Premier Brown never ceases to amaze me.  Over the last couple of days all of my family members have received very pleasant greetings cards, which we may well have paid to recieve.  Donning a photo of the Premier and his wife along with best wishes for the holidays and the new year, such cards would  be a very nice touch if I didn’t suspect that we’re actually the ones paying for it.  The thing that hints such is likely the case?  The return address is that of “THE PREMIER” (yes, specifically in all caps), followed up by the address of the cabinet building.  Is this a likely indication that government dollars were spent on this little boondoggle?

Now, in a time when we’re being hit by a recession I really have a hard time accepting that the money spent to send out greeting cards to all of Bermuda’s electorate is justified.  A recession just isn’t a good time for such frivolous spending even if such cards donned a photo of all of our parliamentary representatives, which they don’t.  So, you can understand my contempt at the sheer audacity of our Premier if he spent our money to send out greeting cards to all of the electorate with his photo on it.

Perhaps I am missing something as I certainly do not recall previous Premier’s having a tradition of sending out similar cards which is entirely possible.  If so, my apologies, but really, in a time where a recession is hitting the island, one should certainly be wondering where priorities lie regarding spending of taxpayer dollars.

The sheer irony of the potential for our Premier to have gotten me to foot the bill for him to send me a greetings card is ludicrous beyond belief if true.  For the Premier’s sake I certainly hope he footed the cost of this out of his own pocket as otherwise this does nothing but a disservice to his reputation as someone who cares more about our island than himself.

One can only hope Uncle Elvis is working on a hell of a cartoon for this one as he’s certainly the one to bring a laugh to this really sad situation.

Government and grocers have gotten together to hold a press conference regarding the rapid rise in food costs yet have offered very little comfort in the way of solutions or signs that costs will abate in the future.  The good news?  High food costs will come down in the coming months thanks to dropping oil and commodity prices.  The bad news?  Those in the position to mitigate the rise and fall of cost of living are behind the curve and missing what can be done today to reduce our exposure to fluctuations in oil and commodity prices.

Let’s offer a few tangible solutions that could be investigated day to help provide a more sustainable future for Bermuda.  The first involves understanding that a major factor in the rising price of food on island has been soaring electricity bills for grocers.   A potential solution?  Grocers can cut lighting costs substantially by investigating the introduction of solar light distributed through fibre optics such as Sunlight Direct’s Hybrid Solar Lighting or Parans’ fibre optic solar lighting, both of which track the sun to capture the most amount of sunlight, transmit it through fibre optics and use that light to supplement florescent lighting systems.

Another major factor in rising food costs is that Bermuda relies heavily on importing food that could be produced locally.  The problem?  Bermuda’s high costs of real estate have left farming a less than viable option for many, resulting in our need to import the bulk of our food.  One possible solution?  A technique referred to as hydroponics, or the growing of plants using a mineral nutrient solution rather than soil, could be used to produce greater yields of local crops while utilizing much smaller spaces.  Legislation could be implemented to make such farming more viable or even still, individuals could take it upon themselves to investigate hobby hydroponics as an alternative to the costly grocery aisles.

Finally, to take things to a whole other level, one could consider the combination of fibre optic solar lighting and hydroponics as a possible solution for maximizing the the amount of light available for a hydroponics farm such that you could not only expedite growth rates but also place farms in venues far removed from the typical greenhouse.