We have a general election next week - 56 candidates standing for 16 seats in the Legislative Assembly. All candidates must be bloodline Caymanians by law. Since no candidate dare say anything too nice about expats, even though we comprise a large minority of the voting population, our choice is limited. Residents of George Town (the Islands' capital) are allowed to cast six votes each, one for each of six of the 25 candidates. Once we rule out the candidates of the three official parties (all of which are anti-expat, in varying degree), there aren't many options open to us.

The parties have between them spent every dime in the kitty, and have borrowed recklessly to fund their extravagances and to feed the bloated Civil Service. The next four years may well see us taxed beyond redemption, even with the British FCO supposedly monitoring matters from afar. Wish us luck.

 

Last month's elections gave us 18 MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly), of which nine are newcomers. I have just posted an item on my blog about the event, but this is a quick summary.

Only the faces have changed. Our MLAs don't have actual policies; rather, they run on their perceived personal qualities. The main content of their manifestos is a fervent promise to strengthen the legal protection of ethnic Caymanians against competition from better qualified expats. Naturally, that adversely affects our economic productivity, but we have learned to live with it. The affirmative-action program is forty years old, and will likely be here for another forty.

Our incoming politicians have sworn to expand the government's reach even further, and to force local employers to hire more ethnics regardless of aptitude or attitude. Britain (our colonial master) has forbidden any new long-term borrowing, so the only way our government will be able to balance its budgets is to increase taxes. Britain has suggested a tax on salaries, so maybe this time that's what will happen. Sooner or later the expense of doing business here will destroy our economy. Most of the expats I speak with think we have only another three or four years of prosperity left, which is sad to report. Much depends on how seriously Britain takes its colonial responsibilities from now on. Fingers crossed.

 

Cyril. I don't do photos. Sorry. I'm long past the age when it's productive to show how handsome I am...

 

http://www.economist.com/news/americas/ ... havens-and

Cyril - if it really, really, bothers you not to have a photo of some sort beside my name, here at the above link is a super photo of a scene from "Pirates of the Caribbean" that you could use. I don't know how to send just the photo, so I had to send the link.

If you need to discuss this off-topic topic further, could you please email me at (barlow@candw.ky)? Then I could reply to you off-forum. That would be better, I think. Otherwise we're just racking up the visitors-number for the various threads. Thanks.