The ridiculous prices we pay for food based on import duties is at the bottom of this problem. If all I can afford is unhealthy foods because the cost of the good stuff is so high, then that's what I will buy because it's what I can afford based on the low wages that I am paid. Years ago I used to buy lots of fresh fruits from the food store. Nowadays I got trouble buying bananas at $1 for 2 or 3 but I can't afford grapes or strawberries or oranges any more, the cost is too high
KP, you in charge of Finance and import duties. What can you do to lessen the load on the small man in this country so he can afford to buy these things again?

This Commonwealth Games team highlighted for me just how disorganised and uncoordinated our national sports team selection process is in this country. We sent kids to swim at the Games days after competing at the carifta Swimming Championships and expected miraculous results out of them. That has to be as ignorant as it gets; they should have gone to one competition or the other but not to both. We send a 39 year old triathlete, an elderly table tennis player, 2 cyclists and a 36 year old wrestler to the Games, none of whom appear to have exposure or records of achievement at the international level or stood any real chance of achieving a high placing in their sport at the Games. They went in with very little and came out the same way, other than to say they competed at a Commonwealth Games. We send 4 women to compete in a 4 x 100m relay but then withdraw them without actually running. Better to have let them run their race, after all that's what you took them all the way to Australia to do. Look at what happened with the men's 4 x 400m relay team? A silver medal with none of the big horses running on the team, a bunch of no-names most of us never heard of besides Dirty. What is it that we are trying to achieve at these Games? To say that we took a bunch of athletes from different sports to gain international exposure? Or that we are trying to make finals, achieve high placing, make quarter finals/semifinals/finals and maybe win medals in as many of these sports as we can? We don't seem to have a long-term plan as to why do we attend these Games or what do we hope to achieve by going. It has to be about more than just attending for attending's sake.

Here we go with more "La Dee Dah" BS where these dumba** utility companies once more can't get their acts together in coordination with the road paving exercise. We had this same truckload of nonsense when they paved Blue Hill Road, Market Street, Robinson Road and Prince Charles Drive just a few years ago. The road is all redone then the Water Corp. or the Phone Company or BEC come along and dig it up to do some remedial work and then we are back to having uneven roads that are poorly and/or improperly repaved and it stays that way for years. The government collects enough taxes from gasoline and now VAT that road should be repaired annually without having to fall into such bad disrepair before anything is done.

Have Foulkes and Symonette lost their minds? Perhaps this is why the FNM has such a low trust and results ranking with the electorate less than 1 year after the election? Both of these Ministers sound as if they could care less whether Bahamians are even employed at The Pointe, or whether the 70%/30% Bahamian to Chinese worker ratio is being maintained. Their approach is appalling and one more nail in the FNM's coffin on why they are unlikely to be re-elected in 4 years time. The Labour Dept. should have been onsite by now to verify the number of Chinese to Bahamian workers. Anything less than 7 out of every 10 workers being Bahamian or if more than 3 out of every 10 workers is anything other than Bahamian then the site needs to be shut down until the proper balance has been achieved. Similarly, Immigration Dept. should have been onsite by now verifying that non-Bahamians working there have the proper work permits otherwise they need to be deported. Enough of this BS where Bahamians have to be begging hat in hand or protesting at the risk of being arrested and prosecuted for standing up for their rights in their own country. Get up off your a*** Foulkes and Symonette and show us you give a damn about Bahamian workers. You expect me to pay construction workers full price if they work Over the Hill but wanna give the Chinaman a humongous break with cheap Labour just because it's downtown. Hopefully this place won't fall down due to cheap and shoddy workmanship when it's all finished causing another set of embarrassment.

Minnis would have been better served to simply say that it's a constitutional matter that will be decided in good time. His answer seems flippant and dismissive. Most Bahamians could care less who is the Chief Justice and whether he is the substantive office holder or acting in that capacity. There is nothing untoward about someone acting in the position for a period of a few months up to a year. Anything beyond that become worrisome. However, Minnis is not doing anything that is in breach of the constitution or illegal. Brave and the complaining QCs are just mouthing off for mouthing offs sake. It's not as if we've never had an Acting Chief Justice. What we should be more concerned about is that the PM alone gets to select the chief judge of the country's 2 top courts. That needs to change as part of major constitutional reform.

So who in Ingrsham's government is going to get prosecuted for this. Should be a public execution in Rawson Square when it happens. How could the Trini come here and squirrel away millions of dollars of Bahamian policyholders money without a trace. We have never gotten the full or true story

Sands has a point. Most Bahamian businesses don't have employees on work permits so this does not affect them or concern them

Let Chummo run on with standing pat to the detriment of the little bit of the offshore financial services industry that we have left. You disobey these guys at your peril. The Bahamas does not have a vast list of trading partners but the EU is one of them. If that avenue of trade and other commercial activities is shut off to us then where do we go? Chummo and his pals will not be able to fill the deficit so what alternatives do we have? Negotiate to get the best deal possible without sacrificing too much of our sovereignty but that won't be easy particularly without much leverage.

You know none of these audits will mean anything unless the Govt. passes laws regarding the tendering process and the granting of contracts. They need to be published. The Auditor General needs to publish annual reports on the performance and expenditure on government contracts. There needs to be a statutory code and regulations governing the conduct of the boards of statutory bodies, authorities, corporations, departments and ministries. Too much is spent in the name of governmental authorities with too little accounting and accountability for what is fine and what is spent. Breach the code and/or the regulations, then the board has committed a criminal offence liable to prosecution. Boards commit all sorts of heinous offences during their time in office but no one is prosecuted or held to account for their actions. That needs to change.

I see this as partly a public relations exercise and partly a stock taking exercise as the residents of these shanty towns are not all Haitians. The shanty towns will be levelled; bulldozerswill raze them in due time. But before that happens Govt. needs some idea of who is in them, how many are illegals, legals and citizens because what some of you overlook is that Govt. has to come up with an alternative solution, a humane solution for the legals and citizens first. Find them alternative housing, things like that before flattening the shanty towns. Don't rush to judgment, let's see how this plays out first.