Something jumped out at me while reading that Government is looking to re-table the Internal Audit Bill, establishing a new internal Audit Department:

The Internal Audit Act will set up a new Internal Audit Department to provide an overview of the managing and cost of Government activities.

Dr. Brown introduced the bill on December 4, but made the rare move to "rise and report progress" -- effectively postponing the bill -- after the UBP and BDA said it didn't give enough independence to the overseeing team.

Yesterday, the Premier told this newspaper regarding the internal audit bill: "We have made a few amendments that should meet the favour of both sides of the House."

Two weeks ago The Finance Minister claimed that The Office of Internal Audit was part of the accountability framework.

In addition, there is an accountability framework that includes the office of the Accountant-General's Department, the Office of the Auditor-General, the Office of Internal Audit, and the Ministry of Finance HQ.

The Office of Internal Audit doesn't exist yet.

May I suggest that before the trade delegation to India leaves, the outgoing Premier and Minister of Travel takes a Cabinet delegation across the street to Pitts Bay Rd and Par-la-ville Rd - where Bermuda's bread is buttered - and address the self-inflicted wounds on our international business sector.

Prosperity, like charity, begins at home.

Warren Buffett famously wrote in his 2001 annual shareholders letter that "you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. "

Well, it's low tide and Ms. Cox and Dr. Brown are high and dry:

Auditor General's Consolidated Fund Chart

A reader extends the Parental Responsibility legislation to the political arena:

Statutory provision will be made to make the voters civilly liable for the actions of their Ministers in circumstances where the voters have failed to exercise reasonable care, supervision, protection and control towards their Ministers when it is found to be a contributing factor to the offences committed by the Ministers.

A delayed budget doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

A reader writes on Paula Cox's shocking oped from Wednesday:

"In addition, there is an accountability framework that includes the office of the Accountant-General's Department, the Office of the Auditor-General, the Office of Internal Audit, and the Ministry of Finance HQ."

Why does she even mention this, when this exact "accountability framework" has been raising red flags over the years only to be ignored and/or challenged by government under the guise of menace.

Two qualified audits as a starter. And the Ministry of Finance can't overrule bonehead directives coming from Cabinet and the Minister. They just have to try and make it work.

The Finance Minister is really really reaching to justify her poor stewardship of the country's finance.

Bob Richards has a good rebuttal today. He wasn't overly academic for a change.

Vexed has two good posts on Government's fiscal irresponsibility and poor attempts to justify the exploding debt against GDP, which are worth a read.

One additional point to bear in mind.

When Ms. Cox declares our debt as $679M (and counting but excluding the $200M guarantee on the Bank of Butterfield), she ignores the hospital redevelopment.

That project is an additional $315M of debt (budgeted, if past is prologue it will be multiples of that) hidden off the books through an accounting gimmick of Public Private Partnerships.

A big shout out to my new reader from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who started reading on the 25th.

I wouldn't have pegged you as a Mac user, but it's nice to know you care.

The PLP website boldly declares that the new flight from Toronto indicates that "WestJet [is] Bullish on Bermuda Tourism".

Or..."Westjet bullish on students, friends & family."

Additional airlift and competition is always a good thing, but the Miami flight was pitched as a tourism coup as well, but any local who has been on that flight knows that when you return from Miami you get through Immigration much faster if you skip the long Bermudians and Residents lines and head right for the empty visitor section.

The role of Finance Minister has always held clout and prestige and that of a serious guardian of the public purse. Until today.

Paula Cox published a pre-budget oped setting the stage for a debt level that is clearly about to explode in the next budget and trying to deflect her role in the mess that the PLP have got Bermuda's finances into:

The Minister of Finance operates as a cog in the wheel. My role is to add value and to provide input on fiscal positions taken in various ministries. I can indicate support or objection. However the sponsoring minister(s) knows that I cannot overrule their request unless I have others who join with me to support and uphold my position.

Individual Ministers are 'finance directors' in their own right and have a responsibility to keep a keen eye on how their senior officials manage their budgets and projects.

Weak. Seriously weak.

A couple of quick email follow ups from my last post:

From Vexed (as I suspected):

For the record, their pointing out my post on the nuclear family as supporting evidence is incorrect. The same strengths apply to children in gay marriages. It is the union that counts, not the gender.

From another reader:

... I would have liked to see you also address the writers spurious references to studies regarding drug use and STDs. It seems this writer would have you believe that these things only exist in the LGBT community? (not really surprising considering they equated them with pedophiles and thieves).

The writer is either incapable or unwilling to take this data at anything
but face value. Perhaps the drug use is so commonplace in these studies
because the LGBT community has been discriminated against and they see drug
use as an escape from this. The same goes for the STD stats, where
dangerous, clandestine sexual acts are a necessity for these individuals who
have been forced to live a double life.

I can and will do that, but my previous post was already pretty long and there was so much to address. But yes, the science cited is selective and I will address that in the next day or so.

This will be a long post, because I want to take the following email I received from a reader and respond. First the email.

Christian,

The gay agenda relates to efforts to change government policies and laws on LGBT issues (e.g., same-sex marriage, LGBT adoption, recognizing sexual orientation as a civil rights minority group, LGBT military participation, inclusion of LGBT history and themes in public education) as well as non-governmental campaigns and individual actions which increase visibility and cultural acceptance of LGBT people, relationships, and identities.

Today they may be saying they simply want an amendment to the Human Rights Act, but if the US gives us an indication of their next steps, and I believe it does, then the items noted above will soon follow. Thus, it is properly referred as the Gay Rights Agenda

First we need to evaluate if this is a life style decision or if it has a genetic base. While scientists have found intriguing biological differences between gay and straight people, the evidence so far stops well short of proving that we are born with a sexual orientation that we will have for life. Identical twins have identical genes. If homosexuality was a
biological condition produced inescapably by the genes (e.g. eye color), then if one identical twin was homosexual, in 100% of the cases his brother would be too. But we know that only about 38% of the time is the identical twin brother homosexual. Genes are responsible for an indirect influence, but on average, they do not force people into homosexuality. This conclusion has been well known in the scientific community for a few decades but has not reached the general public. Indeed, the public increasingly believes the opposite. There are numerous other studies that lead us to the same conclusion, but for the sake of brevity I will omit further details. Consequently, I think we can conclude that LGBT is lifestyle decision and not a genetically determined factor.

Most, but not all, of the characteristics protected by the Human Rights Act relate to matters that are outside of a persons control - sex, race, colour, language, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status. However, by and large the same protections are not extended for individuals lifestyle decisions. For example, we would not argue that the Human Rights Act should be amended to protect drunkards, drug addicts, thieves, slanderers or pedophiles. Likewise we should not be extending special protection to those who identify themselves as LGBT. Why?

Because, just as drunkards, drug addicts, thieves, slanderers and pedophiles are detrimental to society, so are those who are LGBT. The degree of harm to society is not the same (just as the degree of harm by two different drunkards is not the same), but it is still detrimental to society.

Consider some of the following:

* Analyzing data taken by the Ministry of Health of 15,000 New Zealanders between 2003 and 2004, the researchers found that 42.7 per cent of those in the homosexual lifestyle regularly smoke cigarettes in the last year compared to 27.7 per cent of heterosexuals. Homosexuals of both sexes are also twice as likely to have used marijuana; nearly four times as likely to have used amphetamines; more than four times as likely to have used LSD and more than three times as likely to have regularly used Ecstasy.
* April 11, 2007 - Last year, 6,360 gay men were tested by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center for sexually transmitted diseases, and one in four had used methamphetamines at least once, the Los Angeles Times has reported (1). That frequency is twenty times greater than in the general population.
* Homosexual promiscuity is well documented. Before AIDS almost half of white homosexual males had had at least 500 different partners, and 28 percent had had 1000 or more, mostly strangers.32 Homosexuals still have 3-4 times as many partners as heterosexuals6,66 (when medians rather than means are compared), and between 13 percent and 50 percent of gays continue to practice high risk sex post-AIDS, evidence surely of an addictive drive.
Please refer to Vexed's post regarding the importance of families at http://www.vexedbermoothes.com/nuclearfamily/
* and here is a link from the Gay and Lesbian Health Association regarding the health issues http://www.glma.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage

&pageID=690 of the LGBT community.

Again, I could continue with other examples, but for the sake of brevity I hope you will agree that LGBT is detrimental to society. Consequently, I would ask you to rethink your position on this matter.

I appreciate the email, however there isn't anything that I can agree with or endorse. The reader has gone to great lengths to attempt to justify discrimination and wrap it up in 'science'. What I read was a moral agenda being imposed on others under the guise of a dispassionate defense of the public interest.

This is about equal rights, not 'gay rights'. These are by and large the same pseudo-scientific arguments historically advanced to advocate racial discrimination which the overwhelming majority of people today find repugnant.

To break down some of the assertions.

Whether sexual orientation is a genetic or a lifestyle issue is simply irrelevant with respects to the Human Rights Code. The HRC protects many 'lifestyle choices' including political expression, religion orientation or others. Protecting a choice is not a new concept for the Act to embody, and protecting the private sexual behaviour of consenting adults strikes me as no greater or lesser a choice than religion or political views.

Regardless, lifestyle choices invoked by the reader - "drunkards, drug addicts, thieves,
slanderers or pedophiles" - involve a violation of the law or rights of others, excepting drunkards. However a drunk still has rights (but a gay drunkard has less).

Of course theft, defamation or sexual abuse of children is detrimental to individuals and society. But you cannot equate the sexual preference and behaviour between consenting adults with crimes against person or property by thieves, slanderers or pedophiles. The comparisons are simply invalid as they all involve force against someone else.

This is not a logical or legal argument on the reader's behalf but a moral one, based on the reader's own political or religious views (which I would note are protected under the human rights code).

I'm not all that interested in tackling the genetic or choice argument because that has little bearing on the Human Rights Code, but let's go with the example of twins. As the parent of identical twins I can attest that there are many differences between identical twins, identical genes or not. Think about it as two buildings built with identical blueprints. The blueprint may be the same but they will not be completely identical.

Additionally I have read a lot of the science on sexual orientation, and cannot agree with the claim that the biological contribution has been dis-proven. To the contrary, there is extensive research which points to sexual orientation being biologically determined, although it can clearly also be a choice.

As I said earlier though, none of that has any bearing on the Human Rights Code whatsoever.

You're not going to find me agreeing that homosexuality or trans-gender people are 'detrimental to society' any more than you're going to find me saying that inter-racial relationships are a detriment to society. Much the opposite, it's part of the fabric of what makes the world such an interesting place and I hope that as a society we can get past the fear or people who are different and choices we dislike.

Normally what happens is that once these changes are made there's a collective shrug, and everyone looks at each other and wonders what the big worry was.