For years the clothing stores have said if there was no duty they would be able to compete with Miami. Now government has done that (if they meet the criteria) they start to say they shouldn't be forced to reduce their price. Fine you don't have to reduce your price, just pay the duty on the goods. If you don't want to pay the duty, then reduce your prices. Your choice.

Basically agree, but i would not kick the cruise ships out, but charge them a much larger amount to come. That way there may be less but we should make more then what we do now. The government does not realise or use the power they have over cruise ships. If they dont want to come here then fine, but they will have to spend a lot more on gas to go elsewhere. And if you enter our waters and don't stop in one of our ports, thats a $100 per head charge. Stop in the port then its $30 or something like that.

And therefore those same unions are the ones who are partially responsible for the increases in taxes that are killing the middle class.

With no suggestions as to where else the plant shall be the Chamber is being useless. They should at least suggest a location for the where they think the plant should be (at a guess it will be as far away from all those large gates out there as possible).

All this means is Mr. Roberts let his emotions do the talking back in June /July. I am sure his systems should have been able to tell him what % of his sales are breadbasket and what $ value those are, so he could then extrapolate the effect of the changes in VAT on his expected August sales.

I would ask if the Government understands how to enter into a contract. As long as you don't make any changes then the price quoted should be that. Every single contract Government enters is over budget by millions, We all know why, and this is why nothing will change as each party has those people loyal to it that need to be rewarded when they are in power.

There have been two unsolicited bids, who is the other one. Before everyone says ADP shouldn't get it, who is the second one and what are they offering. As i have said i don't care who gets it as long as they are the best for it. The last thing we need is the Port to be like the old airport with the Flying Cloud restaurant before NAD came along.

Give it to whoever will run it the best for the benefit of all Bahamians. If that happens to be APD then so be it. Do not make your choice based on some of the criteria above. If the port is able to increase the number of cruise ship passengers that come off by 5% the spill over in terms of extra money spent at restaurnats, bars, taxis, excursions etc will be great.

So you don't know (or won't say) how much they will be paid. You don't know the timeline, you haven't worked out the accounting and reporting mechanism as of yet. What exactly was in the RFP? As all of these should have been answered in there. Or was the RFP a complete white wash as you already knew who would win? Who is this company? Who owns it and most importantly what experience do they have in running a landfill. Yes i know who Ken Kerr is, but his company is just a middle man which is going to make millions just being a liaison between whoever is actually running the site and Government.

Every year, doesn't matter who's in power it's the same