Flights of Fantasy

Finally got rid of the last blow-up doll and closed a chapter on a business wonder scheme that looked like it would never fly.

All down to another Rapture forecast. Thanks guys!


Pranksters bought up the stock, filled them with helium and set them loose after I marketed them as 'I-cant-believe-it's-not-apocalypse' party ware.

The dolls were quite realistic, that was one of the design features but also their Achilles' heel. I think the real problem was the way they talked, not so much the speech sound (although I don't think I'd use Mrs B doing a  Phyliss Diller impersonation again for the voice) but the phrases used.

Based on my history of marital bliss with Mrs B I went for phrases I thought would provided the most realistic and immersive experience of erotic congress.

For example:

"What time do you call this"
"Not now: I have a headache"
"Mother was right, you are a beast"
"Not unless I get a new pair of shoes"
"At least take your hat off"
and hysterical laughter.

The dolls may now serve a more noble purpose, floating around in the stratosphere, reflecting sunlight and helping to hold down global warming. They are very durable and it would take years before they would go down on you. [Insert your own joke about Mrs B here]

Journalism, Jollies and Jealousy

I have received the following from an outraged (is there any other sort?) UK Daily Mail reader

Dear Baldric,

I find it scandalous that British journalists are swanning around Caribbean islands under the pretext of conducting investigations into British police officers allegedly swanning around Caribbean islands when there is more than enough muck needing raking back in the UK.

Why should UK readers have to put up with delays in back-biting and sniping about the latest fashion faux pas of a minor celebrity? Why should the readership have to forego grainy close-ups of cellulite on the thighs of rich and famous women. And who is going to write those essential stories that make the gaps between tea breaks bearable, like the reports of labrador dogs looking after orphaned ducklings and vice versa?

We all know they are just lounging around in hammocks, which is blatant duplication of effort since the FCO already supply Brits to do that.

Please use you best efforts to shame those journalists into getting back to where they are most needed NOW!

Your incandescently,

Rudi Beckia

Crafty Devil

Q. What's the difference between Nation Building and Buying Votes?

A. Twelve months in Northward

God, supposedly, moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform but Mac wants a piece of that action. So Mac created and administered a special fund, also in a mysterious way, for handing out public money to Ministers (church variety).

His Holiness the Pope of  West Bay

Pending God blowing the roofs back onto the churches he blew them off of during Hurricane Ivan, Mac takes matters into his own hands and gets them fixed. After all God helps those who help themselves and God knows Mac does that - to his elbows.

I don't know how many roofs you can put on the same church - maybe new oriental influences are ushering in the pagoda style - so it looks like the church ain't the only thing the money is intended to fix, if you catch my drift.

Presumably the Small Fries went along with this extraordinary ecclesiastical handout being, where not God-fearing, at least Mac-fearing men. But, it looks like the Governor keeps one eye half-open while dozes in his pew, for his hand-servant the Auditor General is now on the case.

Unwilling, as ever, to account for public money he's been splashing out,  Mac berates and badmouth his detractors from the bully pulpit of his office, even unto accusing them of being 'Devil worshippers'.

No Mac, the devil is in the details and, unless Joe Public gets to see them, there could be Hell to pay.
(Not Hell, West Bay obviously -that's already been paid).

Are we there yet?

Freetard: defn

A person whose ability to make rational decisions is impaired by the possibility of receiving something for free.

 
I bumped into the Duke of Earl the other day. I'd heard he was more or less off the booze. He only ever drank to forget and his memory is so drink impaired these days that, while he still drinks on the days he recalls what he was trying to forget, on the days he forgets what he's trying to forget, he's dry. Sounds less complicated than is is.

Hi Duke, how's it goin'?

Do I know you?

Sure you do. It's me Baldy.

Did you used to have less hair?

Nah. I'm wearing a wooly hat.

OK. Hey, are you the one with the wife that looks like Schwarzenegger?

You got me

Take a seat my friend and tell me how it's been goin'.

I joined him on his park bench and we talked of this and that and how the world seemed to be going down the crapper.

Why is that Duke? What's going on?

Too many freetards. Too many people feel entitled to take out more than they'll ever put in. If this keeps up, we are headed, my friend, to government of the freetards, by the freetards, for the freetards.

Duke, I know places where that process is nearly completed.

You mean West Bay and Cayman Brac?

Bingo.

Here Today Gone Tomorrow

So how was your Rapture?

I had fun putting a scare into Mrs B.

Mrs B is a pretty hard case - think Sarah Palin on steroids suffering from industrial strength PMT and wearing a fright mask. But she can be credulous if something like The Rapture is repeated in the news often enough and she had been drawn in.

She says she married me for my sense of humor, and I married her out of conviction, or the possibility of getting one if I hadn't married her. I'm still not convinced you legally have to marry a girl just because you left the toilet seat up in her house on the first date.

I'm so careful about that now.
 
Ayhoo she got a shock on Saturday evening, Rapture Day, when she came out into the garden to find I was nowhere to be seen and my sole earthly garment, vacant of its occupant, on the lawn.

From my hiding place up in the tree I heard her gasp, "O-M-G,  O-M-G. He's been RAPTURED"

Ruptured would have been closer, I don't know about you but I haven't climbed a tree, naked and in a hurry, since I was about 12. Apart from our honeymoon. But it was worth the effort.

I was shaking with mirth so much the tree was swaying,  spooky, because there was no wind. Not yet anyway. But when I crammed my fist into my mouth to hold down a fit of giggles what was suppressed at one end found an exit at the other. Yea the trumpet shall sound!

Even that sulphurous blast could have passed for one of the signs and omens of doomsday if only my cap hadn't fallen off, causing Mrs B to rumble me and look heavenward.

"Hey Baldie, your end is in sight. And it ain't pretty."

With some effort I got down from the tree and Mrs B, seeing the funny side of things (she certainly laughed each time she looked up), helped by letting me stand on her shoulders and lowering me to the ground. It was just like the old days when we scrambled over the back wall to avoid her mother's visits. Ah memories!

"What's with all the goo on your ankles Baldie?"

"That's Vaseline honey, to help me slide back down the tree"

"Jesus you're weird"

It wasn't true: just in case the rapture really did arrive on Saturday night I'd smeared my ankles with Vaseline so Mrs B couldn't hold me back or hitch a ride.

Nurse! Nurse!! Quick, the screens.

Jeez! What's Gordon Barlow been smokin'? Is he about to check into the rubber room?

The brain-dump that was his blog on the shooting of Osama Bin Laden makes for worrying reading.

 

I don't see how his blog intro, using a mildly racist Irish joke, and the peppering of Dead Osama 'jokes' squares with the normally tight-assed PC credentials of Oral Gob Drown (anag.). Perhaps it was intended to leaven the over excited, nay spittle flecked, body of the post. Still, perhaps I shouldn't be judging him by his own standards.

Opinion varies on what happened, not helped by the authorities providing an initial (possibly wishfully pre-scripted) account of events that needed correcting - and then that correction needed correcting and so on.

So Osama Bin Laden is or isn't dead and did or didn't plan and commission the 9/11 attacks on NY and was or wasn't shot while armed or unarmed in front of his or someone else's 12 year old daughter who was or wasn't in the room.

To help Old Groan Brow (anag.) reconnect with reality I'll state this:

Bin Laden is dead - if he wasn't all he had to do is pop up on Al Jazeera reading that days Jihadi Forecast.

Bin Laden took credit (and hence a bullet) for stuff he may not have done because he was a fantasist and a dreamer

However, he incited the killing of civilians for political ends on many occasions and said he'd squared it with the Koran - making him a liar as well as a terrorist.  What he was all about can be read, in his own words, in media interviews he gave if you trouble to search the web.

Did he deserve to die? Well he kinda talked himself into it over the years.

Did he deserve to die the way he did? Well it was quick compared to roasting alive in one of the Twin Towers.

Should he have been killed in front of his daughter? No. And the same goes for the parent(s) of the  8 children, all younger than 12, who were killed in the planes used for the 9/11 attacks.

The American political establishment hasn't ever looked far beyond it's own immediate imperatives in pursuing 'The War on Terror' and sometimes, to the wider world, their actions come across as ill considered, breathtakingly insensitive and counter productive in propaganda terms. The Islamists are often the more subtle propagandists - doesn't make them right though.

Oft times one side acts no better than the other in any conflict but, if it's a choice of systems, I'm going for the one that has separation of powers in a written constitution, that lets you pick your God (or no God) and allows both men and women to become whatever they are capable of becoming. And I even apply that to Mrs B.

Note to Gordon: Mellow out man - try and find a nice little Merino, maybe the bleating will attract one.

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.

 

Endangered Species

Concern for conservation and preservation in the Cayman Islands is on the rise.

Wendy Ledger wrote recently in CNS -  A sea change ahoy -  about grass-roots environmental (and cultural) concerns that may coalesce to form a new political party.

If that were to happen then, ironically, yet another species, the MLA Parrot,  would be immediately and critically endangered.

In contrast to other parrot species, which can be highly communicative and intelligent, these ones are quiet most of the time although, as a group, (or an 'Assembly of Parrots' to use the correct collective noun) they can engage in noisy, ritual territorial displays. But they seem most content spending their days building and feathering large nests.

Until recently the public have tolerated these birds, some finding their mimicry, ostentatious preening and sometimes colourful antics amusing, but that mood is changing. Increasingly they are viewed as pests and a danger to Cayman's environment.


Do they have a future?  Possibly - for the ones that can adapt quickly enough.

Cat Fight - well, kinda.

Stop it Girls! Or at least wait until I can find a camera.

Babbity Barwick (a real person) was taken to task by Knal N Domp (the assumed persona of a late-middle-aged male Insurance Pro.) for being lukewarm in her affection for her adopted Grand Cayman home,  - as reported in the Financial Times "A gilded cage" (sic)


Not that Knal has ever had a bad word to say about Cayman
 


On reading the infamous article I was astounded by the nerve of the woman - these are actual quotes

"has a lovely coastline, gorgeous sea, beautiful beaches and big skies"

"The large variety of restaurants, though, are good"

"The Caymanian old-timers are real sweethearts, very moral and stoic."

and if those hate filled words don't make your gorge rise here's the clincher:

".. it is bliss here"

Given such provocation can Knal's ad feminam riposte be overlooked?

For those like Babbity Barwick, living in Cayman is something that has to be endured- like English sex- and whilst enduring, think only and constantly, of England.

Hmmm ... maybe Knal needs to take a look in the mirror: I mean apart from when he's having sex with himself.

Phonies

The deputy premier, who is the minister with responsibility for communications, will be leading a Cayman delegation to Spain for the Global System for Mobile Communications Association Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Juliana O’Connor-Connolly and the team will be leaving the Cayman Islands Friday for the four day conference, which is an annual telecommunications industry event, bringing together mobile telecommunications providers, regulators and policy-makers, officials said.

CNS Article

 Now read on ...

Telecoms guru Juliana O’Connor-Connolly sits in her new office mulling over whether to get another name extension and some wider headed notepaper when her Executive Aid enters bearing some Gatorade, a hearing aid, a bandaid and some marmalade. His job is to deal with anything ending in 'aid' or 'ade' and he carries stuff around with him in case it is suddenly needed.

'Yo JuJu whazzup!'

'You overpaid aid, are your manners mislaid? I expect an accolade and you, the aforesaid, won't need to be soothsaid to know when I upbraid you could get waylaid and bio-de-grade. Yunnerstand?

'A thousand pardons madam'

'Dat better. Now wha'appenin?'


'Sensational news madam. I heard that the head of AT&T is here in person to persuade all Cayman's millions to move to his phone network. And a man just arrived saying he was from AT&T'

'Well send him in, send him in. And leave the marmalade.'

In order to impress Mr AT&T Juliana O’Connor-Connolly picks up her new executive phone from her new executive desk  puts it to her not so new, but little used, executive ear and pretends to be talking to the head of Verizon.

As Mr AT&T enters, looking a tad casual - but maybe he's on vacation, she whispers 'You from AT&T?', he nods and she waves for him to take a seat and gushes on

' .... your offer of free phone calls for the first four years is an interesting one Mr Verizon but I think AT&T may offer five years. Also I think two cents an hour for calls to the USA could be improved on even allowing for the free broadband for all schools. Well I must go now the head of AT&T is waiting to speak to me. Bye'

Turning to her visitor she greets him and asks, 'So, can you help me improve Caymans's communications facilities?'

'I guess so. I'm here to connect that phone.'

Mary flips her Wig

I suppose an overheated brain is an occupational hazard of wearing 66 ounces (I'm guessing) of horsehair piled on your head in a hot climate.

How else to explain the actions against Caymanian Compass reporter, Brent Fuller, by The Legislative Assembly  Speaker, Mary Lawrence, for his report on the formation of a committee to 'look into' the Freedom of Information law?

Brent had his LA reporting 'privileges' revoked for 'the rest of the week' by the Speaker - at a Friday meeting of the LA ... and they don't work weekends.

That showed him!

However, this stupendous and (possibly) unprecedented punishment was not enough for MLA Ezzard Miller.

Before we go further let me explain that I am trying to avoid using the words 'shit' 'stirring' 'Ezzard' and 'Miller'  in the same sentence but the predictive text feature is adamant that they are inseparable and they have to appear either all together or not at all. Let me just adjust that feature ....

Now, to continue ...

According to Cayman News Service Ezzard was so incensed by the use of the word 'secret' that he wanted the Compass  and Brent Fuller prosecuted.

Ezzard Miller suggested the offence committed by the paper was the use of the word “secret” to describe closed door meetings of a select committee to discuss freedom of information and the implication in the article that lawmakers may do something “untoward during those deliberations”

I read Brent Fuller's report - the word secret (or secrecy) does not appear in it. Not once. In fact he seems to have gone out of his way not to use the word to describe the said sub-committee.

On the other hand the offending Compass editorial 'On WikiKeaks'  uses the word 'secret' several times about the committee and the general review process - who really cares about that process anyway, all the real deals are made outside the LA then wheeled in for rubber stamping.

However this editorial, in very loose language, pre-empts the outcome and forecasts a curtailment or neutering of Freedom of Information legislation . It is enough over the top that it could have come from Ezzard himself - although obviously it didn't. But whichever hand wrote the editorial it was clearly not Brent Fuller because it is so emotionally and stylistically different to his report.

Which means - to me at any rate - that conflating a fair and honest report by Brent Fuller with a sub-standard editorial barely fit for a blog has resulted in the MLA's voting to try and prosecute both the paper and the reporter.

Yes you read that right - a newspaper editorial opined that politicians were not the surest guardians of freedom of information, used the word 'secret' in a bad and hurtful way and Cayman's law making body voted to prosecute the newspaper and a reporter who never used the offending word in the first place.


As an aside, this is paradoxical progress of a sort - normally the expat would have the entire blame dumped on them, be given the bum's rush and everyone else would get back to enjoying their rice and beans.


What sort of shit-stirring politico could have tied up the legislative process for an entire day, made Mary, Mary so bloody contrary and made the Cayman Islands Legislative Assembly look like some cracker-barrel court in some jerkwater town that jails out of town jaywalkers just to liven up its day. There are no prizes for guessing the name - and it's time they grew up.

The 'dignity' of the Legislative Assembly has been more demeaned by its own actions than any snide press comment could have achieved.

Cock and Bull Story

So I'm in the kitchen gutting anchovies with a Bowie knife, Cayman style, when Mrs B. calls out ... 

' Hey Baldy! Did you see this headline in Cayman New Services 

"Man beaten with bull’s penis" '.

'No. Sounds like a stupid bet to me though. He was bound to loose'.

'Don't be dumb! Some guy attacked some other guy with a dried bull's penis'

'Why would a guy be wearing a dried bull's penis?'

'Jeeeeez! LISTEN!! Man A, armed himself with a dried bull's penis and whacked some other guy with it'

'Oh wow, I see! Wonder what their beef was?  Did the guy being bullied run off or fight back?'

'Doesn't say if he beat off his attacker or just beat it'

 

'Beating off a dried bull penis wouldn't be very easy would it?'

'No, I expect it would be quite hard'

'D'ya think the police will catch him'

'They should do. I mean a guy with a bull's penis would stand out in an identity parade wouldn't he?  Don't worry, they won't be requiring your presence.'

'WelI I think that's about as far we can go here ... the anchovies are ready. Where's the custard?'

Spoons don't kill people ... people kill people

 CNS Headline

Robber scared off with spoon

"An armed robber was foiled last night by a restaurant worker who threw a spoon at the culprit after he stole money from a female customer at Liberty's Restaurant."

------------------

 

Obviously the police should now be armed with ladles.

Depleted Uranium would be a good choice of material - plenty of heft.

UPDATE: Works for Tiger's too ! 

Woman fights off tiger with ladle

Publisher Hits Final Deadline

On the passing of Desmond Seales, Editor in Chief of Cayman Net News.

I try not to speak ill of the dead, not out of superstition, but because it's no challenge, like shooting fish in a barrel - in Desmond's case that would be a puffer fish surrounded by piranha.

I try and avoid instant canonization of the deceased too - which avoidance in Desmond's case is also like shooting said fish in said barrel; saint he wasn't.

Many a eulogy begins with John Donne's words,  No man is an island entire of itself  but I think Desmond came to believe he was the embodiment of  the Island -  something that explains how he came to quarrel, one-by-one, with other self-styled 'big fish' sharing the same conceit.

Cayman probably shaped Desmond more than vice versa. He came to reflect the quirks, contrariness and sometimes garbled logic characteristic of the Cayman Islands, for example how he treated people.

The smiling, welcoming face at the door, which turns away (and turns to thunder) to cuss a servant for being too slow, too noisy, too some-ting, then turns back, smiling radiantly in an instant. 

Or how he couldn't be wrong about anything even when he obviously was.

 The man in smoldering clothes denying he was struck by lightning because he was wearing a tin hat in a thunderstorm. "That hat saved me. Imagine what would have happened if I hadn't been wearing it when that thunderbolt hit".

Cayman Net News had the authentic tang of  Cayman culture, being the same gumbo of contradictions. It mixed high moral tone, inspired comment, blunt commonsense and devil-may-care jibes at the powerful with monumental pettiness, political toadying,  self-aggrandizement, and random mumbo jumbo. Sometimes all in the same article. Fascinating.

If there wasn't enough news for the day Net News wasn't above 'finding' some or if the news wasn't lively enough, augmenting it.

Eventually he overplayed his hand. Crucial, and fairly recent,  events that lead to there being less news and less influence for Desmond were

• outing of his own journalistic source of private government documents, (Charles Clifford) for personal reasons.
• alleged comments (which he denied making) about criminal contacts and police corruption that lead to the fiasco of Operation Tempura - the scale of the fiasco not being of his making.
• publication of letters (of  very dubious origin)  in Net News about the judiciary that triggered another investigation

These events made Desmond appear, at best, a journalistic Jonah and at worst Byronic including in the sense of being "mad, bad and dangerous to know."

Desmond was much more about politics than news over the last decade but I don't think he was ever really on a side in terms of party politics.  He was more like a floating voter, prepared to take a chance on change but also prepared to take his vote elsewhere if electoral promises were broken.

Whatever his faults and failures he was consistent in calling for a better quality of  politics and politicians, he believed both had to improve and advance if the Cayman Islands was to enjoy a happy future. This is from an editorial in May 2007.

Effective political leaders should serve in a transformational role, where they are able to outline a vision for the country and instill confidence through their works to transcend personal goals and ambitions for the collective good of the country. This transformational leadership has typically been lacking in the Cayman Islands, leaving the country searching for direction 

Amen to that.

Bury Desmond's faults with him but let that agitation for better politics be his legacy.

What should his epitaph be?   .. sticking to Donne, but paraphrasing him

"...never send to know for whom the press rolls; It rolls for thee"

With fitting irony Desmond becomes headline news in all the local media ... it's what he would have wanted.

'Type 42 Jamaican Canoe' visits Grand Cayman

HMS Manchester, a Type 42 Jamaican Canoe, is making an official visit to Grand Cayman.


Unsure  about the terminology?  Let me break it down for you.

A Jamaican Canoe is a type of boat used for drug running. They are slim, fast, open boats with two huge outboard motors and often very brightly painted. Can't imagine how they got their name.

HMS Manchester is a venerable, dull grey, British Navy 'Type 42' Destroyer now used for anti drug trafficking patrols in the Caribbean - if they can get the engine started.

Two type 42's were sold to the Argentinian Navy and were used by both sides in the Falklands War.

Twenty Eight years on a Type 42 has ended up on both sides of another conflict -  the drug wars.

A navy wren has been jailed for seven-and-a-half years for her part in trying to smuggle £1.9m of cocaine into the UK on board a warship

Teresa Matos, 37, picked up 4.94 kilos of the 100 per cent pure class A drug when HMS Manchester stopped at the port Cartagena in Columbia.

The cocaine was found on the Type 42 destroyer - which had been involved in anti-drug smuggling patrols in South America - when it arrived in Plymouth en route to Portsmouth last August.

Some of the drugs had been hidden in the lining in Matos's clothes, the rest was stashed in her locker.

[Various UK papers June 18th]

Hmmmm.

HMS Manchester cost about CI$ 132 million  - which figure is close to the CI$ 155 million that the CI Government needed permission from the UK government to borrow to balance the books.

It may be worth sending a sniffer dog aboard HMS Manchester, because if drugs were found on board and the ship is confiscated for drug running in the usual speedy manner, the original owners would have to bid at public auction against (say) Argentinian buyers.

It could fetch a very good price. Well above market price. Maybe as much as CI$ 155 million.

Yah Mon!
 

Bush to sue 'I Speak Your Weight Machine'?

Unreliable sources, ie. not Mr Bush hisself, report that the Premier's sensitivity to criticism has hit new heights and he is to sue an "I speak Your Weight Machine" for defamation. 

Apparently Premier Bush and Kurt Tibbets had a disagreement, about who weighed the most, that turned into a bet. Naturally only honour was at stake not money, because gambling is illegal here, and nothing illegal ever happens in Grand Cayman. Ever.

This was clearly an unwise wager by Kurt since, following the fitting of his gastric band, Mr Bush is less bulky than he was -  Bush Lite, as some wags have it. But it is heartening to find Mr Tibbets disagreeing with Mac on something.

Neither could produce a pair of scales that the other would trust and as it was a weekend the public weighbridge was closed, so they agreed to use a drug store I-Speak-Your-Weight machine that dispensed a printed card recording the weight.

"Yessuh let's have it on record", said Kurt, "That way you can't be puttin words into my mout'  later."

"The man quick enough to put anything in your mout' ain't been born. You so busy fillin it yourself nobody else can get at it", replied Mac.

Disregarding these observations on his appetite Kurt stepped up to the plate (no not that sort of plate) and caused some merriment saying  "This here machine is right up yah political street  Mac. It's Pay to Play".

Kurt patted his pockets looking for 10¢ to operate the machine but seemed to be out of change. Turning to Mac he asked, "Hey buddy, can you spare me a dime?  I'm broke. Like Cayman."

"Yeah! And you the one dat broke it",  Mac replied.

Kurt finally found a coin from a pocket and pressed it into the slot. The needle raced around the dial with an audible whoosh. Zero to Sumo in under a second.

The machine coughed out its verdict in polite metallic tones,  "One at a time please or you will damage the mechanism".

Mac quickly stepped in. "Kurt, you so heavy the needle on the dial is all the way round and bendin' up. Let me try it 'fore you break it."

The Premier mounted the scale's platform, half turned and winked to the growing crowd. "Now watch this".  He dropped his money (your money really) into the coin slot. The needle on the dial moved at a more leisurely pace this time: Mac smiled knowingly. When it stopped the machine's voice sounded out.

 "Whoah! You so fat when you haul ass you gotta make two trips" 

Mac stepped back, affronted, "Enough about my trips!  All I'm hearin' is too much trips this and too many trips that!  You mind out now 'cause I'm gonna sue your ass for every nickel you got."

 

Attempts to contact Mr Bush hisself for comments and verification on this story were unsuccessful as he was entrenched behind his new Wall of Silence in West Bay. If this one works other walls of silence will surely follow.

Send in the Clowns

Opening the new Legislative Assembly earlier this week Uncle Mac Bush (think Uncle Joe Stalin) praised the architects for capturing the essence of the new politics - a three ring circus housing a puppet show.

The event began in spectacular fashion. An expectant crowd awaited his arrival with baited breath and some cheers were raised as his expensively customized vehicle hove into view. As it glided to a standstill an usher strode forward to open the rear passenger door. But what's this? The door came off in the usher's hand followed by a deafening BANG! and vast plumes of brown smoke erupted as all the wheels sprang off.

Good old Mac, everyone knew the wheels would fall off sometime, only the timing was in question, but it was still finely entertaining.

On the door mirror was a warning sticker stating,  "Caution: With hindsight voters can appear more stupid than they actually are. Proceed with care."


Drawing up to the microphone, set against a backdrop of smoke and distorting mirrors, Mac gave a sometimes emotional, sometimes amusing, speech about a variety of topics.

He spoke of his true love for Cayman and, seeming to become a little tearful, drew out his green silk hankie to dab his eyes. But as he drew out the hankie out came many more multi-hued silks all knotted together until there were yards of colourful fabric draped around his feet.

"That's what happen when the Auditor General get hisself involved in drawing up a specification", he quipped, "Everything ends up oversized and overcomplicated. Yessuh! I wanted Dan the Man fired, from the canon, and, though some say we wouldn't,  I say we would find someone else of his calibre."

He also touched on the other circuses in town. "We only need one circus. Competition from the Media Circus and the Civil Circus for equal billing is no longer welcome. If they want to pull their stunts and have performing Seales and stuff like that they going to have to pay good fees in future." And he wasn’t talking about just $5000, “I’m talking over $100,000”. He indicated that in the future, so long as it was inside his tent, any public performer would be allowed to walk a tightrope, "mighty tight too", without fear of repercussions - or a safety net.

And talking of rope he said people had run out of it, Cayman had run out of it, and he'd given them all the rope he was going too. "The Civil Circus don't deliver the old rope we pay them for and we just don't make the stuff anymore" - although that could change depending on the economic situation, which Sideshow Jefferson was juggling with but  it was all up in the air at the moment.

Heart ruling the head?

Sooo ... is the early excitement about Dr Shetty's plan for Medical Tourism as misplaced as it was for "Dr" Syed? 

The University College of the Cayman Islands (UCCI) has announced the appointment of Dr. Hassan Syed as its new President, following a rigorous search and selection process, which was undertaken in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Training, Employment, Youth, Sports & Culture.

The Education Minister, Hon. Alden McLaughlin, expressed his delight at Dr. Syed's appointment by saying that, "This heralds the beginning of an exciting new chapter in UCCI's history.

He added, "We are delighted to have an education professional of Dr. Syed's caliber at the helm of this Caymanian institution, especially one who is so accomplished in the local community.

The Ministry looks forward to a long and productive partnership with Dr. Syed and the University College".

That all turned out well didn't it? The "partnership" was neither notably long nor productive.

Behind the blizzard of bullshit from McLaughlin lay a simple truth:  Syed was bought and paid for (at quite some expense as it turned out) to lower standards to enable the 'Graduation' of  slack-jawed children of dimwitted voters. A good attendance record was all you needed to show up in the hired academic hat and gown and get the Graduate photo that proved to your Grandma's satisfaction that you were a genius.

Shetty actually is a Doctor (MD)  -  whereas Syed was a pretend "My Little Pony" Phd so there's one cause for optimism.

But whatever is supposed to be cooking here I will bet my right testicle (Mrs B already has the left one) it isn't what is finally served up. Land deals - yes. Some foundations being laid - yes. Money coming in from investors - yes.

But then what?


The business model that works in low cost India isn't going to translate well to high cost Cayman - the production line high-thoughput approach isn't a good match with the caribbean ambiance either.  But rather than build a smaller facility and learn what could work it's going to be a 2,000 bed hospital for cardiac surgery from the get go.

What worries me is the plethora of crowd pleasing distraction statements  now flowing from Dr Shetty that make him sound oh so political. 

 In recent media presentations the "Heart Factory" morphs into a general hospital which could mean general world class medical care right here on Cayman (just like UCCI was going to be the new Harvard). The prospect of large scale medical training opportunities for Caymanians is bandied about. Other jurisdictions wanted this facility but Shetty's heart is set on Cayman.  Why is any of this old flannel needed if the original business model stands up?

Is Mac going to cash in on the land deal whatever happens next?
Is Shetty's heart in the right place or will he cash in on his investors and bail out?

Or am I being heartless to even think this way?

The Quality of Mercy

Jury hung in Bodden trial
CNS news article

That is one strict Judge - and all because they couldn't agree a verdict.

No wonder people don't want to do jury service.

I wonder what happened to the defendant?

Glad he wasn't on my case after I got into that fight with the nuns at the zoo.

It was a mistake anyone could have made.

I was standing by the penguin pool and turned around to see what I though was a clutch of escapees so I started tossing 'em back over the fence. It was damp weather and my glasses were misted up,

OK I'd had a couple of drinks, but so had they by the fight they put up - and the language!!

Still got some bitemarks from that one. Sister's of Mercy my eye!

Why people read Blogs

My expectation of hearing 'reality' from realty people isn't that high so I was more amused than surprised to find this website  http://www.caymanluxuryproperty.com/island-lifestyle * still telling it like it isn't.

"The Cayman Islands have for many years enjoyed a thriving economy with literally zero unemployment"

"The cost of living may be about 20% higher here than in the United States (one U.S. dollar is worth only about 80 Cayman cents), but you won't  .... feel afraid to walk around at night. The reason being, it is one of the safest islands in the Caribbean. The crime rate is very low because there are no guns allowed"

 

"Add political and economic stability and you have a secure environment for the whole family."

Is that a class act or a class action, what do you think?

Wake up and smell the cordite!

* Caution - website loads slow as a dog and hogs all your browser resources.