If there is one thing you can count on is this government not doing a God Damn thing for the majority of people in this country

It’s not an exercise that will do us or them any harm. It will take some of the money that these foreign lodge owners are making and put it into the hand of the local guides. The monies that are involved in this industry are so large they don’t want to lose that,” said Mr Smith.

There we have it. A disgruntled small business man trying out his own little plan for wealth redistribution. Why dont we just cut to the chase and make a new law that states that all foreign fishermen have to stay in their own country and just send you money to go fishing on your own and I'll tell the foreign investors to just send me money to build a lodge for Bahamians only

Dear Mr Smith. With all due respect, it is all very well to encourage visiting fisherman to use guides. forcing visiting fisherman to use guides however is not exactly a vote of confidence and actually more an act of desperation. It is also playing with fire when you start trying to manipulate a bunch of wealthy, free spirited fly fishermen

You may have a decent amount of goodwill and a good amount of loyal guides right now and have grown weary or loosing business to competition (in the worst recession ever) but who is to say this rough-arm legislation is going to work for you. What if an immediate shortage of licensed guides forces the daily rate up to $1,500 a day and 90% of your repeat customers bow out. What if a shortage of licensed guides tempts other Bahamian lodges to poach yours away and then you are left with hiring less than capable alternatives, for $1,500 a day. What if the wrong team wins the next election and the new local administrator has it in for you and makes it difficult for your guests to get licenses. What if the local administrator runs out of licenses so your guests cant fish. What if the government does nothing at all to enforce the regulations but your guides take it as a license to show up when they feel like it and charge whatever the want. What if this whole exercise is just the government trying to grab a chunk of your guests spending money and don't give a damn about whether your industry survives or fails

The only thing I know is when these short sighted, greedy fools in Government say they are going to fix things, it backfires on the very people they are trying to help. Unfortunately for them it is so much easier and satisfying to come up with new cockamamie rules Instead of just focusing on implementing the ones that are already in place

I have no problem at all with persecuting foreigners working in this country illegally or Bahamians abusing the system. I would love to see them loose their boats and all their equipment and thrown in jail. While the Gov. is at it they could do something about all the illegal deep sea fishing operators as well

Duppy.......this new legislation is attacking foreign bonefisherman and the lodges that support them. How on earth is it going to resolve the problem if the problem is foreign homeowners renting their houses out ? All this act that is going to do is keep anglers away so nobody gets the business ?? How many times we got to cut our nose off to spite our face ???

For pity sake. DR poachers are cleaning out the southern banks of the Bahamas like vacuum cleaners. Bahamian commercial fishermen gill net bonefish by the millions to use for fish-pot bait and most family islanders do not believe a single conservation law or marine park applies to them........ but what do we want to do.......scare off dem foreign !!

How about the ban on foreign ownership of fishing lodges. Leave it to the PLP to find a way to start restricting foreign land ownership. Its like a bad crack habit for them. How can they possibly convince themselves that putting restrictions on tourist related foreign investment activity is what this country needs right now ??????????????????????//

For those of you that weren't around. Back in the day, Carnival Cruise Lines promised the defunct, drug riddled, foreign investor barren landscape of the Bahamas a crippled leg to stand on by building the Crystal Palace. Oooooh how it was going to reshape the economy in to one of pride and future benefits to all. The only catch was that Carnival needed 5,000 work permits for Bangladeshi's to build it and shortly thereafter they announced the hotel was not profitable and needed to be taken over by the hotel corporation (whilst Carnival got to keep the profit making casino operation) and for the next 20 years the whole operation ran at a stupendous cost to the Bahamian economy and ultimately ended up the discount dump of the Caribbean. That was PLP on Cable Beach last time around. Anyone see any similarities ??

The primary problem with this entire story is that KPT also thinks transferring bad loans to a publicly funded 'resolve' to protect shareholders is a good idea. WTF !!!!!!! The bank has failed. The shareholders loose everything and the directors are held accountable for the losses. Shut the thing down and focus on spending money on social services instead of pretending you have a clue about venture capitol you good for nothing bunch of stupid crooks. The lot of you.

if buying new planes is a cost cutting exercise......why the government need VAT. They could just buy more and more planes until the deficit is gone ??

I love it. They got drones covered but the second most imporatan industry in the country will be flying in the dark