Tal: Get a life. You can spend all your days looking for convenient scapegoats but a few gated communities, which by the way exist all over the civilized world, have zero to do with the problems under discussion here, and your recommendation that resort to the destruction of private property (cut down the locks) just adds to the problem. No beaches are gated. Private roads are gated. That is perfectly legal and proper or would you prefer to lose the hundreds of millions in employment and economic contribution that these "gated" resorts contribute to our country. Get over it Tal. This is not the mid 20th century.

Now there is a suggestion to compound a really stupid idea. Clearly privatization is what was necessary to get innovation into our wireless service system and to get politicians out of running our public utilities. How can any rational person observe what is going on at BEC and then suggest that it would be a good idea for our politicians to be running BTC again? So our PM suggests giving BTC back to the politicians, and oh, he has an additional good idea, lets continue it as a monopoly so the government's incompetence won't be demonstrated as they lose customers to a competing privately run operation. You can't make it up.

Can you spell hypocritical?

Anyone who persists in making this a PLP versus FNM issue is missing the point. This is a national crisis. There are emergency steps that can be taken to get this under control. So far the current government has done precisely nothing but jawbone. This is something that commands a "war footing" and should take precedence over every other one, of the many serious problems facing the Bahamas. There are a plethora of police experts who could be called in to recommend programs that could be initiated immediately to stop this wholesale crime wave in its tracks on an emergency basis. There are new laws required. We have a parliamentary system where the party in power can take those steps. There are no excuses. In the past this has been a difficult balancing act between individual liberty and civil rights on the one hand, and public safety on the other. It is no longer a cause for a balancing act. Public safety needs to be imposed whatever the temporary cost to our civil liberties or there will be no civil society left.

Mr.Miller is a public hero. He is taking on a gang of thieves who have been left pretty much alone, to run our power system as a private fiefdom for nearly a generation. They are not going to see their rice bowl turned into a properly managed public utility without a fight and it is perfectly obvious that these union thugs are perfectly willing to break the law to keep their golden goose pumping out the cash. There is no more pernicious drain on the Bahamian economy than the ludicrous power rates we are required to shoulder. No tax in effect or being considered could impose such a headwind to economic growth. No other burden makes it so hard for us to be competitive across all of our industries.

This is public priority number one and Mr. Miller is left by government to soldier on alone. Of course the only good long term solution is privatization of BEC, but that is a bridge too far right now. Thank Heavens for Mr. Miller and his stalwart fight to impose some discipline on this small group who continue to hold the entire country to ransom. Where is the outrage? Where is the police action? Where are the public announcements of support for Mr. Miller and his heroic efforts from the entire Cabinet and serving government?

Three first steps:

1. Rule of law. The Bahamas needs to make a new commitment to the rule of law, enforced evenhandedly across all of our citizenry. The rule of "party affiliation" in the enforcement of law has got to end. If the laws need to be amended, under our Parliamentary system, the party in majority has the political right and capacity to effect change. The rule of law monitored by a truly independent judiciary, is the essential foundation for any just, democratic society. All serving Prime Ministers must make that basic precondition to a just and free society an absolutely inviolable imperative.

2. Criminal Justice. Every informed citizen of this country, along with every published authority on crime and every senior role player in our criminal justice system, knows that the overwhelming percentage of violent crime in our country is being committed by a very small percentage of our citizenry. This country is in crisis, a crisis that compares to "time of war", and radical measures are justified. The government must enact any and all laws necessary to support legal removal of that small number of violent, repeat offenders from our streets. The police know who they are. Those in the communities besieged by their violent illegal conduct know who they are. Whatever measures are required in terms of new enabling legislation, and whatever law enforcement and judicial infrastructure support is necessary to take that fight to the streets to rid our society of this pernicious minority should be announced as non-partisan priority number one by the leaders of all political parties.

3. Fiscal rationality. The current system of financing necessary government expense via an 18th century, import duty system, is out of step with the rest of the world, our country's treaty obligations, and will demonstrably fail to produce sufficient revenue. The effect is a purely regressive form of taxation, absent the benefits of efficiency of collection, associated with a value added or sales tax regime. Taxation is always controversial, and in a society like ours, where freedom from taxation is viewed as a nearly inalienable right, it is necessary that the various political parties recognize the need to adopt a bipartisan strategy, likely requiring a bipartisan commission's recommendations, to entirely overhaul the country's fiscal structure.

When you waste a million dollars of precious pubic funds on a wild goose chase audit, you have to promise "shocking revelations" when there are none and refer to a "mess" when there was none.

Then you fire the only person who was demonstrably properly doing his job at NIB and turn this public trough over to the political hacks who can't wait to jump in with all four hooves.

What a joke!

I have the greatest respect for Reverand Moss but he is wrong here. This has everything to do with the environment and with Clifton Heritage Park, which he worked so hard to secure. It is about whether Peter Nygard will be permitted to continue his serial environmental degradation of Clifton Bay. It is about whether Bahamian citizens like Fred Smith have a right to visit a public park absent being attacked by thugs. It is about the rule of law in this great country versus the rule of dollars.

This is ours: Now you are waking up. Neither Mr. Nygard nor Mr. Smith feel that they are accountable to anyone. Not the law, not the government, not anyone and Mr. Smith as quoted in this article says just that. How can any civilized society operate on such a basis. That is what the Coalition to Protect Clifton Bay is all about. Accountability!

"Moxie proies" - You talking about Keod Smith? Best he can do is try to change subject from daily environmental damage inflicted at Simms Point and do whatever he can to confuse public regarding the importance of making adjacent sea bed, part of Heritage site.

Why would anyone who cares about Heritage Park fight that? Only one reason, it would put spotlight on seabed construction at Mr. Nygard's Simms Point.