Yet another news website launched this month.
At the BVI HotPress launching ceremony, company representatives and politicians complained that the Virgin Islands media don’t report enough good news.
I was chagrined, because no one remembered to point out that the Beacon reports lots of good news every week.
For example, our front page last Thursday included two very positive stories: the graduation at H. Lavity Stoutt Community College and the Queen’s birthday parade.
Front-page articles the previous two weeks covered Friendship Day, the BVI Music Festival and a Caribbean Development Bank loan.
In fact, every issue of the Beacon has positive coverage throughout.
Of course, I can’t say that all our articles fit this bill. In recent weeks, we have also reported on crime, court, government mismanagement, project delays, and other decidedly negative issues.
We have to cover such topics, because we’re not the BVI Tourist Board.
Still, now that HotPress has promised to focus on the sunny side of life, I decided to take my good-news game to the next level.
To that end, I put on my happy glasses and rewrote a few recent articles.
Ag breaks new ground
In a time when the global tourism industry is extremely competitive, the Agriculture Department has made Brewers Bay unlike any other beach in the Caribbean.
When a cow died near the ocean three weeks ago, a team of agriculture workers didn’t see it as a problem: They saw it at it as an opportunity.
Soon, they had dug a hole and buried the cow underneath a large mound of sand.
The burial caused an angry outburst from many residents, who appeared to be accustomed to a more conventional beach.
But the department stuck to its guns, agreeing only to move the carcass to another location farther away from the water.
Now the beach is believed to be unique: Of the hundreds of tourist beaches in the Caribbean, none has a dead cow buried on it, to the best of the Beacon’s knowledge.
This means that tourists who love dead cows almost certainly will choose Tortola.
If they hurry, they may get a chance to catch a whiff of decaying flesh while their children play “King of the Stinking Mound.”
The burial is in keeping with the territory’s recent push to diversify its tourism offerings from the typical “sun and sand.”
So far, however, there have been no reports that the BVI Tourist Board will change its catchphrase to “Dead Cow Welcomes You.”
Shortfall could be worse
The territory’s revenue shortfall is not nearly as bad as it could have been.
As of May 31, revenue was 39 percent lower than originally projected, Premier Ralph O’Neal told the House of Assembly on Tuesday.
Though this may seem bleak, it also means that revenue was not 40 percent lower than projected.
Nor was it 41 percent lower, or 42 percent lower.
By the same token, it was not 50 percent lower, or 60, 70, 80 or even 95 percent lower.
True, the 39 percent figure may mean that the territory will have to make some difficult decisions in the coming months. But those decisions could have been much more difficult.
If the shortfall had been 50 percent or higher, for example, government might have been forced to make meaningful reforms in the public service.
If it had been 75 percent, senior public servants may have had to trade in their government SUVs.
With a 99 percent shortfall, the entire public service could have been laid off.
And if revenue were down 100 percent, even legislators may have had to take a pay cut.
With a shortfall of only 39 percent, government will continue to function — probably.
At the very least, residents can rest assured that all projects in hotly contested election districts will proceed as planned. At least until November.
Sustainable profits
Caribbean oil and fuel companies can breathe a sigh of relief.
As countries around the region have begun to turn to alternative energy, industry insiders feared that such companies would go out of business.
They need not have worried.
Even in the face of growing peer pressure, one territory has stubbornly refused to go green: the Virgin Islands.
While progressive governments have promoted wind and solar power, the VI has maintained the status quo with legislation that actually discourages alternatives. And when a major grocery store tried to build a large solar array, the government bravely withheld permission.
In this day and age, few leaders would have the courage to make this decision.
In the coming years, experts say, oil will become scarce and its price will spike. This likely will prompt residents in other Caribbean countries to accelerate the switch to green energy.
VI residents, on the other hand, will have no choice but to pay outrageous electricity bills.
For the region’s oil and fuel companies, that’s good news indeed.