These will be booming times for all businesses involved in the movement of cargo & freight from Abaco and Grand Bahama to New Providence and the other islands. LMAO

LMAO - You're so right!

Dumb parents who themselves are a product of our dumbnifying public education system certainly don't care about their children being made even dumber than them. And our equally dumb politicians love nothing more than even dumber voters who they can very easily manipulate for a t-shirt, some live entertainment and a ham. This has been and remains our sure fire recipe for becoming a failed state.....just like Haiti.

> Still the Ministry of Education noted these results were better than anticipated.

What a quote - Need more be said???!!!

I can't believe Education Minister Jeff Lloyd actually said, “There is no way to camouflage it", implying the Minnis-led FNM government would have somehow manipulate the very dismal results if they could. But in fact the Ministry of Education did just that by combining the results of the public schools with the private schools. The public school results are much too frighteningly dismal to have been presented alone.

Truth be told, the unsustainable weight of the overwhelming numbers of illegal Haitian aliens in our country, including those who have fraudulently obtained 'official' papers of one kind or another from our corrupt immigration officials and other corrupt government officials, has all but wiped out our public education system and our public health system. Many of these Haitian nationals have infiltrated our defense force, our police force, our public school teachers, and now, to an inceasing extent, our parliamentarians.

The overall '***D*** minus' grade, that many of our students are now praised by education officials for achieving, stands for increasing ***D***oom.

Many nations in our region of the world, and of course the many international organizations that monitor such education results and factor them into their various country rankings of one kind or another, are naturally left to wonder how our national anthem could possibly start with the words "Lift up your {dumb} head"!!

What a failed Minnis-led FNM government we have.

Marlon Johnson was obviously given the task of floating the humongous $9 billion national debt figure which does not include debt parked off of the government's balance sheet in special purpose vehicles, not to mention at least another $3 billion plus in unfunded pension and other benefit entitlements of the public sector.

And soon Turnquest will be telling us Johnson got it all wrong and our country's real national debt will increase by more than $2 billion.

Shortly thereafter Minnis will of course then step in (with the international lending agencies at his back providing him with plenty of support in the run up to the next general election) to say...."No, no, no, my DPM got it all wrong.....the people suffering from the impact of Dorian need and deserve much much more and so our real national debt must be increased by no less than $3 billion." LMAO

Sadly this failed Minnis-led FNM government has also caused our public health system to occasionally run out of vital medicines and our public education system to often run out of necessary school supplies. Meanwhile Minnis hob-nobs with foreign investors, the political elite and his business cronies.

Unfortunately legislating to alter behaviour may be the only option given that our successive corrupt governments have been quite content to saddle many in our society with an overall D minus grade upon their graduation from our failed public education system.

Your cynacism aside, there is merit to some of what you say here. Cuba has plenty of land - we Bahamians are not nearly so fortunate.

Sands needs to push for much more to be done, and he should have the strong support of Minnis as a professional colleague who is well aware of the serious health issues facing our society as a result of poor dietary habits caused by unhealthy foods and drinks being much more readily available and much less costly than healthy foods and drinks.

There will be no noticeable decline in the increasing prevalence of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney disease and many types of cancer unless and until the duty rate is increased to: (1) 100% or more on all forms of raw sugar and all food and drink products containing any form of sugar and/or high fructose based sweeteners; and (2) at least 200% on all food and drink products containing any type of artificial sweetener. At the same time duty rates must be significantly reduced on all healthy food and drink products, especially fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, nuts, frozen fish, etc.

No one but Minnis is to blame for this shameful situation. Minnis should have long ago put Moultrie out of his misery by insisting Moultrie demit from his lofty parliamentary position as speaker of the house. Frankly, not only is Minnis shamefully disrespecting the legislative branch of our government by permitting an already mortally wounded Moultrie to soldier on, but Minnis is also being cruel to Moultrie because Minnis knows full well the track record is such that it will not be long before Moultrie has another episodic meltdown and/or display of great bias. Bottomline: Minnis is providing us with yet another shining example of his own inability to exercise good judgement.

LMAO