After all the political shenanigans of last week, it is noted that no sooner had the governor’s feet left the tarmac last Thursday for London than government called a Cabinet meeting on Friday, which was chaired by his deputy. The deputy premier was acting as premier, since Premier Dr. Orlando Smith also left for London on Friday. I don’t know on which side of the fence the deputy governor leans, but I don’t need to tell you why the British government insists that the governor chairs Cabinet meetings. I wonder what was so important? I thought Cabinet meetings were usually held on Wednesdays?

 

NPT kudos

Partly because of the aforementioned, there were none of the scheduled bigwigs at the Arbour Day celebrations and reopening of the J.R. O’Neal Botanic Gardens on Friday. Instead they sent various underlings. It has taken some time, but the National Parks Trust has done a good job so far in reinvigorating the gardens. Of course, they lost many of the big trees, but they have completed about two thirds of the garden. They have repaired the outer fence, they are working on electrics and watering systems, and they have neatly fenced off the lower third below the pond and bridge so that visitors can have a circular walk in the completed areas. I’m pleased to say the red-legged tortoises and fish survived. Not sure about the birds. So now they are able to welcome tourists and residents to a quiet spot in town.

NPT gets quite a bit of funding from the European Union, but not much from government, so they are worried about the outcome of Brexit in case their funds are cut off. I expect they are still suffering from that huge loss on the pop concert that was supposed to be a fundraiser but turned into a debacle. It’s nice to see Ronnie Thomas back working there.

 

Pennies

Saving some time ago I made mention in response to an article by Dickson Igwe about the differences between poor and rich (people and countries). I said that in simple terms the poor throw away their pennies outside the supermarkets, and the rich pick them up to spend or save. Last week on the BBC News site there was an article about a man in the United States who saved such pennies for 45 years! It reached a point where he had so many in demijohns that he could not get insurance cover. So he decided to cash them in. It took a truck to get them to the bank, needed a trolley to wheel them in, and took several people, with several coin counting machines, over five hours to count and bag them. Guess what the total was? Over $5,300! That’s 530,000 pennies! I think the picker uppers here have been leaving them for me, because I have had a bonanza since I got back last month. But I use them to buy the Beacon, so don’t think I will reach $5,000-plus, or live for another 45 years to do so!

 

Open letter on WSD

And now, an open letter to the minister of communications and works.

Hurricane Irma swept away our public water supply meter and pipework, leaving us with no connection and no water. Water supply in Sea Cows Bay is so bad that we did not want to bother anyone for a while. However, I eventually found out that WSD had been charging us the monthly meter rental “because we had not asked for it to be disconnected.” One assumes that in order to make a monthly bill someone must have come to read the meter, and would have found it missing. So we applied for a disconnection and paid the final bill.

In June I inquired about a reconnection, and was told, “We have no meters. We have no meters on order. We do not know when we will have any meters. We do not know whether the department has funds or not. That is above our pay grade.”

Today I visited again to ask the same question, and was given exactly the same answers.

This means that the department cannot be making any new connections or repairing existing installations. So one wonders what the staff are doing all day?

Can you please advise what is the situation with regards funding for the WSD, and when they may expect to be able to order some meters and make connections? I presume the budget will be coming shortly and trust that there will be allocations for WSD — enough to buy some meters at least.