Newstocks

The happy swimmer

Aidan is getting more and more comfortable in the pool.

He's now quite happy to jump in from the side, something he wouldn't do just a couple of months ago, and most of the photos we have of him underwater show him grinning away!

He can also now comfortably support himself by hanging on to the side of the pool and "monkey" his way round to the steps.

Must be a result of the great swimming teacher he has!

Those in glass houses...

If the requirement for scrutinising legislation in the Senate is legal expertise greater than that of the Attorney General's chambers, as David Burch claimed today, can someone tell me why the PLP have a 26-year-old radio DJ as one of their Senators?

Or is that kind of expertise simply not required on the PLP side, since all they do is blindly nod through Government legislation anyway?

Teaching discipline

In his article "The case for conscription" in today's Royal Gazette, Al Seymour suggests that the Bermuda Regiment is essential for teaching discipline to some young Bermudian men and women. It's probably the most commonly heard argument in support of conscription, yet it's illogical and disputed by some former senior officers.

If the purpose of the Regiment is to teach discipline, then surely only those who need it, male and female, should be sent there? What is the purpose of sending those whose family, schools and neighbours have already done the job?

The thing is, the purpose of the Regiment is not to teach discipline. Former Bermuda Regiment commanding officer Eugene Raynor, a supporter of conscription, recently said, "The army needs productive people in order to do what they have to do. If you are able to sort out a few on the side that's fine and that's been going on all along. It's not the role or intent for people going into the Regiment to be sorted out."

If the Regiment itself does not see teaching discipline as it's raison d'etre, how can anyone else justify its existence on that basis?

Citizen journalism

Jay Rosen has posted a great, pithy definition of citizen journalism.

"When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism."

After the difficulty I had yesterday finding out what was going on with the Causeway, I'm again thinking about how to apply this here. What could be set up in Bermuda to allow ordinary people to inform each other about what's going on, without the need to wait for the middle-man (i.e. the media)?

I'm not just thinking about "disaster" scenarios like hurricanes and so on, I'm thinking about how this could be used for all news reporting (even hyper-local stuff that wouldn't even make it into the Royal Gazette, like which kid won the running race at the Francis Patton sports day).

Some things to think about:

• How do you maximise the uptime and timeliness of the service?
• How do you persuade people to contribute, and how do they do so?
• How do you keep out the trolls?
• How do you present the information in a digestible way?

I have a few ideas, which I'm exploring, but I'd be interested to hear yours too. Could something like this work here?

Pfffft

After saying all day that the Causeway is going to stay open, at 4.45pm the bloody idiots in the Government issue a press release saying they've closed it for at least the next two hours.

"In the interest of public safety, due to unexpected high winds associated with the TS Bertha, a decision has been made by Government to close the Causeway immediately for a period of about two hours.

The public will be advised immediately once the Causeway opens, which is expected to be around around 7.00 p.m. or there after – until the severe winds have abated.

The Government apologises for any inconvenience caused."

Unexpected high winds? Do me a favour. Surely they could have given people a little notice?

Until it reopens I'm stuck here at work in Hamilton.

UPDATE (5.20pm): Apparently a caller was just on the radio saying she was going across the Causeway right now, and grumbling about the Government's inability to get its story straight. So who knows what's going on. I'm going to hang tight here however until I get more concrete info.

UPDATE 2: Turns out the Bermuda Weather Service issued a Hurricane Watch at 3.50pm. You would have thought that the Government could have started warning people about the likely closure of the Causeway then.

UPDATE 3: While I'm moaning about this, can someone tell me why there's still no official place to go online to find the latest information about the Causeway? weather.bm has nothing and the last update on gov.bm was issued at 12.45pm and is still reassuring people that the Causeway is open. For God's sake, how hard is it? The Bermuda Sun currently seems to be the best source of info.

UPDATE 4 (7pm): Still closed. They're going to reassess at 8pm, apparently.

UPDATE 5 (9.30pm): Causeway reopened; finally home.