"He is perfectly balanced…with a chip on each shoulder." This statement applies to me at this time.

    The first chip has to do with the Inland Revenue Division (IRD). IRD has reportedly been peering at accounts in the commercial banks and other financial institutions. I believe this destroys confidence and the perception of confidentiality in the banking system. It may even be illegal.

    One unintended consequence of recent IRD actions is the potential flight of savings and destruction of jobs, when what is required in a slumping economy is the deployment of savings to create employment.

    The chip on my next shoulder is for the thief who broke into my office sometime before dawn of Friday, August 9, 2002. I hasten to add that I do not intend to group my friends at IRD in the same set with robbers of the "common" type.

    In Dominica these days, we are confronted by a curiously bold ignorance that is singularly obstructive to progress. That ignorance is especially manifest in the media, where everyone and his mother hold themselves out as experts on every facet of every subject under the sun and beyond.

    Perhaps it is the same undiluted ignorance that informs the thieves that an accountant's office is a place where the banks and the credit unions store money. They keep trying despite the "burglar bars." If those damned fools knew how "broke" I was, they would come to my office with money; not go there looking for money.

    They broke through a tiny area of glass and entered and left leaving blood stains. Whoever it was did enough to give the area the appearance of a war zone in miniature, and stayed long enough to help himself with refreshments from the refrigerator.

    Before the end of August, we know that other places in the neighborhood were burglarized, including NIKKI and Dominica Social Security.

    Others may have seen and not noticed it: During the past ten years one of the few business activities to develop with potential lasting effect is the security "industry." Some may say it is the only viable "industry" that has taken off in that period. Should that bother you?

    Absolutely…because it implies that we have developed a generation of thieves - people involved in illegal activity - with the demise of the banana industry, at least as we knew it.

    In the absence of bananas we have developed no other viable industry that can take off on a path of sustained growth. We have not even focused on food security of the nation. I find this all very disturbing.

    There has developed in recent times the religion and doctrine referred to collectively as "privatization." It is represented in popular circles as the blue print for economic progress. Yet, no capitalist voice has uttered a cry for privatization of the Police Service. This call would harmonize ever so sweetly with the cry for the end of taxation and government spending!

    I sense a peculiar parallelism between banana at its height in the 1980's and security in the 1990's. No authority, public or private, was required to urge the farmer to produce, and how much to produce in the eighties. And no authority in the nineties was needed, and none is required today, to motivate the little man to get into the security arena. And it does not matter whether he be in competition against the Police Service, or whether his input is complementary to it.

    Whether the entrepreneur be big or small, there is always the question "who are to guard the guards?" Last week it was alleged that a security guard completed his shift and left. He returned masked and armed to stage a robbery. He was over-powered. So that those engaged in the security industry must establish sound recruitment policies.

    To their credit the Police came within very reasonable time after we called them on August 9. They asked questions. In their professional opinion there was no need to take photographs, so we called our own photographers. We queried why they were not taking some finger prints. The relevant expert appeared a short time later. I do not intend publicly to ridicule his methods. After all our society produces our police women and men. They are a reflection of us. Suffice it to say that my helpers and I were unimpressed. We had never felt more insecure than we did that day.

    How often should we need to remind ourselves that this is the age of miracle and wonder: DNA evidence; forensic data based on a hair or on an analysis of a single thread from a victim's clothes found in a suspect's car!

    The Policemen admitted that they had little equipment. I reminded them that recently, they compromised the security of the nation protesting for what some say is a second pension. It would be hypocritical should I tell you that they had my sympathy. People would have been infinitely more sympathetic and understanding if they were "demanding" appropriate equipment. It seems that equipment to do good police work may not be priority business for our friends in the Police.

    So, I mentioned your shortage of equipment to the Hon. Prime Minister and Minister for National Security at Layou on Wednesday August 28, 2002. You the Police should kindly follow-up; remind and advise the Hon. Minister.

    True, the Government has no money; and that accounts for so much else. But we cannot afford not to afford the basic equipment that the Police requires to do its work.