Sobering Thoughts

Was it Governor Alan Scott or was it Governor Michael Gore who was 'drunk on parade' -  it had to be one or the other if Ezzard Miller, is to be believed - OK I could stop the post right there but let's humour him.

Miller ...... said that he too had “experienced the arrogance, disdain and condescension of Her Majesty’s representatives in Cabinet.” He described one as coming to cabinet “in a drunken stupor and drooling over cabinet papers”. 

Cayman News Services (CNS)

"Drooling over cabinet papers" ... who would have thought politics could be that exciting ;-)  Cor! look at the size of those amendments! 

Miller was only ever an EXCO (Cabinet) member during the governorship of Scott,  bar a few weeks of Gore's birdwatching holiday in Cayman just ahead of the 1992 election when Ezzard lost his seat. Maybe people thought he'd become drunk with power?

Looks like Governor Scott is being fingered here and he did own two little dogs exactly like the ones on the whisky bottle label. How much proof do you need - 75% proof - 100% proof - over-proof?

Governor Scott is rumoured to have told Miller at their first meeting to 'take the stairs' and not the lift in The Glasshouse but then Ezzard probably started that rumour too.

Miller's visceral hatred of the English probably has deeper roots than a casual slight by a governor - whatever - it is the engine of his politics and comes out dressed up as a high principled call for independence.

Now we know the present Governor (whose origin is Scottish not English btw)  is wrong about nearly everything but not when he says that people who think there is no corruption in the Cayman Islands are deluded.


Ezzard responded to this by asking for evidence - where  do we start? It has become a way of life and is the cancer killing Cayman from within but people like Ezzard want to live undisturbed in their fantasy world populated entirely by heroes.

The trick is to convince voters that this blinkered vision is, in fact, a foresight of a magical future free of outside interference. Tell it to the IRS!




I've had a lot of fun at Martin Bridger's expense (and he certainly had fun at ours) but, be honest, didn't he become part of the problem after he saw how easily personal enrichment can be wheedled out of the public purse in Cayman and took to it like a duck to water? It's a well trodden path and Miller has walked it too. Sayed, at UCCI, same thing. He screwed UCCI while the minister screwed students - everybody's happy, except the ones left holding the baby. It's arguable that Cayman's problems are caused less by outsiders who don't adopt or assimilate Caymanian values and more by those who do.

In a response to the CSN thread under Miller's name (and not retracted so I assume it actually was him) came this gem of statecraft:

I once met an Indian man who said "I would rather clean toilets that (sic) work for an Englishman" - It took me a while but now I see his point...cleaning toilets wont get your hands as dirty...and its honest work in comparison.

It's no surprise to discover that Ezzard learnt politics from a professional shit-stirrer but his own hands aren't  that clean. A recent example is the $100,000 consultancy contract Eden handed Miller on a plate  with no competitive tendering. Basically it was a welfare payment and bizarrely it was Miller himself who brought it into the sunlight and to the attention of the press, presumably for electoral reasons.

You tell me who's worse here the giver or the taker? I don't see a difference but presumably Ezzard did. Ezzard anticipated no electoral backwash by raising all this in a newspaper at a time he was running for office. Nobody in officialdom did a damn thing about this. Nor about the failure of two other candidates to comply with constitutional electoral requirements. Some of those MLA's accusin' and abusin' Governor Jack for 'thinking they were all corrupt' owe him for not looking deeper into electoral issues.

Both Eden and Miller were elected to the CO² factory, formerly known as the LA, from whence Miller now uses parliamentary privilege to pass comment on ex-Governors that, in any other context, could be called defamatory.

When all of that passes for 'normal' can anyone say there aren't ethical problems in public life - aka corruption.

Over at the CNS discussion on Miller's 'prove there is corruption' ploy I rose to the challenge and raised the Eden-Miller consultancy issue (using a different pseudonym to the one I use on my blog) and provided a verbatim quote and the url of the relevant Cay Compass article. My post was brief and to the point and though CNS eventually published some 20 comments mine, which was bang on topic, wasn't one of them ... go figure. Ezzie and CNS sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g  ... ;-)

As Miller himself put the 'handout consultancy' facts into the public domain I assume the CNS decision to decline  my pertinent and well researched contribution was on grounds other than potential defamation or libel. Miller can't libel himself can he - although there is a self-directed, physical, activity some people would like him to try.

Miller isn't stupid and angry men do get things done - but history shows they tend to be the wrong things.