Really good news in giving the license to a 100% Bahamian owned company. The 51% of shares invested in the new holding company should be offered to the general public and not just to select institutional and high net worth individuals as appears to be the plan. The shares should be allocated from the bottom up, meaning that those Bahamians with the smallest orders should be filled first, before the big boys! This way the shareholder base will be as broad as possible and will give the little man in the Bahamas an opportunity to benefit. This is the way cable Bahamas shares were allocated in the initial public offering under the fnm govt. twenty years ago. Anything less would be dishonest and simply reserving the economic pie for the select few rich and politically connected. PLP do the fair and honest thing and allow the shares to be offered to ALL Bahamians and allocated from the BOTTOM up, so that small orders are filled first.

On pace for 150 murders this year, by far the most ever. Dear birdie, have you forgotten the billboards? Your beloved PLP told us they had the answer to crime. Now that they have failed miserably you want no blame? Then you go to the mothers of all those poor, black Bahamians murdered like dogs in the street this year and tell them why their sons died. You made your bed politicizing crime, now lie in it.

The rot begins at the top, and this country is rotten to the bone. When you have a cabinet where half of the members should be in prison, from interfering with the judiciary, to Bamsi, to missing and misused funds, and not a single resignation, or firing, or criminal charge what do we expect? Then there is the leader of the opposition and his blatant conflict of interest, again he does not resign but simply offers up the flimsiest excuses that are an insult to an educated electorate. Corruption is endemic among the greedy elite in this country so I am glad poor people are getting away with so much crime. Why should the poor suffer when the rich and politically connected get away with it? Maybe what the Bahamas needs is to be blacklisted by the U.S., because that is what it will take for real change to occur. Usually one has to hit rock bottom before meaniful change. Slowly but surely the plp and the fnm are slowly destroying this beautiful country.

Another murder today, 107 year to date, on pace for 151 murders for the year an all- time record. After campaigning on having the solution to reduce the high murder rate in the last election, the PLP should hang their heads in shame. Where is the accountability? totally incompetent Minister Nottage should have been fired long ago, he has failed miserably and we need a new approach.

It is not hopeless, NIB use to allow their $45,000 vehicle to be driven home and used for any and all personal uses on our dime, well no more. To NIB's credit the vehicle is now parked in front of our island administrator's office and only used for official business. Now every public sector corp should do the same.

Come on people are you going to believe the the honorable Sharon Wilson or your lying eyes? Wake up Bahamas. We are not free, we are ruled by a cadre of lying, corrupt elites. These people have no shame or honesty. God help us!

The reduction in the price of oil is not being passed on to consumers. It is a sham. It is being used to pay the huge, over 100 million back bill BEC has for fuel. It is being used to pay BEC workers the highest wage and benefits
In the public sector. In your beloved Long Island it is being used to pay for the vehicles that BEC workers take home every night, that they use as their own personal vehicles to go to the grocery store, to pick their children up from school and yes to even launch their boats when they want to. I see it all the time and it is disgusting. i saw the general manager here use one to lauch his boat and then he left BEC's vehicle on the ramp so no one else even had use of the ramp until he came back from fishing. These BEC workers in Long Island act like little princes, untouchables, who are basically stealing from poor BEC consumers, and the corporation and govt allow them to do it!

Was this contract put out to tender? Who received this contract , we taxpayers deserve to know? How is it possible that it cost $ 500,000 to renovate one large classroom and a bathroom? An entire new building could be constructed for half that. Again we the taxpayers get ripped off. We should seriously consider a voucher program for education in this country. Give each parent a voucher to educate their child at the private school of their choice and disband completely the bureaucratic nightmare that the ministry of education is. Our students would have better test scores, a better school environment, and save taxpayers millions of dollars. New Orleans did it after hurricane Katrina and it has worked.

Bank of the bahamas shares are for all intents worthless. The bank was in violation of the central bank's minimum liquidity requirements for months before this bailout with resolve occurred. Without the bailout the bank would have been insolvent. The govt has paid the interest on BOB preference shares for the last year otherwise they would have defaulted. And there is no end to the red ink in sight. It has too many branches, has too many employees, neither of which it can reduce because of political interference. It was grossly mismanaged, and still retains for the most part the incompetent board responsible for this fiasco. There has been zero accountability save the eventual force out of its incompetent former director. This is why governments should not own any bank shares. The only saving grace for shareholders is that the govt will not let the bank go bankrupt, so the shares will meander for years where they are, never reaching zero but no chance of appreciation. As for the poor bahamian taxpayer that is another matter, we will be lucky to get 40-50 cents on the dollar for the 100 million bailout.

Every day I question the so called independence and competency of URCA. Urca seems to have it in for cable, issuing opaque, contradictory rulings that do nothing to enhance competition in the Bahamas. Cable should have the right to constuct if they see fit a completely independent system of towers from BTC. Btc has inferior infrastructure, leading to inferior service so why would a modern, efficient company like cable want to be tied to such an infrastructure. Not to mention in the event of a system wide failure in our cell service, which BtC has had several times, would it not be in the national interest to have a completely redundant system that we could depend on. URCA in their rulings seem to want to discourage competition to the benefit of the 49% govt owned inept BTC.