Bahamas Blog

Tourism honcho Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace once said that the Caribbean was all "painted with the same brush", meaning that Americans viewed the region as one entity.

If that's true, and I think it is, then the following article does not bode well for the region.

Gay Tourist Healing After Caribbean Island Attack
It is time for Americans to reassess their relationship with islands such as Jamaica, St. Maarten and the Bahamas.

The Bahamas' hatred of gays was broadcast internationally after the banning of Brokeback Mountain. Many still remember the lesbians who were chased down Bay Street by so-called Bahamian "Christians" a few years ago.

Crime is already rampant in The Bahamas and tourists are more and more becoming the victims.

It doesn't take a leap of the imagination to realize that it is only a matter of time before incidents such as the one mentioned in the article above become a daily event here.

I mean we already had a Detention Centre guard beat an Amercian reporter. (What ever happened about that? I heard the Bahamas Government paid the reporter a lot of money to "forget about it".) So, we know Bahamians are violent towards foreigners.

Sounds like there needs to be a massive "attitude change" on the part of Bahamians, before we end up scaring away all of our potential visitors.

Defence Force Officers on US Stop List

Yesterday, before addressing the allegations, Mr Wilson apologised for misinformation he supplied to the newspaper concerning the aircraft's location.

Mark Wilson, permanent secretary at the Ministry of National Security, came clean regarding the new turbo aircraft bought for the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, which has been grounded in Nassau for several months.

After telling the Guardian that the plane was out of the country for repairs, Wilson admitted to the Tribune that the Defence Force airwing officers assigned to fly the plane were on the US stoplist. And an incident in Cuban airspace also factored into its grounding.

If you ask me, I'd say the man was trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes. The Guardian had published a photo of the plane at Nassau International Airport. How could a guy in charge of our national security be so clueless.

Besides, if the permanent secretary at the Ministry of National Security doesn't know where the damn plane is, who the hell does?

And the revelation that senior officers in the Royal Bahamas Defence Force are so tainted that they are not allowed to travel to the United States is both disgusting and embarrassing.

It is probably a threat to our national security, as well.

Cynthia Pratt, the Minister of National Security; Mr. Wilson; Commadore Davy Rolle of the Defence Force and at least six of his senior officers should be removed from their positions. A few of them probably belong in jail.

Mudda sik! We have criminals "protecting" our nation.

BTW - Misinformation Mark Wilson, scandal-ridden George Wilson and gangsta-businessman Franklyn Wilson - are these three scoundrels related? Why are the honest Wilsons not making the headlines?

The Bahamas' largest Internet service provider had a complete breakdown of all company functions on Monday morning.

In a spectacle of incompetence at every level, company representatives dropped the ball, lied, stalled and left customers, who called for information, on hold for up to ten minutes at a time.

One customer, calling to find out why his Internet service was not working, was put on hold, transfered repeatedly and lied to by several different Cable Bahamas employees in a frustrating 55 minute example of how not to run a cable company.

Finally, getting through to a technical representative, the customer was told Cable Bahamas had experienced no outages and that the problem must be on his own computer. After the frustrated customer scolded the Cable Bahamas technical representative and told him to "stop lying and tell the truth", the tech rep admitted that the company had indeed suffered a service disruption and that several areas of New Providence had been affected.

Attempts to reach the company president, Tony Butler, to inform him of the abysmal service were thwarted by employees who wouldn't even bother to put the call through, instead leaving conflicting reasons why Mr. Butler was not available.

Customers were first told Mr. Butler was "not in the building", and later, that he was "in a meeting".

A message left for Mr. Butler was never repsonded to.

One could literally hear the disdain dripping from the voices of the customer service representatives as they put customers on hold for unusually long periods of time. Only to return to the phone and lie or "intentionally misinform" the very people who are paying their salaries.

The woman who initially answered the phone sounded like she was on drugs with a bored, disinterested voice and a slurring to her speech that made it almost impossible to understand what she was saying.

Culture of Lying

It appears that it is the company's "secret mandate" to never reveal or admit that they experienced any technical difficulties. So many Cable Bahamas employees lie and mislead customers that it appears as if the company has developed a culture of lying and hiding the truth from customers.

"Do we have the makings of a Worldcom or an Enron here?" one Bahamian business analyst questioned. "A company with a culture of dishonesty?"

"This is the same company that was accused of stealing Internet connectivity from the Bahamas Telecommunications Corporation.

"This is the same company that has been bought and sold so many times that it would raise the concerns of any security investigator in a properly regulated environment.

"This is the same company that allegedly pirates satellite signals from the US, then resells the programming to Bahamian customers.

"Yes, I'd say we are dealing with a corporate culture that eschews the ethics and morals of proper business dealings."

Apparently, with their investments in Jamaica and the US, their Maxil data centre operations, coupled with their recent stock buyback; the executives at Cable Bahamas no longer feel a need to treat Bahamian customers with dignity, respect or honesty.

In fact, they appear to be treating Bahamian Internet customers with utter contempt, now that providing Internet service to Bahamians has become such an insignificant part of their business plan.

300 police officers were given a promotion yesterday, despite the fact that overall crime has increased and violent crime rages out of control.

Magistrates are threatening to strike, despite the fact that they have turned the courts into a revolving door, and the justice system in The Bahamas into nothing less than a circus.

Teachers are agitating for more money, despite the fact that the national grade average is a D.

Hotel employees want higher wages, yet hospitality service in The Bahamas is the worst in the region.

BTC wants to raise phone rates, yet they already charge too much and provide a sub-standard service.

Cable Bahamas wants an increase in cable rates, yet they never lived up to their initial contract to wire all Family Islands.

Politicans want our vote after mismanaging the government and screwing us over the entire time they've been in office.

What's wrong with this picture?

The recent presidential selection process at the College of The Bahamas was all about politics, about Bahamianization, about foreigners vs. Bahamians, about white vs. black and about Frankie Wilson's mis-management.

It was never about education.

COB will never achieve "university" status until education becomes the primary focus.

And that will never happen until they get rid of the ethically-challenged gangsta' that sits as chairman of the College Council.

In the most recent INSIGHT column, in The Tribune newspaper, commentator John Marquis warns that anti-foreign attitudes, which are fast reaching the xenophobic level, are "not a good idea."

He notes that PLP critics remember that anti-foreign bias was used as a powerful electoral tool in the past and it's hard for some of the party die-hards to shake off the habit.

"Whipping up anti-foreign fervour was a key role of the 1960s goon squads and became a recurrent characteristic of the Pindling era right into the 1990s," Marquis writes.

He also suggests that, "this unscrupulous manipulation of grassroots emotions may no longer be the force it was."

One reason: "College educated Bahamians are more savvy in the ways of the world than old-style party supporters used to be. It's not as easy for politicians with law degrees to lord it over simple island folk as they used to and walk away with the spoils of power."

Could this new crop of enlightened voters change the emphasis on anti-white, anti-foreign rhetoric? Or are we set to watch three months of Roots again.

Anti-Foreign Attitudes Are Not A Good Idea