$15 million for football?

Are you kidding me?  Last year it was $11 million on cricket and we all witnessed how well that turned out.  I must be reading this incorrectly.  Are we honestly going to spend $15 million on football?

Don't get me wrong, football is a much loved Bermudian sport that needs the support of the country, but I do need to ask about the motivations behind throwing a large amount of cash behind another professional sport when there may be more important things we should be focusing on.

Should our government not be focusing more of their efforts and $$$ on education?  I don't just mean improving the system for future students but also fixing the horrible mess that has been made of my generation.  Certainly my generation has gotten the short end of the stick.

There is one perfect example that springs to mind that will help illustrate my point.  While at recruit camp, we had regular evening lectures to learn various topics.  In one such lecture on the combination of making schooling more accessable to recruits, one recruit asked if it was possible for him to attain his GED through the program.  This may have been something whose responsibility was passed off to the National Training Board, however what concerned me was that this recruit was requested later in the presentation to stand up and read a slide.  It surely was an embarassing scenerio for the individual as he struggled to read many of the words and did so at a snails pace.  It was such an abysmal performance that one could do nothing but feel very sorry him and feel enraged at the system that was supposed to educate him to enough of a level to survive in our society.  While he is just one example, there were many others who showed signs of being very poorly educated.

The regiment education program is a good first step, but the approx $100,000 of funding is pennies in comparison to $15 million.  Especially when many recruits arn't even capable of performing at the college level considering they missed out on the basics.

If government is interested in preventing "young people from getting mixed up in crime and drugs", the first step should be to ensure they are educated well enough to afford themselves a future.  Spare funding should be put towards helping all of those who have fallen through the cracks of our failed system.

Bermuda has failed my generation.  Football is all fine and nice, but we should be focusing more heavily on core issues not just paying idle lip service to them.

Comments

[Full Fullish]

This amounts to money for votes, plain and simple. The PLP is attempting to win a popularity contest by throwing boatloads of cash. While I believe in financing for a strong sports program, the current sports program is far to biased as to what they support, consider our lone female boxer for example. Aside from this how can we justify 15 million for a sport, when a large amount of that money could be used to build more houses or help the failing educational system. This is another example of our Governments lack of ability to properly manage or tend to the needs of Bermudians.