2011-12-30

UK Overseas Territories - good reading

A little while back, Catch-A-Fire pointed out a site devoted to discussing the concerns of UK Overseas Territories, hosted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the UK.

I've just now gotten to read it and encourage any Bermudian who stumbles across here to give it a peek as well. There are posts that are quite relevant to Bermuda and it's interesting to see several parallels with the Cayman Islands, for example.

Improving cricket in Bermuda

We need to find a way to get Garry Sobers to Bermuda more often.

Despite every cricketer of significance saying that 'open' cricket is a better development tool for players than the wham-bam-slam 20/20 format currently popular, Bermuda seems to hem and haw at the concept, which is so simple, Geico's already running ads on it.

Seriously though, playing cricket over longer periods is a good thing, despite what many current local players seem to think. The BCB need to find some way to encourage participation in two- or three-day competition, even if it's added monetary awards for participation.

Hopefully the new executives there will heed the wise words of Sir Garfield and others - and if it's something that can also be included at the youth/school levels, then all the better.

2011-12-29

Another view of the Bermuda blogosphere

Catch-A-Fire has taken my occasional musings of the local blogosphere to a new level, with a specific focus on political and social blogging (as would be expected, after all, the majority of well-known Bermuda blogs are political in nature; there aren't any sports blogs anymore, and personal blogs remain pretty much anonymous).

When the established online newspapers allowed commentary on articles, they became the de facto blog and forum alternatives for much of the online community - to the point that many people mis-label themselves as bloggers when they comment on article threads. That said, we still don't know if the collective posters represent Bermuda as a whole or a distinct subset (or as some suspect, paid operatives meant to skew discussion deliberately).

All in all, more is good, however. More voices means more ideas get thrown out there. Just have to know which voices are malicious and tune them out appropriately.