Blowing Point

Dolphinarium Construction Begins at Blowing Point. I really am not focused on the dolphins. They are the national symbol of Anguilla. Their exploitation by a Mexican company, with the connivance of Anguillian officials, for the amusement and entertainment of hamburger-eating cruise ship passengers from neighbouring St Maarten, is curious at least. The general opposition to the project in Anguilla has not moved our government. Other than that, I have no interest in dolphins.

The three dolphins on the Anguilla rebel flag shown above stand for friendship, wisdom and strength, according to the website Flagspot. The three dolphins are coloured orange to represent endurance, unity and strength. The circle stands for continuity. The flag has a white background, for peace and tranquility, with a turquoise-blue base representing the surrounding sea and also faith, youth and hope. What irony!

The current official flag shown above, a blue ensign with a dolphin badge, was adopted on 30 May 1990 with much pride and fanfare. I remember the events well. As I recall, Colville Petty served as Chair of the committee, and I was a naïve and enthusiastic member of it. Little did I know at the time what use we were to make of these intelligent and friendly symbols not twenty years later.

The story that catches my interest is the report that the relocation of the dolphinarium from Meads Bay to Sandy Ground and now to Blowing Point has not been conducted within the rules and laws that govern Anguilla. Official approval and encouragement of wrongdoing is the real meat in the dolphin story. The Land Development Control Committee advising government has placed reliance on Environmental Impact Statements that have been described by the experts as mere “lobbying documents, insubstantial and shallow”. Their decision to approve the project in the face of all the evidence that it is of no advantage to Anguilla’s tourism plant, causes most Anguillians to wonder. The Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association is in the process of conducting a poll among its members. Preliminary results indicate that upwards of 90% are opposed to it, on the ground that none of Anguilla’s tourists and few Anguillian residents visit it. Placing a wild animal circus in a high-end city suburb has never been a town and country planner’s idea of how to add value and improve the environment!

This Saturday’s Daily Herald Weekender section carries a front page story by Suzanne Koelega detailing the whole sad chronicle of events. It is an eye-opener for anyone who is not familiar the story.

Here are some photos of the new construction under way. You can draw your own conclusions.

This shows one of the pens under construction.

This shows what I imagine will be the jetty out to the pens.

This shows the Anguilla ferries at Blowing Point harbour, moored not more than a couple of hundred yards away, up-current from where the dolphins will be caged. I understand the EIS reports hopefully that the diesel and gasoline and the noise of the engines will have no adverse effect on the captive animals.

The above photo shows one of the ferries darting out of the harbour, just a few yards up from one of the new dolphin pens under construction. You do not have to be a dolphin expert to imagine what damage this activity will do to the caged animals with their delicate echo-location equipment being assaulted twice every half hour in this fashion. Not to mention all the inevitable spilled fuel and oil. But, then we all know that dolphins like to swim in dirty water, and suffer no adverse effect from it.

I had thought that the new dolphin facility would be on the actual sandy spit at Blowing Point. We have been referring to it as the new dolphinarium “at Sandy Point”. However, the above photo shows it being constructed some distance to the east of the spit, and close to the business places and the ferry terminal just to the east and in the near background of the photograph.

Then, of course, there are the new homes that are going up to the west, down current from the dolphinarium. You can see one going up to the right of the above photograph. Heaven alone knows what it will be like to swim in all that rotting, uneaten, dead fish and dolphin excrement that will be flowing in their direction. And, where will the Anguillians who used to picnic on this pristine location go to enjoy themselves in the future? And, what is going to happen to these “fish” when the next, inevitable hurricane strikes?

I am told that one bus driver who has a lucrative contract to take the cruise ship passengers from St Maarten, who are the main users of the dolphinarium, and two ferry boat operators, who have similar contracts, were the only lobbyists in favour of the dolphinarium. Their alleged mortgages outweighed all the other interests in moving the government of the day to approve the project.

How will the Hon Hubert Hughes answer to his political constituents when the inevitable merde hits the propeller, I ask myself? As the Chief Minister has admitted in another context, “Mistakes have been made.”

Dolphin steak, anyone?

Journalism

The Role of the Media in Exposing Corruption. I was very interested to read a recent speech by Victor Hart. He is the Chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute. He was addressing the 27^th General Conference of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association. The meeting was held in Nassau from 23-26 January. The theme of the conference was Innovative Ways of Exposing Corruption – The Media and the People. Anyone wishing to read a copy of his speech, just email me.

He urged journalists to bring to their job more professionalism by proper checking of sources to ensure factual, legal and ethical content in their reports.

He asked them to show more balance in their reporting by eliminating all personal, political and other bias and challenged them to expand their areas of interest and to do more research.

He encouraged them to practise more investigative journalism.

Turning to the owners and managers of Media Houses, he urged them to give more support to their journalists by providing adequate resources and a work environment free from interference.

He asked them to reject the indolence of those reporters and editors who accept and publish 'set pieces' of news and press releases without searching to find the real stories behind the headlines.

They should make their journalists understand that quality and not quantity is what is expected of them and should encourage them to ask the hard questions without fear or favour.

It seems to me that we in Anguilla could have benefitted from our various media houses attending this conference. I sense that Anguillians would love to see any investigative journalism at all taking place. Anguillian media houses have made a science of accepting and publishing “set pieces” of news and press releases. We never search to find the real stories behind the headlines. We have no interest in quality, only in quantity. We never ask the hard questions. We only act from fear or favour.

Or is this an exaggeration?

Business Licence

No, there Are No Licences Required in Anguilla for Doing Business. I cannot believe it. A civil service friend of mine contacted me recently. He had been told that he had to get a business licence to continue to do his photography business. He has a good camera. He tells me that he has been taking photographs for years. He has started to earn some money from his hobby. He does not have a photo studio, just his home. He does not have a sign outside his home advertising that he is doing business from there. He has no studio in his home. All his advertising is by word of mouth. He has got some real lucrative commercial work recently. Word has got back to the Inland Revenue. Someone in his department tapped him on his shoulder and told him that questions were being asked. Did he have a business licence? If he did not get a licence he was going to get in trouble! So, he had gone to Inland Revenue and paid for and obtained the licence. It cost him about US$1,000.00. He has been told he has to renew it annually.

He asked me the question. Did he need a business licence to do what he was doing? The answer is a resounding NO! There is no licence required for doing business as such in Anguilla. There never has been.

About 20 years ago, Lawyer Fred Kelsick tested the law. Fred Kelsick was a St Kitts lawyer. He has died now. He used to come to Anguilla to represent his clients in court and give advice and other legal services. Charlie Gumbs of the Quarter was his agent. You made appointments by contacting Charlie to find out when Mr Kelsick was coming next to Anguilla. Mr Kelsick interviewed his clients outside the court house, under the loblolly tree that is still there. That was the old court house, which we now know as the “Statistics Department”. The police served a summons on Mr Kelsick. It had been approved by the Attorney-General. The charge was for working as a lawyer in Anguilla without a business licence contrary to section 3 of the Trades, Businesses, Occupations and Professions Act. I do not remember who the Magistrate was. He threw out the charge. The Magistrate ruled that you don’t need a licence to do business in Anguilla.

You do not have to be a lawyer to see why he threw out the charge and told the police not to harass Mr Kelsick. You only have to be able to read a simple sentence. Section 3 of the Act reads:

Obligation to obtain licence to carry on certain trades, businesses, occupations and professions

3. Every person carrying on any trade, business, occupation or profession set out in the Schedule shall take out an annual licence in accordance with the provisions of this Act in respect of each premises or place where such trade, business, occupation or profession is carried on, and shall only carry on such trade, business, occupation or profession from such premises or place.

It should be obvious. The licence is in respect of “each premises or place where such trade, business, occupation or profession is carried on”. If you set up an office in your home, advertise it, and have customers come to your home to conduct the business, it is arguable that your home is a place of business. But, if you only practice your profession in a public place like a courthouse, and interview your clients under the loblolly tree, then you do not have a place of business that can be licensed. Nor do you have to.

The late Clement Daniels used to have a retail business called Galaxy Shoppe. It had two outlets. One was at Wallblake. He had another branch at The Valley where Brodie runs his retail outlet. He had two places of business. He had to obtain two licences under the Act.

My friend does not have a place of business. What he is doing does not require a place of business. He goes out on assignment to take photographs. He is photographing a wedding at a hotel one day, at an event of one kind of another at a different place the next day. The Act goes on to say that if you do have a licensed place of business, you cannot open additional branches all over the island. If does not say that you cannot carry on a business without having a licensed place of business. Do you think that my friend needs a licence?

Well, do we need an Ombudsman in Anguilla, or do we not?

I told my civil service friend I hoped he had permission from the Governor to be doing an outside business. But, that is another story.

Labour

Illegal Exploitation by Anguillians of Cheap Foreign Labour. So, what’s the latest scam in Anguilla? Come on! If you do not give me the information, I cannot be expected to go and ferret it all out by myself. There must be lots of interesting scams going on in Anguilla right now.

I mean, in addition to the contractors who go down to West End every Sunday before dawn and fill their pick-up vans with Chinese labourers from the Ashtrom project. The activity is done out in the open, even if admittedly a little early in the morning. No one from Immigration does a thing to stop them. You don’t believe me that any Anguillian contractor could be so greedy and careless? Why not do like I did? Stand at the intersection of the road to Great House Hotel and the South Hill Main Road for half an hour early on a Sunday morning. I was on my exercise walk at about 7:00 am. You don’t have to torture yourself like me. Just stand there for a half hour. I saw seven contractors’ pick-ups pass me filled with Chinese. They seemed to be in a hurry. The Chinese were laughing and looking around them. Some even made a feeble attempt to hide behind the doors of the pick-up. That was difficult to manage with six of them squeezed in the cabin. Mostly, they just looked happy. Happy to be out and about and earning some real money.

I checked with one of my contractor friends. This illegal practice has been going on for months now. The Chinese are paid US$60.00 for the one day’s work. The contractor charges the owner of the house he is building the usual US$100.00 to US$150.00 per worker per day for supplying such expert labour, and on a Sunday. And, they are expert labour. I am told that they do in that one day, Sunday, working from dawn to dusk, as much work as the average West Indian worker would do in a week. I feel bad about writing this. They are so earnest and so hard working, and so deserving of their pay. Working four Sundays a month they take home as much as they earn working for Ashtrom six days a week for the entire month.

But, should our sympathy for the plight of the Chinese allow this illegal activity to continue? Should we allow these contractors to flout the law with impunity? These Chinese may be here in Anguilla legally to work for Ashtrom. But, they are not permitted to work on outside jobs. If we say nothing, when the next contractor starts importing cheap illegal labour to be able to compete, what are we going to tell him? When you and I start employing our own personal illegal cheap labour, who will be the first to get prosecuted? Is it that we don’t care if we turn into another St Maarten development madhouse?

Has somebody been paid off?

Where are the ethics in all this confusion? Who is in charge here? Do our laws mean nothing? Come on, tell me what is going on!

No News

I Have Very Little News: Perhaps, the headline is more accurate. I practically have no news. That is why I have not updated the blog for several days.

Unless, you think that the news of the relocation of the dolphins to Blowing Point is news!

Planning and Executive Council permissions and leases have been granted, in spite of the criticisms of the people of Blowing Point who will now have a circus in their midst! In spite of the nuisance that this development will cause its neighbours! In spite of the realization that this relocation must ensure that the Blowing Point taxi-drivers will never again earn a penny from the business! Dolphinarium customers will simply walk there from the ferry!

Yes, that is the public access to the beach. This development will inevitably destroy one of the public's last accesses to a popular beach and picnic site!

Yes, that pretty white building you see in the background, behind one of the newly installed pilings, is the ferry terminal. The dolphins will love breathing its spilled fuel and fumes! Their echo location sensors will just have to learn to put up with the ferry engines!

The lease and permits were granted based of one of the most idiotic “environmental impact statements” you have ever read in your life. It was written in a semi-literate style, but was no doubt well funded. This report should have been all the evidence government needed to tell these people to go away. The other EIS was very well written, but by a notoriously pro-dolphin-circus engineering company. They are a reputable company, but they build dolphinariums, for Heaven’s sake!

And, government does not subject these two reports to expert scrutiny of its own?

Nor hold the sort of public consultations they promised in signing the Environmental Charter?

But, then, I hate to say, “I told you so!”

Nothing More

Time for Written Submissions to the Foreign Affairs Committee has been Extended to 31 January. There has been no announcement in Anguilla. Not by government. Not in the local press. Not on a single radio station. There has been a deathly hush all over. No, it is neither a conspiracy nor fear. It is pure indifference. We Anguillians have it good. Financially, at least. We have no time for concerns about where our island is going. We are busy earning a dollar. We have not a moment to give a thought for the island our children will inherit. After all, we do not have the time to give them breakfast or a lunch package in the morning when they set off to school. We give each of them a hundred dollar bill, and tell them to buy breakfast and lunch on the road. You cannot expect more loving care from us than that!

The British FAC is making an inquiry into how our Overseas Territories are governed. They have invited written as well as oral submissions. Any one of us can write to the Committee. We can express any concern we might have about some matter of good, indifferent or bad governance. I seriously doubt any of us in Anguilla has written in. Well, we have until January 31 to do so. That is the new, extended, closing date for making written submissions to the FAC.

Compare our situation to that of the people of the Turks and Caicos Islands. The TCI have a transparent system when it comes to tenders. So says Premier Michael Misick.

In TCI, there is a process in place at ministerial level for the allocation of Crown land. Parliament has a register of interests. The government is in the process of putting anti-corruption legislation in place to ensure that corruption does not rear its ugly head in that Territory. The police are within the ambit of the governor. There is an independent non-political Attorney-General responsible for prosecutions. Belonger status is given by the entire Cabinet, and not by one person. The Governor is the chairperson of Cabinet, and does not have to accept the advice of Cabinet. Our Anguillian public service and elected officials have much a greater autonomy than the government of TCI. Most of these checks and balances found in the TCI do not apply in Anguilla. Belonger status is given in Anguilla by an expert committee set up by a law. Our governor is obliged to accept the advice of our ExCo. Our parliamentarians do not have to disclose their assets to anyone. We could do with some of those TCI provisions in Anguilla.

Yet, in spite of these safeguards, accusations from TCI citizens continue to pour into the FAC about the poor level of governance in the TCI. According Mike Gapes MP, chairperson of the FAC, over one third of all written submissions received by the FAC from all the Overseas Territories put together have come from the TCI. This suggests an extraordinary degree of concern among the citizens of that Territory. Compare that with Anguilla, where there is no hint that any person has made any written submission to it. That, in spite of the many problems with governance that we all know about.

There is still time for you to change your mind. It is all our duty to be concerned about integrity in public life in Anguilla. You might try accessing the FAC website. There you will get all the information you will need on how to make a written submission to the FAC. You have until 31 January.

A report on the Overseas Territories will be produced at the end of the Inquiry, for submission to the House of Commons and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It would be sad to read in it that no one in Anguilla had anything to say.

Me? I made all my contribution when the Constitutional Commissioners delivered their report to government on 26 August 2006. I have nothing further of value to add!

Crime Solved

Ditherers and Platitudes. I am sure we all remember with pride and a sense of accomplishment the news from April 2007. The Hon Chief Minister, in response to near panic in the community at the rise in the numbers of burglaries, rapes, murders, and youthful drug-fuelled mayhem, set up a Multidisciplinary Committee on Crime. The purpose of the committee was to “design a strategy and the development of an action plan to facilitate the prevention and correction of crime on Anguilla”. If you want, you can read all about it here on the government public relations website. In case you are overwhelmed by a sense of the futility of reading press releases and would prefer not to visit the website, I extract the important part of the press release here:

"As part of the efforts to address the recent upsurge in the incidents of crime, the Honourable Osbourne Fleming, Chief Minister convened an emergency meeting at his offices on Wednesday, April 11, 2007.

In addition to members of the government and opposition member the Hon Hubert Hughes, present at the meeting were Dame Bernice Lake, QC, Commissioner of Police, Keithley Benjamin and Sergeant Rudolph Proctor, Superintendent Minister of the Methodist Church, the Rev. Dr. Clifton Niles, Chief Education Officer, Mrs. Rhonda Connor, Commissioner of Social Development, Mr. Stanford Richardson, Director of Tourism, Mrs. Amelia Vanterpool-Kubisch, Chief Immigration Officer Ms. Laureen Bryan, Executive Directors of the Anguilla Hotel Association and the Anguilla Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as well as other representatives from the Department of Education and the Anguilla Hotel & Tourism Association.

[Zealous puffery about what we all "must do" omitted.]

The purpose of the committee established by the Government of Anguilla is to therefore assist with the designing of a strategy and the development of an action plan to facilitate the prevention and correction of crime on Anguilla."

I am sure the families of Stacy Ann Brooks-Laurent, shot to death on 3 August as she sat in her car, and of Randy Audain, shot in the head on 10 August, must be reassured to know that this committee was established. All Anguillians expected much from it.

The meeting appointing the committee was well publicised.

The Anguillian Newspaper did a story on it in its 13 April 2007 issue.

In an article published in Anguilla Guide entitled “Reclaiming Our Paradise”, the anonymous author showered high accolades on government for setting up this committee. This article was written after the famous 16 August “Day of Mourning, Repentance and Prayer”. The author wrote then, “What I would say, though, is that if it is business as usual after all the mourning, repenting and praying, then the “Day of Mourning, Repentance and Prayer” would have been in vain.” This was to be prophetic.

I have checked with three people in Education, Social Services and the private sector who are working directly and effectively with young people. Not the young people who want to become dentists, accountants and proctologists but the boys we are all concerned about. Like me, all of them heard of this important initiative in April of last year. And none of us has heard a word about it since then.

What has it accomplished? Has it met once since it was set up?

Did it ever design a strategy? Did it ever come up with the promised action plan?

And, how many young Anguillian men have been shot, stabbed or murdered since April 2007?

How do we put up with such ditherers and their platitudes?