A Monument to Myopia

In one episode of the UK radio comedy the Goon Show parliament debates criticisms of extravagant and wasteful spending by the government. Defending against the naysayers the Prime Minister points out that no lighthouses were built in The Strand (think Broadway in NY) last year, only a single tunnel was constructed from the House Of Commons to the The Folies Bergère in Paris and it was lit with plain chandeliers and not gold and diamond encrusted ones as originally planned.

He finishes with a flourish, "Efficiency, Gentlemen, that must be our watchword. Efficiency! No expense will be spared to ensure money isn't wasted".

The comedic hallmarks of the Goon Show, twisted logic and demented schemes are,  in the Cayman Islands, the engine of its politics. For example government 'saves' money by doing something that didn't need doing in the first place in a less expensive manner.

The $9million  'Hurricane Hilton' shelter on Cayman Brac sounds a lot like a lighthouse on Broadway to me.

Brac politics is basically family politics. The political foundation of MLA Juliana O’Connor-Connolly, whose brainchild the Hurricane Hilton is, is a large extended family that procreated an entire Brac constituency to vote her into. They vote for her, she votes for them.

Some wags say Juliana O’Connor-Connolly's twin surnames are to maximise electoral appeal on the Brac, however, more and more, you hear a shorter name, 'Juju'. And though names may be shortened to convey affection I guarantee this diminutive isn't for that.

'Juju' has especially unfortunate heathen connotations for an in-your-face type of Christian like Juliana, being a name applied to traditional West African magical beliefs.  You know witch stuff.

Wikipedia defines Juju thus:

"An object of any kind superstitiously venerated ... and used as a charm, amulet, or means of protection; a fetish".

Hmmm  -  sounds familiar.

Juliana was flaunting her 'protective' credentials, the better to be venerated, at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Hurricane Hilton - groundbreaking in the sense that ground was broken not in the sense of something original happening - policians have been dreaming up these overblown, self-agrandising projects for the last two decades.

In her speech Juliana played the martyr, the target of outrageous press and blog commentary and all because of her vision to provide 'her people' with the best hurricane shelter other people's money can buy. She was above it all however going on to state:

“When one studies history, one finds that great buildings were rarely appreciated until the person who had the vision had passed on and you read about it in the obituary,”

Juilana your political vision is so shallow it could be used to calibrate a laser for eye surgery.