Let's cut a little slack for BPL and say because of the archipaleagic nature of our country with small populations spread throughout it's an expensive proposition to provide power to all want to be electricity consumers so maybe we should be paying a bit more than our neighbours.

But that's as far as my sympathy goes.

For as long as I can remember this "public" corporation has been on the brink of disaster and blackouts in Summer are the norm, but our political class finds other ways to spend tax dollars than on infrastructure.

Fixing the power generation plant is not as glamorous as carnival or even scholarships or entrepreneurial loans.

Frankly I don't care right now if the FNM is better at BPL than the PLP. Rhetoric like that is irrelevant at the best of times. Fix BPL and then brag if brag you must.

While the politicians need to be held accountable, the management and staff deserve opprobrium as well. After all, those hired to run the day to day affairs of BPL have a lot to answer for. But, those people charged with running the operation need to speak up if they've been putting plans forward for improvement that the political class have cast aside. There should be no sacred cows now. This has been going on for far too many decades.

In situations like these I can't help but quote H.L. Mencken:

"The theory behind representative government is that superior men-or at least men not inferior to the average in ability and integrity-are chosen to manage the public business, and that they carry on this work with reasonable intelligence and honest. There is little support for that theory in known facts…"

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office."

Let's face it, we seem to look for shortcuts and band aid fixes to our myriad of problems of too much government.

It's known as symbolism over substance.