Bingo! That's precisely what needs to be done in order to help control our national healthcare costs. Most well known unhealthy foods should not even be available on grocery store shelves.

Why is Minnis making it so easy for such a small PLP opposition in the HOA to seem like they have the upper hand and better finger on the pulse of the Bahamian people?! It is utterly absurd for Minnis to lay his government open to accusations that the FNM MPs who desperately need a pay increase should not have been allowed to run by the party for elected office in the first place and that those who do not need a salary increase are just plain greedy. If the majority of FNM MPs have not achieved the financial wherewithal in their own right to aspire to and hold elected office, then one must ask why did the FNM party nominate them to begin with?! And if they have not achieved financial independence in their own right, then how can they possibly be expected to make the right decisions in parliament regarding matters pertaining to the financial well-being of most Bahamian people and our country?! And it is truly a sad indictment of the character and integrity of the majority of FNM parliamentarians for any FNM supporter to suggest the pay increase is necessary to deter them from engaging in corrupt activities!! In summary, the Minnis proposed pay increase for parliamentarians wreaks of selfishness, is a huge political blunder, and calls into question the calibre of the majority of nominees put forward for elected office by the FNM party in the last general election.

Just trust me, the vast majority of Bahamian people are not as stupid as you think they are.

We do not live in your Bahamas; we live in our Bahamas, a democratic country where all votes count. The people have already spoken on this matter in a recent national referendum. Who are you to call the majority of voters in that referendum bigots?! Put your mind at ease by finding another country if you don't like the majority of us.

Our pathetic Minister of Finance still does not understand that what we really need is a business environment free of government corruption and unnecessary red tape, and free of street crime, that is conducive to private sector job growth. The last thing we need is more taxes to grow an inefficient and unproductive government!

> "Management does not expect that the continued operating losses or regulatory capital deficiencies will impact the bank's continuing ability to operate as a going concern."

*Translation:* "Bahamian taxpayers and the National Insurance Fund have already been bilked to keep BOB's doors open and Minnis is prepared to let the horrendous bilking of taxpayers continue no matter what it costs!"

Articles published in The Punch in December 2013 informed the Bahamian public that Bank of The Bahamas (BOB) had made the following loans and advances connected to political friends and cronies of Perry Christie:

• $28 million to Leslie Miller and/or entities owned by him and/or members of his immediate family.

• $3.5 million to Obie Wilchcombe & Pleasant Bridgewater re. Universal Distributors Bahamas Ltd., a company apparently now defunct for all intents and purposes.

• $8 million to another senior PLP cabinet minister, rumoured to be pudgy with short stubby grubby dirty sticky fingers.

• $6.3 million to PLP business woman Patricia Mortimer who purportedly is a best friend and business partner of Lady Poodling and the owner of several shops at Nassau International Airport.

• $2.3 million re. GEMS Radio Station which at the time was owned by Debbie Bartlett and Cyprianna McWeeney, the latter being the wife of PLP lawyer Sean McWeeney who is the brother of Paul McWeeney.

• $4.5 million to enterprises owned/controlled by Edward Penn.

• $4.6 million to Phil Lightbourne re. Phil's Food Services (Phil Lightbourne was the front man and spokesman for Ben Frisch who owned Bahamas Food Services up until the PM allowed the Frisch Family to sell it to Sysco Foods (a large U.S. public company) in April 2013.

And the above list represents just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the mega millions of dollars of now essentially worthless loans (loans that never had adequate collateral) that were fraudulently made by BOB over many years to cronies of both Perry Christie and Hubert Ingraham alike. bob has been bankrupt for a long time - Tony Allen and Wayne Aranha should have been appointed to liquidate BOB, not manage it. Now Tony Allen is gone - he must have quickly come to his senses and realized Minnis and K P Turnquest were wrong to endorse and accept the failed Bahamas Resolve bail out model that Christie, Halkitis and Wendy Craigg had created.

*Repost from 10 weeks ago:*
Dr. Minnis and KP are about to needlessly commit political suicide in their handling of the collective financial mess at BoB and Bahamas Resolve. All can see that the patient was brutally abused by the previous government and has been lying on the operating table quite dead for sometime now, notwithstanding very costly emergency treatment that was doomed to failure from the get go - including several blood transfusions from the taxpayer donors that simply bled out onto the floor. We, the people, supported Dr. Minnis becoming PM so that he could certify the time of BoB's death and sign its death certificate. We did not elect the new FNM government to foolishly continue trying to resuscitate a dead corpse at a ridiculously absurd cost for the family members who are barely able to make ends meet, i.e. we, the taxpayers. Get on with doing what you promised you would do Dr. Minnis, otherwise you will be the one to end up politically owning all of the inevitable horrendous losses associated with BoB and Bahamas Resolve. Just let the chips fall where they rightly politically belong - in Christie's lap and the lap of the PLP - because no matter what you do these unpleasant and very costly chips are going to fall in any event, and you certainly don't wish to take serious political pain that rightfully belongs as a part of Christie's despicable legacy.

You're of course right about Ferguson. Not sure why I would have had the much earlier Commissioner Thompson on my mind.

It is truly gut wrenching to watch Greenslade get rewarded for his gross incompetence in fighting crime and for the role he played in endorsing all of the unnecessary and very costly police promotions made by the corrupt Christie-led PLP government during the last general election campaign as part of their "vote buying" efforts. Thanks to the incompetent Greenslade, we now have an ineffective police force made up of all highly paid incompetent chiefs with no indians. Minnis has made countless serious errors in judgement since becoming PM and this is just another one of them. As for any hope of Commissioner Thompson doing a better job than the grossly incompetent Greenslade did, well you can forget that happening. Thompson was completely ineffective while serving as Greenslade's right arm and will more than likely be as lousy a Commissioner as Greenslade was. We really need to bring an end to promotion by tenure alone in our police force and introduce a promotion system based on crime fighting merit as judged by an independent panel within the Ministry of National Security and not by the police commissioner.