My son owes this country absolutely nothing. He is not sacrificing his life for any country period. Ask someone else to die for you. No need for exemptions, if this program is optional. In that case I am all for it, pay the participants whatever you want. This is a democracy, no one should be forced into compulsory national service.

No, no, hell no. Have an optional program but it should never be mandatory. Why should my son who comes from a good family, and has great opportunities, waste two years of his life? Send your son leave mine alone to pursue his best future.

So true. Business license fees should be calculated on net income not gross. This should have been corrected years ago. Also lower business license fees for companies that list their shares on BISX so the public can share in the success of this country as well. This would help lessen income inequality. Scotiabank does not offer shares to the Bahamian public but commonwealth bank does. Commonwealth bank should be rewarded for giving all Bahamians an opportunity to share in their success. Sadly, no one in govt has any vision or guts so will probably never happen.

This revenue shortfall is very disturbing and vat revenues underperforming has a lot to do it. It shows there is a limit to how high vat can be increased before suffering diminishing returns. I recently imported an item with only 5% customs duty but after freight charges and the vat on top of that it cost me 60% of the item’s cost. This is much too high and a discouragement to consumption.

We simply need to expand our tax base particularly focusing on taxes targeting the wealthy among us. If we had proper enforcement of property taxes this would seem one promising avenue to go. Vat is too regressive of a tax with the burden falling disproportionately on the less wealthy who are the very people most sensitive to an increase and therefore most likely to reduce consumption in the face of a vat increase. Govt needs to serious address this as a 20% shortfall in revenues is unacceptable.

Said it before and I will say it again Fred Smith is a national hero. No Bahamian is doing more to defend civil liberties and human rights in this country.

NO.

Dearest Tal would love to answer you but can not make heads or tails of what you are trying to say. Can you say it plainly, preferably in the queen’s English?

Bahamians have to be some of the most negative people in the world. Look through today’s newspapers many ads for quality jobs. The reality is tourism has never been so good. We are on the cusp sans a recession in the United States of an economic boom. There is so much opportunity, by the end of the year this will have filled down throughout the economy and touched every Bahamian household. Look at almost a billion dollars foreign investment in the pipeline for the next two years. Yes things have been bad for a long time but the dawn always comes and as we say in the islands day has done clear. Open your eyes, seize the opportunity it is there.

What a sham and waste of hot air. We all know there is no accountability for rogue cops in this country, they are protected and can abuse and even kill with impunity. We need an independent investigative commission made up of lay professionals and even that will probably not work, this country is too corrupt to expect justice.

Pathetic. No accountability. No Justice. No peace.