'Gaming' on cruise ships on hold

This is a little surprising, that a Government proposed bill amendment didn't go through for once. This bill was to allow cruise ships while in port to have their casinos open late at night, but it was met with opposition from both the Opposition and Government backbenchers.

Here's the money quote from one backbencher:

"Hamilton was already a ghost town at night and tourists were staying at home at night."

I think this is what it comes down to. Nightclubs and other avenues for entertainment aren't too plentiful, so allowing tourists on cruise ships to stay aboard is a pretty self-defeating purpose as far as raising revenue is concerned.

So instead of finding ways to revive the local product and try to get money into the hands of Bermudians, the powers-that-be are choosing to appease the cruise ship lines (and most likely take a small slice off the top to fill Government's coffers).

(Edited to add a link to the Devil Island post that puts things in a better light; but like I said above perhaps the initiative is to just get more cash into Government)

Not even a dumplin'

I think that many people in Bermuda enjoy Jamaican Grill restaurant. It's been in business for quite a while and recently opened a new restaurant in Somerset that's pretty popular. You could argue that they are the top restaurant for West Indian cuisine on the island.

That said, they don't seem to always have available certain menu options. Usually it's the beef patties that are hard to come by, but the other evening I was a bit surprised to walk in to place an order when I was told that they were out of jerk chicken, brown stew anything, and even dumplings!

Not even a li'l dumpling. Ouch. Go figure, that evening they had patties galore.

I was thinking that they may as well have closed the place down, but this is "the iiiiiiisland (tm Beyonce)" and some places just continue on because after all, it's not like there's any competition around.

Come on, Jamaican Grill. You put out a decent product, so let's try to make it more available, please.

Sports Awards chosen by... politicians?

Was off-island for a few days and apparently a whole bunch of things happened including a government bailout and another unfortunate road fatality, but I want to first take notice of what happened with the local Sports Awards issued out, that I found totally amazing.

Basically a panel chose a swimmer who made the Olympics to win the Male Athlete of the Year. However the Minister of Sport who apparently has the final say, went in another direction. The Gazette, TalkSport and Catch-a-Fire have each published their views of the hows and whys.

But my main question on the Sports Awards is why a politician is determining the winner and not the appointed panel of persons who presumably have knowledge, experience and insight into the athletes and their chosen disciplines?

It would seem that the Sports Awards have suddenly lost their worth in a big way. Will the same happen to the Sports Hall of Fame as well?

Stop sign means stop

Well, the Police are taking a different approach, it seems. I suppose the whole "don't speed, don't make a third lane" motto was finally losing steam after a most-successful two years of constant usage.

So we have a new press statement, whoo-hoo! This time, it's something that looks promising. The Police want to focus a little more on people who fly through stop signs at certain junctions (they give three examples; there are several more out there). They're even threatening to ticket people. It's sad that the Police have to announce these kinds of things to the public, but I think the public honestly either don't know or don't care. But if they at least see a Police officer watching (or heck, a scarecrow dressed like a cop would probably do the trick these days) they may pay a little more attention to the road signage.

Senator David Burch made a good point the other day when commenting on Police deployment (it had to do with budget cuts, which I won't bring up here), that is, that the deployment has to be improved. It seems that there aren't enough officers patrolling normally, and when they do, it's in groups of three or four when one or two would suffice in the particular situation. Not sure if it's due to training or something. But it's a proven fact, one that does not require any surveys or studies, that when police are known to be around, people will be more cautious on the road and more obedient of traffic laws. This also cuts down on other activities like malicious behaviour (e.g. teens wanting to throw bottles at passing vehicles).

Again I'll ask the Bingo question

To Quinton Edness and everybody else who has come out and denounced gambling as being bad for Bermuda, I only ask, does the TV Bingo programme airing on local television, where people purchase cards and essentially hope that random numbers come up to match what their cards say, with the chance to win a big jackpot prize, fall into that category?

And why or why not?

The ads so absurd they're funny

You've seen some of those infomercials and the like for some of the strangest products. While I want to give a nice shout-out to whoever thought a robe/blanket that makes you look like part of a dangerous cult was a brilliant gimmick, I gotta bring this other one up, it's so hilarious.

So this commercial starts up, with the theme of "Candid Confessions: Secrets Women won't share with men" or something like that. A bunch of women, all allegedly between 21 and 26 years old, 'interview' to the camera about issues with guys who aren't equipped with the proverbial anaconda (that's a shoutout, Mitch). It's very blatant. Now, these women are quite attractive from a physical standpoint, but it's so hard to take the commercial seriously because you're thinking, ho, skank, slut, bitchy skank, wannabe actress bitchy skank.

Anyway, the theme is "Size Matters". Big graphic cues up, in case we haven't figured it out. Then we have this apparent 'doctor' come on screen wearing some low top that has a cleavage exposure factor of 9.3, trying to sound like a practical expert. Oh, she's also an author. Surre. And a relationship expert. Riiight. Porn star, definitely.

A bunch of stock photos to illustrate "actual disappointment" and "actual hoplessness" come up, each pic more and more absurd in how phony they are. Then some more blather while the producers are counting on you to just stare at the cleavage. A requisite and not-at-all allegorical video of a rocket launch pops up and then more stock photos, captioned "actual happiness".

While this infomercial is totally ridiculous, it is probably going to be effective. Men's "enhancement" products is big business now, possibly fueled by the "female satisfaction" movement and the apparent fact that women have far greater say in the relationship business than ever before (and men, far less). So, like the whole "women must take pill X and exercise product Y in order to be more attractive, etc." thing, here's the corresponding item for the fellas. Take our product, or beautiful women are going to scorn you forever.

2009 Budget fun

I'd been meaning to blog a few things this week but due to a power outage, the apparent loss of all data on my PC, problems connecting to the Internet, and other not-fun-at-all scenarios (currently I'm trying to get over this cold/sniffling/coughing thing) I've had to postpone writing a couple of things having to do with the road safety stuff that the Premier talked about.

Today the Finance Minister revealed the planned budget for this year. I'm no big detailed analyst kind of guy and only took first-year Econ at university so don't ask me anything, k? Vexed has his early take on the budget. Bermuda Sun has stripped it to a highlights package here.

Two weeks ago I had thought that we need to hear about the renovation/reconstruction of our only hospital, that should be the primary must-have as far as this budget was concerned. Then it was announced that a private-public partnership was to be implemented. I don't know how that works out in terms of delivering a successful product on time, or if it's a concept that is borrowed from the U.S. Surprised it hasn't generated much discussion, actually. The Budget itself did mention financing of the hospital, but no dollar amount was mentioned in the statement. Have to read the report, I suppose.

The import duty has been dramatically reduced for boats, which is very interesting. The rate had been previously been hiked from 33.5% to 55%, which angered a lot of mariners. So the change here is likely to be well-welcomed by those who boat, fish and sail on the island.

As expected, sports looked to have taken a hit. Doesn't look good for that swim complex (or enhancements to the cricket pavillion). Again, to be expected.

There's too much to go through at this time, but I gotta add that I like the idea of a Cultural Legacy fund. It comes to mind every time I see and hear people playing old folk songs at the airport arrivals hall or at SaltRock Grill.