Reopening Villa Tourism

 

Anguilla’s borders have been closed to visitor traffic since mid-March 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Hotels and villas have had to close, and staff have been let go.  The island economy has collapsed.  Both employers and employees are close to the limit of what they can bear.  Government revenue has shrunk to half the budgeted amount.  Public expenses, meanwhile, have more than doubled.

Some of the villa owners are pressuring government to begin opening Anguilla up to tourist arrivals.  In a memo of 23 July from the Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association to its members, there is a suggestion that villa owners and their guests be allowed in by private jet or charter from 1 August.  This is to be a soft opening preliminary to a full opening of the tourism plant this coming winter.

I have some thoughts on the suggestion that we now pull the plug on the measures that have kept us safe.

Covid-19 continues to rage throughout the world, including both the USA, our main catchment area, and Antigua, Puerto Rico and St Maarten, the hubs through which our airline passengers arrive.  The USA has the worst statistics for the disease in the entire world.

Canada and other countries that depend on tourism are not permitting anyone from the USA to enter their countries.  The USA is Europe’s biggest tourism market.  The Europeans have banned US tourists even as they open to other visitors.

Anguilla’s main defence against widespread sickness, hospitalisation and death is the availability of a safe and effective vaccine.  The likelihood is that there will not be such a vaccine this year.  The earliest would be eighteen months from the date the research institutes began to work on vaccines, ie, January 2020.  If so, this means that we cannot realistically expect to have a vaccine for Covid-19 before July 2021.  It follows that the earliest we should be considering reopening Anguilla’s borders to tourist arrivals is winter 2021.  Anything before that will almost inevitably result in our being re-infected and having to close our ports and our hotels again.

Under President Trump’s misguided leadership over the past six months, the virus has been allowed to rampage through the USA.  Why would Anguilla let any US resident in before mid-2021 when they are so evidently careless about their health?  What do they care about our health if they care so little about their own?  It would be different if we were to allow in tourists from countries where they had suppressed the Covid-19 epidemic.  But, to allow into Anguilla visitors from the USA currently is unimaginable to me.

If we do open our ports for guests of villa owners, will we be able to make them take the necessary health precautions?  Will visitors be made to produce a Covid test result that is not more than three days old showing they are clear, or be sent back on the plane they arrived on?  If they turn out later to be infected, will we be able to make them self-quarantine for 14 days?  Do we have the means or the will to police a quarantine?  These are rich and “entitled” people who are accustomed to buying their way out of any situation.

If any of them later turns up positive, we shall have to trace all their contacts and confine them to quarantine if we are to stop social spread of the virus.  Do we have adequate amounts of testing equipment?  Do we have the capability to produce timely results?  Are our health personnel trained in contact tracing?  Do we have the resources to conduct a proper tracing programme, and to enforce the resulting quarantines?

What about our stocks of Personal Protective Equipment?  Will our supplies of masks be adequate before the borders are opened?  Do we have the gowns and other PPE needed for the medical staff?  Do we have the latest models of ventilators for when we are committed to the Intensive Care Unit?  Do all the villas have adequate stocks of PPE in advance of opening for the use of staff and guests in appropriate circumstances?  Will our villa staff be trained in the correct use of this PPE prior to opening?

If we admit in visitors from the USA, and as is inevitable, the virus catches and begins to spread in Anguilla, we shall be obliged to lock the island down again for a couple more months at least, until it is contained. 

Of course, repatriation of Anguillian nationals from any country remains a continuing necessity.  Fortunately, the testing and quarantine protocols and safeguards put in place by the Health Department for dealing with repatriated Anguillians are now well practised.  Such repatriations have not resulted in any local spread of the virus since the first three cases in March.

It is arguable that the last administration suffered politically, and lost the June general election, at least partly because they chose health over economic interests.  They totally closed the island to visitors in March.  Our borders are still closed today.  The result was they limited Covid-19 cases in Anguilla to three mild ones in March.  We are free of infection today.  But the previous administration suffered serious political damage.  Many businesses closed, some permanently, and large numbers of us became unemployed.  Schools closed, and the children struggled with distance learning.

Opening our borders to visitors from a country where the infection is surging out of control will likely destroy all that our sacrifice has accomplished.  Is the present government prepared for the political backlash that will follow if they allow the virus back in to flourish for the sake of a few villa owners’ financial interests?

If we open the island to US visitors, we can expect numbers of us, not only to be committed to the ICU, but to die.  What answer will the administration give our families when they are accused of opening before the USA could flatten its own curve?  Are they ready to deal with the accusation that they allowed the villa owners to kill us off?

Other than for a short period in August, July to November are dead months for tourism in Anguilla.  It is the Hurricane season.  This is the low season for West Indian tourism.  Why open the island in this quiet period when there will be few or no tourists (other than the highly risky ones from the USA) coming by air or by sea to Anguilla?  Opening our borders to tourists of any kind now will contribute hardly a penny to either government revenue or to the economy.  There is no real economic point in reopening before late November or early December.

Are the Anguillian public prepared to deal with a new surge?  We have been safe for so long that we now all ignore the social distancing rules we used to practise in March.  People lean on shop counters, despite the printed signs; stand in line in the supermarket pressed up against each other, despite the spacing marks on the floor; and not one of us wears a mask in public.  When we let in tourists, we will need to relearn the social distancing precautions.  Will our health authorities engage us citizens in an intense social distancing revision course in the months before we let in tourists?

Finally, as Dr Fauci reminds us, we must ask what is the recommendation of the Health Authority?  What is the expert advice our Ministry of Tourism has received?  Is the recommendation that it is safe to let in visitors to villas from the USA?  Or should we wait until after a safe and effective vaccine is generally available?

Later on Friday, I was pleased to see what amounted to a Government response to the AHTA initiative on behalf of villa owners.  This was a press release titled “Covid 19 Update 13”.  It advised that Anguilla’s borders will remain closed until 31 October.  An exception is made for visitors from countries with active cases of less than 0.2% of the population, who will be allowed into Anguilla on condition.  They must comply with all relevant protocols and quarantine regulations.  That rules out visitors from the USA.  The US (with 4% of the world’s population and 25% of all Covid-19 infections) cannot meet the less than 0.2% benchmark.  We all anxiously await the arrival of a safe and effective vaccine.  I need not have worried.  No doubt, it helped that we have a physician as Premier.

24 July 2020

Revised 27 July

 

The Covid-19 MOU

Anguilla’s airwaves are filled with doom and gloom broadcasts.  Apparently, as a country and a society, we are finished.  According to one commentator heard recently, the financial position of the Government of Anguilla (GoA) is so dire that the British government is about to suspend the Constitution and take over the day to day administration of the island.

I decided to look at the available information on our public finances.  I started with the most recent document, a copy of the Hon Premier, Dr Webster’s, address of 9 July 2020 as printed in the Anguillian Newspaper of 10 July.  There, he writes that, because of the Covid-19 pandemic closing our tourism-based economy, our Treasury is projected to suffer an EC$97 million revenue shortfall (our highest ever revenue was EC$207 million in 2007).  This will make us unable to satisfy either our debt obligations or our monthly expenses.

The previous Administration on 11 June 2020 signed an MOU with the British Government for the receipt of an aid package of EC$100 million (US$37 million) offered to avert the impending bankruptcy of the island.  It is rather grandly titled the “Anguilla Covid-19 Emergency Financial Aid Programme.”

It is this MOU that is the subject of so much public grief.  In brief, the FCO’s conditions for the EC$100 million grant to us are,

(1). All disbursements must be made on submission of a claim in the form provided and accompanied by supporting documents.  The Accountant General must certify that the claim is correct.  It seems right that the Accountant General of Anguilla should be the one responsible for justifying the claim for these funds.

(2). Disbursements from the EC$100 million fund will be made monthly to reimburse us for the previous month’s recurrent revenue losses.  Support will meet proven losses, not imaginary future ones.  This seems a sensible provision.

(3). GoA should continue to meet debt amortization payments from its sinking fund.  This is a sensible provision.  We cannot be defaulting on our debt while the British taxpayer pays our public service commitments.

(4). The aid ceiling is set at EC$100 million for the 9-month period April to December 2020.  Recurrent revenue loss in any given month will be supported up to 70% of the forecast recurrent revenue (Control 1).  In other words, as I understand it, the $100 million will not be used to make up the total amount lost.  Support is limited to 70%.  This appears designed to encourage frugality and is to be commended.

(5). Revenue support will be reduced by the value of any revenue foregone in that month due to discretionary concessions approved by GoA (Control 2).  If GoA grants a duty-free concession to a hotel or other taxpayer and, therefore, looses $100,000.00, that loss is entirely voluntary and within our control.  That seems only fair.  There is no justice in having the British taxpayer make up that loss.

(6). Expenditure must remain within the overall three-month rolling expenditure envelopes set out in the cash management worksheet (Control 3).  This is a technical control, which no doubt is understood by the Inland Revenue staff, though it is meaningless to me.

(7.) The programme will be reviewed on a three-monthly basis and the grant will be automatically discontinued once recurrent revenue variances return to a manageable level of 5% or less (Control 4).  This seems only fair.

(8). Any virements/reallocations greater than $100k will be deducted from the grant (Control 5).  A virement warrant is the mechanism that permits the Minister to reallocate surpluses from one head of the budget to another.  This seems only fair.  GoA cannot redirect revenue from one head to another and then claim a shortfall.

(9). The draft Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability report will be used by the FCO as a preliminary assessment of the public financial management systems (Control 6).  This is a technical matter and no doubt the Inland Revenue people understand its significance.

(10). The FCO can request and review any GoA financial information.  It can audit the programme at any time (Control 7).  This is an obvious and sensible control, given the Chief Auditor’s repeated complaints about the negligent way in which the GoA’s accounts are kept.

(11). The House of Assembly must pass a Supplementary Budget for 2020 reprioritizing spending to meet pressures arising from Covid-19 (Provision 1).  The previous Administration pretended to do this a few days before the House dissolved, but there was no attempt to reprioritize spending.[1]  To comply with this condition the new Administration will be required to go back to the House with a more realistic Supplementary Budget.

(12). No new revenue or expenditure policy with material financial implications can be adopted by GoA unless the FCO first accepts it (Provision 2).  This seems reasonable.  The FCO has a real interest in ensuring that we do not fiddle our financial policies to unfairly take advantage of this grant in aid.

(13). We commit to maintaining progress in implementing a Goods and Services Tax (Provision 3).  We will prepare a draft Bill and Regulations regarding the implementation of GST phases 2 and 3.  This is not new.  We have previously agreed to implementing GST in stages.

Personally, I have difficulty in seeing how GST can be implemented in Anguilla.  Other than the banks, law firms, and major corporations, few Anguillian businesses keep audited accounts.  In Anguilla we raise revenue mainly through indirect taxes such as customs duty on imported goods.  There is little or no direct taxation on income.

Few employers keep accurate payroll accounts.  Businesses keep such accounts as they consider necessary for their own internal purposes.  Profit or loss is calculated based on whether the business needs to show either a profit or a loss for some reason, such as applying for a bank loan.  In the absence of accurate accounts, Social Security payments are calculated and paid by the employer with no system for checking the accuracy of the calculation.  Hotel calculations of receipts and payments of Accommodation Tax are taken on trust by the IRD.  The Interim Stabilization Levy (a minimal payroll tax) is always calculated and paid by employers based on the assumed honesty of the payee.  it is difficult to see how our businesses can be expected to calculate and pay GST with any degree of accuracy. 

The FCO cannot seriously expect our Mom and Pop businesses to suddenly purchase computers, learn to use Quicken, open bank accounts, and begin to hire accountants.  We will have no difficulty passing a GST Act, once the FCO understands that this tax will be (like many others) entirely voluntary and generally incapable of verification.

(14). We will begin the process of collecting overdue taxes by court process (Provision 4 and 5).  So far as I am aware (after 40 years of the practice of law in Anguilla) no prosecution or civil suit has ever issued for the collection of an unpaid tax.  We have instead used “administrative measures” to collect tax.  The most we could do to satisfy this condition is to carry out one or two prosecutions a year of the most egregious offenders.  There must be low-hanging fruit in the odd hotel or guest house that does not pay its Accommodation Tax that we can pick.  Political backlash can be minimized if we take the easy way out and start on a foreign owned business.  Admittedly, it is mainly the local ones that have figured out how to game the system.

(15). By 31 December we will begin on-site tax audits on at least 20 businesses and take the necessary action within 3 weeks after the audit is completed (Provision 6).  This is a manageable condition.  Law firms are required by the Legal Profession Act to have their accounts audited to maintain their legal practice certificate.  Between the Banks, international insurance companies, and local law firms, it should not be difficult to find 20 targets.

(16). We undertake to submit by 30 June 2020 a report on the expected impact of Covid-19 on the revenue and subventions of statutory bodies (Provision 7).  As the Chief Auditor never tires of complaining, many of the statutory bodies and other government agencies in Anguilla do not submit the audited accounts that are required by law.  His constant chiding in his Annual Reports did not improve this situation.  It would be a good thing for this programme to finally provide the impetus for this much desired improvement to be made, even if we have almost certainly missed the deadline.

(17). Statutory bodies must present their budgets and work plans to Executive Council by 31 July 2020 (Provision 8).  This is an existing obligation, but it is not certain how many bodies meet it.  Government’s threat of non-payment of the annual subvention should suffice to ensure compliance, even if the deadline will be missed.

(18). Each statutory body will be reviewed for contingent liabilities by 31 July.  Each should prepare a plan to improve financial sustainability and reduce expenditure arrears over the following 12 months (Provision 9).  This condition will no doubt be a hardship to many good causes such as the National Trust and the Health Authority.  But in this difficult time we must cut our discretionary expenditure to the bone.

(19). We will ensure the preparation by all statutory bodies of quarterly financial reports by 30 September with publication by 30 November (Provision 10).  Once the IRD prepares a common template for this purpose and provides a minimum of training, it should not be difficult for the Boards and Executive Directors of these bodies to comply with this condition.

(20). GoA will achieve and maintain an overall “largely compliant” rating from the Global Forum’s review of Anguilla’s implementation of the Exchange of Information on Request standard.  We will deliver an action plan to the UK by 31 December to show how we will meet any resulting recommendations (Provision 11).  This international tax transparency provision is a long time coming.  In the present environment it can hardly be contested any longer.

(21). We shall grant UK Revenue access to data on Anguilla’s residency by investment programme by 30 September 2020 (Provision 12).  If we are going to accept the benefit of these UK taxpayers’ funds, we can hardly object to giving the UK tax collector access to information about potential UK tax dodgers.

(22). By 30 September 2020 we shall begin sharing suspicious activity reports appropriate to UK civil and criminal cases (Provision 13).  At present, these reports go only to local and regional bodies such as the Central Bank and the Financial Services Commission.  If we are going to accept UK taxpayers’ funds, we can have no reasonable objection to sharing them with the UK authorities.

(23). We shall allow by 28 February 2021 UK Revenue to obtain beneficial ownership information under the Exchange of Notes signed on 19 April 2016 (Provision 14).  We have already agreed to this.

(24). We shall provide UK Revenue direct and cost-free access to our new company registry, once in place (Provision 15).  We can have no valid objection.  This is an international tax transparency objective which when implemented will place Anguilla in the forefront of company formation destinations.  Besides, it will not be long before it is an international standard.

(25). We undertake within 2 months of the last elections of 29 June to complete and submit to the FCO a credible and achievable plan to reduce net debt to recurrent revenue to below 100% by 2025 and below 80% by 2030 (Provision 16).  This condition may fairly be described as a pipe dream.  Who in their right mind is going to travel to Anguilla for pleasure by ‘plane or by boat?  If there are a foolhardy few, they certainly will not be in the numbers needed to support our hotels, restaurants, and related businesses.  We can expect the hard times that are coming to last for years.  The new normal will call for ingenuity and creativity for our people just to survive.  As with the UK Government, our public debt must inevitably increase.  There is little hope of its reduction in the foreseeable future.

I do not consider these conditions onerous or unreasonable.  We should embrace them. They provide a welcome opportunity for us to improve our shoddy public accounting of the past.  Dr Webster says he wants to renegotiate the MOU.  In my opinion, there is nothing worth renegotiating, save for the now obsolete timetabling which was made inoperative by the intervening general elections.

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[1]      http://www.gov.ai/documents/2020%20Budget.pdf

Mission Accomplished?

Let me say at the outset that I have great respect for the Hon Cora Richardson-Hodge as a person and a professional.  In my interactions with her I have always found her to be an honourable and decent person.

I was listening to Radio Anguilla’s morning news two Fridays ago when I heard her making a speech.  She claimed as one of her accomplishments during her term as Minister of Home Affairs that she brought us constitutional and electoral reform.  That claim is so upsetting to me that I am forced to put pen to paper.

Anguilla has not had reform.  We have had betrayal.  Betrayal of the most hurtful form.  As I reflected on her cynical boast, I became more and more distressed.

The constitutional and electoral reforms we want are set out in the 2006 Report on Constitutional and Electoral Reform (“the 2006 Report”) and the subsequent 2017 Report to Government (“the 2017 Report”).  [The links are live if you have the electronic version of this paper].  We want to see an improvement in accountability, transparency, and integrity in public affairs.  There were two principal public demands, increased democracy, and improved standards of public life.  We got neither.

What we got was the AUF Administration’s boast that they gave our foreign grandchildren Anguillian status, created four new Island-wide seats in the House of Assembly, and the Chief Minister could now call himself Premier.  They hoped these boasts would help them to get them re-elected in 2020.

So far as I am aware, there is no continuing discussion on constitutional and electoral reform for Anguilla.  Neither the local Administration nor the FCO appear to have any interest in any of the real reform proposals that were so laboriously set out in the 2006 and 2017 Reports.

When a Report is presented to Government, there is no expectation that every proposal in it will be accepted without question.  Government is free to select what parts of the Report they will accept.  But we all expected that if they intended to make any alterations to the package of reforms proposed, they would come back to the people and explain what they want to do.  They had an obligation to be transparent about the alterations, and to attempt to get our approval.

I listened from my hotel room in Antigua back in September 2019 to the Minister and her assistants explaining in the Teachers’ Resource Centre the provisions of the draft new amendment to the Constitution and the draft new Elections Act.  The public meeting occurred on the very day the draft appeared for the first time on the government website.  No one had a chance to read it.  In case you are interested, I discuss the events here:  Constitution - Government Proposals.

In this first and in the few subsequent town hall meetings, the government representatives made no effort to point out to the unaware members of the public what was being omitted.  They offered no explanation at any time as to why the main reform proposals were not being carried forward.  They pretended that what they were proposing was what the Reform Committees had recommended.  That lie so often repeated was a hurtful part of the betrayal.

The British FCO joined with the Administration in enabling this betrayal.  That was particularly painful.  The FCO team visited Anguilla for discussions in November 2019.  I was a reluctant member of the Anguilla team that negotiated with the FCO.  They assured us that the remainder of the proposed reforms which we had agreed on would be in a draft new Constitution.  They promised to send us a draft in December 2019.  When December passed, I asked them directly.  They offered no explanation for the delay.  I assume the Administration has pleaded the Covid-19 excuse.  I fail to see any relevance of Covid-19 to legislative reform.  The FCO seems to be playing along with the delay.  More betrayal.

It is not just the Administration’s failure to implement any meaningful kind of constitutional and electoral reform that hurts us.  They have failed Anguilla in so many other ways.  The Minister in the same speech boasted that she had brought us labour reform.  She referred to the new Labour (Relations) Act of 2019.  She warned the opposition parties.  If they ever gained power, they must not touch this reform she was so proud of.

Listening to her speech, I felt myself getting more irritated.  This new labour law brought no reform.  There is no minimum wage regulation despite the promises.  Labour protections have been weakened.  This law is a betrayal of Anguillian workers.

There were a few failed start-up trades unions, but there is no real one in Anguilla to stand up for workers’ rights in the private sector.  There is only the Labour Commissioner and the Minister of Labour.  What these two offices did over the past twenty years was to remove all the workers’ protections that Ronald Webster introduced in his last term in office.  I previously explained how Ministers and Labour Commissioners illegally permitted workers to be treated as gig workers in Ronald and Labour, published on my blog in December 2019.

Workers at some of the major hotels began, at first illegally, to be classified in their contracts as gig workers.  A gig worker is an independent contractor, not an employee.  None of the original workers’ protection applies to gig workers.  Employees, but not independent contractors, are entitled to sick pay when they become ill.  Compulsory workman’s insurance does not apply.  Holiday with pay does not apply.  Social security contributions from the employer are not technically payable, though since the new Act I have heard that Government has twisted the arms of employers to force them to make the contributions voluntarily.

The original Fair Labour Standards Act and Labour Department Act became disembowelled.  Ministers and Labour Commissioners allowed employers to terminate their workers each year.  The workers would then be taken on the following year and put on a new one-year contract as an independent contractor.  Earlier administrations started the process.  The Minister and this present Administration finished off the job.  The new law now authorises employers to classify workers as independent contractors.  More betrayal.

The Minister oversees immigration.  Our immigration and work permit laws are supposedly intended to protect Anguillians from outside forces.  But our laws have not protected us for decades now.  Various Ministers of Immigration and Home Affairs have gutted the immigration laws of Anguilla.  In this endeavour the Ministers were ably assisted by various Labour Commissioners.

Under various Administrations, foreign-owned stores have spread all over Anguilla.  They have in time displaced our uncompetitive little local retail groceries, dry goods, and hardware stores.  Our immigration laws were passed to protect us and our vulnerable little businesses.  The law failed to do so in this case.

The foreign-owned hotels are in a different class.  They represent hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign direct investment which has given jobs and advancement to Anguillians.  Foreign-owned restaurants that raise the standard of cuisine are part of the attraction of Anguilla to tourists.

By contrast, dry-goods stores and groceries add nothing to our economy or culture.  But, because they are slightly cheaper, unpatriotic Anguillians flood into them, abandoning the slightly more expensive local ones.  Some of the older local groceries, dry goods stores, haberdasheries, and hardware stores are nearly empty of customers.  It will not be long before they go bankrupt and close.  This Administration has delivered the coup de grace to the local retail business.

And, now, just before elections, seems to come the final betrayal.  In 2018 the British Government gave Anguilla £60 million, or EC$300 million, in reconstruction aid.  The money was intended to put Anguillians to work rebuilding the schools, port facilities, and other public buildings devastated by Hurricane Irma towards the end of 2017.

Our men could have done with the work in 2018 and in 2019.  They had bills to pay and families to feed.  Did the children have to be put through the continuing discomfort of attending damaged school buildings in morning and afternoon shifts throughout 2018 and 2019 and going into the future?  We saw the effect of the discomfort in the lowered grades achieved by our students over the last two years.  Reconstruction should have commenced immediately after the plans were approved.

It would be a shame if the delay was so that the Administration can boast, “See, we have you at work now.  If you want to see more work like this, you must vote for us.  This is no time to switch horses.”  If this was the reason for the delay, Anguillians are quite capable of seeing through the smoke screen.

Covid-19 Border Control

Anguillians will all be aware of the police press release of Monday 25th May which sought information from the public about,

a small blue boat with white engines motoring (in contravention of Anguilla Border Regulations) which dropped four persons into the water about 150 meters from the beach.  These persons swam to shore and entered Anguilla illegally.

Now on Wednesday 27th May we see a new police press release.  It advises that,

The matter has been fully investigated by the RAPF’s Major Crime Unit.  They are satisfied having examined all the evidence and interviewed a significant number of people, that this was not an illegal landing.  But, it was a local breach of current Border Regulations by persons who are resident in Anguilla.

The Emergency Powers (Covid-19 Border Control) Regulations 2020 prohibit the operating of any boat in Anguillian waters without permission.  For example, it criminalises taking a boat ride from Sandy Ground to Blowing Point without permission.  The penalty is imprisonment for 12 months or a fine of up to EC$10,000.00.

Given that the RAPF are telling us that it was a “breach of current Border Regulations by persons who are resident in Anguilla”, it can be safely assumed that permission was not granted.  The unstated suggestion in the release is that the matter ends there.

Will these persons be prosecuted?

Or, will all charges be dropped?

I thought this law applied equally to important persons as it does to common Anguillians.

Or, is the law applied one way for friends of the elite, and another way for you and me?

The real scandal is that the Royal Anguilla Police Force does not seem to impartially enforce Anguilla’s laws.  This is not the first time it appears to take instructions on who to prosecute and who to let go.

The Hypoglycemia Defence in Anguilla

Someone asked me recently what I knew of the incident many years ago when Eric Reid knocked out Hubert Hughes in the Anguilla House of Assembly.  I was well aware of the incident.  This is what I told him.  It is quite a long story, so bear with me.

In 1981, I was representing Atlin Harrigan, the most senior electrician on the island at the time.  He came to me for professional assistance.  He had wired the buildings at the Merrywing Hotel for a recently arrived British investor, John Batson.  Batson was refusing to pay his bill for the electrical work.  He had no reason not to pay, he simply was not paying it.  It was quite a lot of money by the values of that time, about US$30,000.00 as I recall.  So, I started proceedings by writing the usual “lawyer’s letter” demanding payment in seven days, or else.

There was no response.  No letter of repudiation of the claim came back.  Nothing.  So, we started the next stage, issuing of a writ.  I paid the Bailiff to serve it on him.

A few days later, my sole secretary, Marionette Morton, called me to reception.  “Mr Mitchell, please come outside, there appears to be a problem.”  So, I exited my little chambers, and went out into the main office.  There I saw a very agitated John Batson waving the writ form at me.  He was yelling, “Did you send this to me?  Do you know who I am?  What is the meaning of this?”  I replied, very reasonably, I thought, “Mr Batson, go and see your lawyer.  I will deal with your lawyer.  I cannot deal with you.”

I then turned around and headed back to my office.  The next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of reception facing the wrong way, and with my knuckles hurting like hell.  I turned to Marionette, who was sitting back in her chair with her mouth open and her eyes even wider open.  I asked her, “Marionette, did something just happen?”

She replied, “Mr Mitchell, you don’t know what you just did?  You punched the man in his face.  When he fell to the floor, you threw him out into the road.”  I was so horrified, I ran to the glass panes in the front door and looked out, fully expecting to see a dead John Batson with truck tire marks running over his prone body.  But there was nothing.  I opened the door and looked around.  Nothing.  He had disappeared, straight to the police station, I imagined.

I went back in and asked Marionette what had happened.  She explained everything.  She said, “When you turned your back on the man, he yelled at you, ‘Listen to me, you arsehole’.  You turned back to him with your face in a rage and hit him in his face.  When he fell down, you pulled him to the door, opened it, and threw him out.”  It must have been the adrenalin.  He weighed twice as much as I did, so it took super-human effort.  I went back to my office, sat down and trembled for the next two days waiting for the police to arrive to question us prior to bringing charges against me.  Nothing happened.  I did not know what I would tell the police.  I had absolutely no recollection of anything after I turned away from Batson and headed back to my office, until I came to myself and spoke to Marionette about why my fist was hurting so much.

Well, after a couple of days, Batson’s lawyer, Billy Herbert, sent over a cheque for the US$30,000.00.  And, that was the end of it.  Atlin used to laugh after that and say that I had discovered a new debt collection technique.

A couple of years later, I was at an International Tax Planning Association workshop in Monte Carlo.  The theme of the workshop was, “How does a busy professional protect himself/herself from the pressures and demands of clients.”  There were several sessions including professional insurance, the need for exercise, and the like.

One of the sessions was conducted by a nutritionist.  He explained to us about hypoglycemia.  I learned that if you don’t have a good breakfast then the slightest thing can set you off, and you lose your temper.  The first meal of the day is not called “break-fast” for nothing.  Your blood sugar level is at its lowest when you wake up, not having eaten for several hours.  You need to have a proper meal to bring your blood sugar to the right level.  Without it, you can’t absorb any sudden injection of adrenalin.  It could be a slamming door or a telephone ringing loudly that sets you off.  If your blood sugar level is unbalanced, a surge of adrenalin into the blood stream might set off the fight or flight instinct, and you react with excessive anger. 

This was the way one hundred thousand years ago we were able effortlessly to climb to the top of the tree in the jungle when we came around a corner and found ourselves face to face with a saber toothed tiger.  Now, it is not tigers, but a slamming door or a ringing phone that sets us off.  Or, apparently, in my case, a red-faced Englishman calling me an arsehole.

After that workshop I equipped my office with a toaster, a fridge, and a coffee maker.  When I got into the office each day between 3:30 and 4:00 am, the first thing I did was make myself breakfast.  Sometimes it was a New York businesswoman’s power breakfast.  Sometimes it was baked beans on toast.  These were some of the meals recommended by the nutritionist.  My blood sugar level seems to have been fine after that.  I never hit anyone in my office again.  And, I was now ready to take on my first hypoglycemic attack case.

Oh, and I built the concrete staircase with the wooden railings that gave access to the office at the Babrow building.  It is still there, opposite Gee Wee’s Restaurant.  You will notice that the stairs are at right angles to the door.  That was specially designed so that if I ever threw another person out of the office, the railing would prevent him from landing in the road in front of passing traffic.

A couple of years later, I had reason to put my learning about hypoglycemia to good use for the first time.  It had to do with the Minister of Education, the Hon Eric Reid, knocking out the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Hubert Hughes, in the precincts of the House of Assembly.

At a meeting of the House of Assembly in the old House of Assembly building (presently the Statistics Department), Hubert turned his attention to Eric Reid, the Honourable Minister of Education.  Eric was also the manager of a transport company owned by Osborne and himself, Island Transport (or its predecessor).  He delivered truckloads of water to householders whose cisterns had run dry.

Hubert spent the entire morning addressing the Speaker (and the nation, as the sitting was broadcast live over Radio Anguilla) about the dishonesty of the Minister of Education, who he alleged, filled his water trucks from the public water supply pump in The Valley and by stealing water from unoccupied buildings, and then selling the water to needy householders.  The Speaker of the House who permitted this ad hominem attack was, by this time, none other than the previously mentioned electrician, the now Honourable Atlin Harrigan.

At the end of the session, Eric was walking out of the House.  Hubert was immediately behind him.  It seems that Hubert repeatedly jabbed his finger into the back of Eric’s ribs, saying, “Boy, I got you there.  I could see you were feeling it.”  Eric explained to me that he simply blacked out.  He saw red.  The next thing he knew, he was turned around 180 degrees facing the Speaker’s desk.  Hubert was lying unconscious at his feet, and his right fist was hurting like hell.  He had no idea what had happened until Chief Minister Emile Gumbs stepped over Hubert’s prostrate body and explained it to him.

Just a few months previously, Lyn Bell had asked me to represent him in the police case brought against him when he jumped a French professional tennis player and beat his face in on a car door, nearly cutting off his ear in the process.  The event was the opening of a lady barrister’s law chambers in the location it presently exists.  Lyn was attracted to the lawyer, but she at that time was more interested in the much younger French tennis coach at Malliouhana Hotel.  Lyn explained that he had been on a diet for weeks, trying in vain to regain his 18-year-old physique, when he saw the lady chatting to the Frenchman at the reception.  He lost all control and jumped the man.  He had no recollection of the incident.  Apparently, from what he was told, a wine glass held in his right hand which he used to repeatedly beat the head of the Frenchman against a car door broke, and accidentally nearly cut off the ear.

All the guests were witnesses.  These included the Governor, Ministers of Government, the Bishop who had just blessed the new office, all members of the Bar Association, and the great and good of the island.  There was no chance of us pleading mistaken identity.

Lyn was charged with several serious assault offences.  I suggested that he obtain a medical opinion on the likely effect of his fasting on his mental state when he was struck by this sight of the object of his affection chatting to his competition.  The medical report he obtained from doctors in Canada was to the effect that the patient had suffered a hypoglycemic attack over which he had no control.  He had not eaten properly for some days. 

We pleaded guilty to a relatively minor charge of common assault, and I presented to the court the medical report in mitigation.  Lyn was given a very mild sentence.  He was placed on a six months’ bond to be of good behaviour and to keep the peace.  Lyn was subsequently sued for damages in the High Court, and he accepted liability for an amount of damages in the area I told him the court was bound to give in any event.

Anyway, Eric was charged with a variety of offences.  They included the offence of “an assault within the precincts of the House of Assembly.”  This charge incurred a mandatory penalty of exclusion from the House of Assembly for a period of one year.  This was a serious situation for a legislator and a Minister of Government to find himself in.  He could not afford to miss meetings of the House for an entire year.  He would have to resign as a Minister.  He was also charged with offences of common assault.  After discussion with Eric, we offered to plead guilty to the lesser offence of common assault.

Because of my experience with John Batson and with Lyn’s case, I had a good idea what had happened to Eric.  However, Eric did not have the means to acquire the expensive medical report that Lyn had obtained.  But he managed to get a local one.  This explained that he was a diabetic.  His blood sugar level was affected.  He was subject, when placed under extreme stress, to a hypoglycemic attack which would induce the flight or fight syndrome over which he had absolutely no control.  Any violence he exhibited would have been entirely outside of his control.

Despite his lack of control, we could not plead “not guilty because of the hypoglycemic attack”.  That is essentially a plea of temporary insanity.  Politically, insanity, temporary or otherwise, would have been unacceptable.  So, we offered to plead guilty to common assault.  The attorney-general, Richard Whitehead, accepted the plea deal.

I had only two authorities upon which to base my argument that Eric was entitled to a light sentence.  One was suggested to me by my cousin, David Carty, Eric’s political adviser.  It was the Biblical story of Jesus seizing a strap and whipping the money changers from the Temple.  The other was the speech of Iago in which he declaims, “Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis nothing … but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.”

I argued in mitigation that if Jesus himself could lose his temper, then so much an ordinary man.  There was such a thing as legitimate anger.  And, that, just as with Iago, the theft by Hubert of Eric’s good name was the greatest offence that could be imagined.  It was not surprising that, with his medical condition, he just lost it and struck out.  He should be excused.

Magistrate Roop Sharma put Eric on the same bond, to keep the peace for six months and be of good behaviour.  Eric later asked me what that meant.  I explained that he was prohibited for a period of six months from cuffing Hubert again.  He had no problem after that attending the House of Assembly.  And, Hubert never gave him reason to strike him again.  Indeed, years later, when Hubert was Chief Minister, I have known Eric to be in Hubert’s office sitting at his side assisting with the interviewing of prospective investors in the island.  There were no permanent hard feelings on either side.