Passing the Buck

Two lawyers are having lunch in a restaurant when armed robbers burst in. As the robbers start taking money and valuables from the other customers one lawyer presses something into the other's hand under the table.

Without looking down, the second lawyers whispers, "What's that?"

"That's the $100 I owe you".

That's the way the new private finance initiative is going to work for Cayman - everybody looses out except the crooks but by manipulating the timing of repayments the smart people loose no more than they stood to loose anyway.

Maybe the smart people don't loose at all in the long run, what if the crooks from the story get caught and the lawyer who borrowed ends up representing them ... on legal aid.

Lord how the money goes round - until it runs out, which is has.

The word "tax" is not to be used in polite company on Cayman; the expression "live within your means" is akin to profanity too. Civil Servants seem to have become a protected species - though Mac's attitude to whistling ducks leaves the worth of protected status open to doubt.

No pain no gain. The central issues of how Cayman will control public expenditure and repay borrowing have been daintily stepped over like a sleeping drunk and the focus has shifted to who it will borrow from in a bid to continue to live beyond its means.

Hopefully the financial backer for this "Borrow your way out of debt" strategy will be a fool, from whose money we can soon part him, and not a rogue.

Meantime better add another storey to one of the new government buildings for the section that is going to deal with PFI tendering and compliance issues and the entourage of lawyers, accountants and consultants that attend it.

Can you tell a Wopper from a Mac?

Desperate times call for desperate measures - but there never seems to be a desperate time handy when you could use one to cut a few corners.



Lacking a Reichstag to burn down Big Mac and his Small Fry's have been rubbing sticks together and blowing hard to create smoke. Financial Secretary Kenneth "Trust Me" Jefferson has provided tinder via a financial crisis in government and there is now a small blaze started.



You see because of the appalling state of financial reporting by Government bodies, five years behind in most cases, we have to take the word of the FS whether the CI Government is solvent or otherwise.



In March, according to the FS, government was farting through silk but a few weeks later it was headed for Skid Row - without the figures who's going to prove him wrong?



Though they were unable to basically do their jobs and get the Civil Service to produce proper accounts for the last five years Mac doesn't seem to hold this against George McCarthy, the Financial Secretary who evangelized for Government's new and failed accounting system and Jefferson who succeeded him when McCarthy was made Chief Secretary.



I guess if they are nice to him he owes it to be nice to them. Same church too probably. In any event Mac's prayers have been answered - this crisis is a political godsend.

Who knows, the phrase "Cayman's first Minister of Finance" could be floating around too.


All manner of things will be justified by the financial crisis and being able to turn it on and off with a nod to Jefferson is icing on the cake.

Is it just me or does anyone else see the return to the days of the political three way split? "You run politics, we run business, the Governor goes birdwatching".

Now that's what I call a Big Mac

Another PR coup for the Ministry of Truth

If there truly was no such thing as bad publicity we wouldn't have PR departments tagging along like pilot fish cleaning the teeth of the shark after a kill.

I see PR as a necessary evil, with very little emphasis on the word necessary, so it was sweet to see government's sub-prime PR department deal cack-handedly with an issue concerning themselves.

The Caymanian Compass submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for disclosure of how much public money is paid as remuneration to the CI Government's official pill-sweetener at the Ministry of Truth (or to use approved official titles the Chief information Officer at Government Information Services)

The GIS line is that the salary of its CIO is a private matter. Hmmm.

How do the salaries of government jobs, which have to be publicly advertised along with other key job details, become 'personal & private information' once somebody has been appointed to said job?

GIS's shroud-waving, citing, 'privacy' and 'civil service morale' as serious concerns, seems misguided at best. Why try to obscure something that should already be in the public domain? Assuming that the job was correctly advertised.

GIS is like an old mutt ready to bury everything a bit smelly that it comes across but maybe this reaction isn't classic GIS. Could there be another reason for the secrecy?

Once possibility is that actual remuneration received and the advertised salary could be two quite different figures if extra payments are made outside of government's official salary scales.