What do they do? They collect salaries and allowances, etc., and generally live off the FAT of the land, if you follow my meaning.

What seems to me to be so strange about most of the comments appearing relative to these recent stories is that few people seem to realize that this is part of a recurring pattern in this country. Big foreign money can cause some serious entanglements. Who remembers the late Robert Vesco from the mid 1970s? Some time after he moved to Costa Rica there was a full page newspaper advertisement in one of the local papers demanding that he be expelled from that country. I saw the newspaper in early 1975. Our younger readers should research his numerous adventures and learn about his "unfortunate" end in a Cuban jail cell.
Many people come to this country in the knowledge that they can get away with here what they would not even dare attempt in their home country. The sad part is that our poorly educated young people (and many not so young) know little or nothing of past events and so are condemned to remain "present dwellers" with no historical perspective with which to evaluate current affairs.

Ms. Burrows you have covered a lot of ground in this opinion piece and your youthful idealism is plainly visible but I cannot agree with your comment about so few people having made an honest living. A senior citizen such as myself who has seen a few parts of the world where the situation is so much worse than here at home can only shake my head and wonder at your lack of historical perspective. This country has a number of problems difficult of solution which may well have taken shape when the late Sir Stafford Sands set us upon a course of tourism thus allowing the country to use its natural attributes to carve out a place in the world tourism industry. In 1992 when Pindling's Immovable Property Act was repealed by the incoming FNM administration to the delight of foreign land speculators, the cost of land and affordable housing began to move beyond the reach of many working people. With an inexorable increase in population and unsavory foreign media influences there has been an increase in a sense of desperation and incidents of violent crime. Corruption and incompetence in government is everywhere and I can only encourage the younger generation to seek out their own Cincinnatus and run for office so that they can lead by example. I for one would be very pleased to see such a change. Whether I will hold my breath while waiting for such an event, I am not so sure.

The proper word is "uninterested" and not disinterested. Check the dictionary. However, this correction does not in any way soften the blow to those who fall victim to crime in any way, shape or form.

All of you dear readers please do not forget that a political organization is, by its very nature, designed to further the ambitions and/or fortunes of its members. As was asked some years ago :"Why should I join and support a political organization if there is no advantage for me in such an act?"
Very often the aim of the organization is to oversee the transfer of wealth and/or influence to its members (or at least to some of its members) as opposed to those who are outside of the organization.
If we are looking for altruistic motives on the part of a politician in modern times we shall have to look far and wide and very carefully. That is not to say that such do not exist but history provides us with too few examples among them the Roman farmer/general Cincinnatus and Mohandas K. Ghandi of India. However, even Ghandi admitted that "I am a politician pretending to be a saint, not a saint pretending to be a politician".

This is a public relations exercise worthy of Joseph Goebbels in the 1940s.
Notice how well orchestrated were the outpourings of public support for the vote being taken inside Parliament.
More than likely this is a "rabbit in the hat" exercise by a government that has been unable or unwilling to deliver on its many promises made during the 2012 election campaign. The deeper problems of the country are still unaddressed or overlooked while the 2017 election draws near.
So it is time to distract the general public with this type of exercise in the hope that they will tend to forget about the unfulfilled promises made in 2012 and the more general problems facing the public on an everyday basis.
Let us await the results of the promised referendum and remember what happened in 2002 after that failed effort.

Yes, let us recall how much resistance there was to the concept of National Insurance in the early and mid 1970s. Pindling said that many would resist the idea but one day would be glad to have such a system in place. National Health Insurance is perhaps a more complex and certainly a more ambitious scheme but in the long run it could prove to be an advantage for the general public if such a system can be maintained within reasonable parameters of cost, efficiency and, above all, honesty.

No community is the same after such a severe hurricane. Current in North Eleuthera is not the same after Hurricane Andrew in August, 1992. There are whole communities in Abaco that were relocated after severe storms almost a century ago and other communities that lost a great proportion of their population who moved to New Providence in the aftermath of severe hurricanes in 1926 and 1929.
The terrible truth is that many of the homes that were destroyed and/or damaged were not in top shape to start with and were most likely under insured or completely uninsured. Keep in mind that "catastrophe" insurance coverage is about 3 times as costly as coverage that excludes "catastrophic" loss such as that suffered during the passage of a strong hurricane.
It is virtually impossible for the government to assume the role of insurer of last resort for private citizens.

In response to "Ikalikl" above, I can guarantee that the PLP did not "throw out" all foreign teachers after 1967. There were many foreign teachers employed by the Ministry of Education after that date with a gradual change taking place that saw more Jamaican and Guyanese nationals being employed than European, British, etc. Even today a large percentage of teachers, especially in the high schools, are foreign nationals. In fact there are a number of Cuban nationals on loan from Havana teaching Physics, Chemistry, etc. in Nassau and in certain Family Islands.
It is true that the original Government High School was not maintained at the same high standard, a development that caused considerable regret among GHS alumni who saw the GCE system of examinations discarded and the watered down standards of the BJC and the very weak BGCSE apparently intended to create the impression that students were actually accomplishing something during their school years.

An interesting reply to my earlier comment but let us be fair and not lay the blame for the weak educational system at the feet of only one administration. The weakness to which you refer is of long standing duration and, consequently, very difficult to correct. This weakness radiates at least in part from the appointment of poorly qualified persons to decision-making positions in the Ministry of Education as well as from the wider culture of glorification of non-academic pursuits at the expense of efforts to make significant changes to the national curricula in an effort to broaden the outlook of each and every student. Of course, I will be the first to admit that not every student can be brilliant but every student can be exposed to a more rounded and encompassing educational experience.
As someone once said, if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.