assault case where the accused was also a "holy" man. I agree that being charged in court does not equal guilt, but who is to say that an offence hasn't been committed, say exciting prejudice as to any proceeding pending in court under section 441 of the Penal Code?

As for Cash and other politicians whether elected or wannabes, they don't care who gets in the way of their mad dash for headlines and oneupmanship of each other. Greenslade seems to be a good man with good intentions but I don't know what he can point to as an indication of his successes. Fellows like Keith Bell don't help Greenslade because they seem to be trying to run the police force and manipulate crime statistics for political reasons from behind the scenes - think back to the 2012 billboards. Consequently, ordinary citizens don't know whose statistics to believe - Greenslade and Bell or Duane Sands? Probably safer to accept that the police and PMH each probably compile their numbers differently based on different reporting methods so both are probably right and there is no political issue here. Actually what these stories show is the laziness of the press/reporters in this country that they do no research to find out how PMH compiles its "crime" stats vs. those of the police. The police method of compiling stats needs very detailed explanation as they seem to classify homicide differently from murder, etc.

Today's work permit is driver's licence-sized, small enough to carry in a wallet or purse. This guy should have had his on him the same way the Haitian gardeners and Jamaican maids who have work permits. It's given to him to avoid the type of situation that he found himself in: being asked to provide proof of legal entitlement to be here. The fact he's in a suit and tie and driving a high-end car is irrelevant. I've been in foreign countries where having been stopped while driving or walking around and because I did not speak with an accent local to the country I'm in, I was asked to provide proof of identity (in the driving case, beyond just the Bahamian driver's licence) so I had to produce my passport.