God's Mother and Father

 

The Judeo/Christian God is of quite ancient ancestry.  He emerges from the Bronze Age (circa 3,200-1,200 BC), some 5,000 years ago.  In many ways, he is typical of the several other male, Middle Eastern, Bronze Age gods.  There was Horus of Egypt, Utu of the Sumerians, Helios of the Greeks, and many others.  But who were his mother and father?

For millennia, a variety of mother goddesses flourished in the Middle East.  She took many names and forms.  She is found in the Ashanti Asasa Ya; the Egyptian cat goddess, Bast; the Roman fertility goddess, Bona Dea; the Celtic hearth goddess, Brighid; the Greek goddess of the harvest, Demeter; and the Greek life force from which all other beings sprang, Gaia.  Freya was the Norse goddess of abundance, fertility, and war.  The Egyptian goddess Isis was honoured, as the mother of Horus.  She was the divine mother of every pharaoh of Egypt, and ultimately of Egypt itself.  The Egyptian goddess of fertility, Hathor, is often painted nursing her son Horus.  She is taken as the inspiration for the classic Christian portrait of the Madonna and Child.  There were countless others.

1. The Venus of Hohle Fels

The 40,000-year-old mammoth bone carving of the Venus of Hohle Fels (above) is the oldest known representation of the human form.  Its exaggerated anatomy and massive breasts are a powerful depiction of being female, symbolizing the fertility goddess’ characteristics of sex and reproduction.

 

2. The Venus of Willendorf

The 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf (above) is another Stone Age carving discovered in Austria.  Hundreds of similar ancient female figures of the mother goddess have over the years been discovered by archaeologists.

Study of the history of religion through the ages reveals that the mother goddess took a variety of different forms.  Sometimes she was represented as a snake, or a vulture, or the Moon.  Each symbol represented a cycle of death, birth, and regeneration.  The snake hibernates, and then wakes up and sheds her skin.  The vulture recycles dead flesh by eating it.  The Moon dies and is reborn every 28 days, mirroring the feminine menstrual cycle.  The archaeological record shows that her veneration as the supreme god goes back tens of thousands of years.

In the millennia before the male god-figure rose to ascendancy in the Middle East, a variety of mother goddesses proliferated.  It is uncertain which one of them can with accuracy be named as Yahweh’s mother.  Worship of her was universal throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.  Her adoration in various forms lasted for tens of thousands of years, from early pre-history to the Iron Age.  She could have been any one of them, or all of them.  Her temples were gradually destroyed, and her cult extinguished, by the followers of male gods Mithras, Yahweh, God, and Allah as they began their ascent to the summit of mythology.  For the last two thousand years, these male versions of god have triumphed among the superstitious.

Her priestesses celebrated fertility, bounty, and life.  The fertility religions which venerated the mother goddess stood no chance of surviving once the male gods began their inexorable spread across the western world.  They could offer little opposition to the warlike adherents of the male gods who came to overthrow them.  One by one, the priestesses were sliced down, and their temples burned.  Left to lord it over the religious battlefields were the three Abrahamic gods:  Yahweh, the God of the Jews; the God of the Christians; and Allah, the god worshipped by the followers of Mohammed.  They hold sway among the superstitious of today.  Their main challenge is from those who have come to realise they are all made up superstitions.  But we can with some confidence conclude that Yahweh’s mother was the mother goddess of antiquity.

Yahweh’s paternity is subject to less uncertainty.  The Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep IV (1352-1336 BC) ruled an empire that included Palestine, Phoenicia, Nubia, and Egypt.  There were hundreds of gods of both genders worshipped throughout the empire.  Amenhotep changed his name to Akhenaten when he established a new religion that taught there was but one god, the sun god Aten.  This theory of one supreme, male god was previously unknown.

3. The cartouche of Akhenaten’s name

Akhenaten and his wife, Queen Nefertiti, worshiped only the sun-god, Aten.  The priests of Amun and the other ancient gods of Egypt considered Akhenaten to be a heretic.  The Heretic King is believed to be the first person to promote a monotheistic religion, the belief in only one god.

Moses appears to have been an Atenist priest who was forced to leave Egypt with the people who were to become Israelites.  He and his followers took the new theory of a supreme male god with them out of Egypt.  Such an idea did not previously exist in the Middle East.  Some scholars even theorise that Moses was none other than Akhenaten himself, fleeing the uprising against him by the followers of the old gods.

4. King Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti with three of their daughters under the rays of the sun-god (circa 1350 BC)

The date of the Exodus from Egypt is uncertain and controversial.  It is placed by archaeologists as early as 1446 and as late as 1290 BC.  The details of Moses’ life, and the accuracy of the Hebrew Old Testament’s account of the Exodus, are mired in controversy.  This is not unusual given that the books of the Old Testament were preserved through centuries of unreliable oral tradition.  The stories of the Jewish Bible were not written down for the first time until Ptolemy II arranged for them to be documented in the mid-third century BC, a thousand years after they were first made up.  However, a date in the thirteenth century for the Exodus is generally accepted.  The identity of the specific pharaoh involved remains an open question.

It is clear from the sequence that it was this event that brought the male god, whom the Israelites subsequently came to name Yahweh, from Egypt to Israel.  This god whom Moses and his successors syncretised out of the Aten and the god versions of Canaan remained an essentially barbaric, murderous and jealous Bronze Age god.

5. Statue of Akhenaten

Akhenaten’s chosen religion did not survive long in its original form.  Once he left the scene, the worshipers of the old gods wasted no time in tearing down the temples to Aten and chiselling away most references to him on the monuments Akhenaten built.  But the Aten’s legacy survived elsewhere.  The progeny of the Aten flourished in the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula and later in the sands of Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula.

6. The Tetragrammaton YHWH, the name of God written in Hebrew

During their forty years in the desert, the Hebrew-speakers developed their theology of the male god, Yahweh.  He seems to have gradually evolved by a merger of the Aten of Egypt and El, the supreme god of the Mesopotamian Semites.  Moses can thus be said to have achieved the monotheism that Akhenaten sought to promote.  In this way an African deity, the Aten, has a good claim to be the one true father of Yahweh.

In the earliest Christian writings, the concept of God was governed by the invocation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Since the 1st century, Christians began to call upon God with this name.  By the time of the first Council of Nicaea in AD 325, this version of the Christian God had come to receive universal acceptance among believers.

Anxious to distinguish their god of the New Testament from the barbaric god of the Old, and to emphasise God’s preference for love over vengeance, the followers of Christ made several adaptations that Christians are familiar with today.  The Sermon on the Mount preached by Jesus, together with the three virtues taught by St Paul, remain core Christian teaching.  Christianity may be said to distinguish its adherents as sitting at a cultural peak of all religious superstition.

7. The earliest known depiction of the Trinity, 350 AD

It is interesting to note that, in syncretising his own version of god, the child-rapist, mass-murdering prophet of Allah, Mohammed, preferred the more savage version of god promoted by the Hebrews.  Allah, according to the teachings of Mohammed, has not mellowed with age as the Christian god has.  His followers still practise the barbaric customs of stoning to death, cutting off limbs and heads, and child rape as marriage, pioneered by the religious of the Bronze Age, promoted by the followers of Yahweh, and recommended by Mohammed.  He married his favourite wife, Aisha, when she was six, though he claimed not to have taken her to bed until she was nine years old.

The present-day followers of either one male god or the other are in a majority throughout the world’s believers.  Yahweh, the first son of the Aten, has a mere 15 million Jewish followers.  His half-brother, God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is followed by 2.5 billion Christians.  The third and youngest son of the Aten, Allah, is worshipped by the followers of Mohammed who number some 2 billion.

Given that there are some 8 billion people in the world at this point in the early twenty-first century, that leaves 3.5 billion pagans who do not claim allegiance to any of these religions.  How many nominally religious persons believe the nonsense taught by the high priests of their male dominated religion is doubtful.  It is probably no more than fifty per cent.  But that is another story.

In conclusion, we observe that new religions traditionally emerge from among the poor and the oppressed.  Over time they progress from being a persecuted minority to the generally accepted code of belief.  Forecasting the future is more difficult than excavating the past.  But we can confidently anticipate that at some date in the future, when the religions of the Christians and the Muslims begin to go the way of Baal and the Aten, a Rastafarian Queen will ascend to the throne of England and her religion will be the norm through the civilised world.

Christmas Letter 2020

 

Don and Maggie wish you a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous and Healthy New Year in 2021.

We have done practically nothing at all for the year.  Our long-planned, grand, Easter, Maggie’s Family Gathering went down the tubes for a reason you will have no difficulty guessing.

Maggie’s annual summer trip to Europe went down the same tube. She retired from volunteering at WISE at the end of the summer term. At 72 and going deaf, she decided that 12 years was enough. She will miss the students and the teachers but will keep in touch. She does aquarobics 2-3 times a week, for an hour each time, and comes home exhausted and content to collapse for an hour or so while Don feeds the dogs.  She was re-elected to the Board of the Anguilla Mortgage Company at its (virtual) AGM in March and goes off to meetings at regular intervals.

Don’s main excitement was his cataract operation in nearby Marigot which meant he had to spend two weeks in quarantine in the Guest Shack.  He is now without spectacles.  As he has been heard solemnly announcing, this is the first time he has been able to drive a car without spectacles since he was seven years old.

Dick Foran was not in Anguilla to take Maggie for her traditional November Birthday meal at Hibernia Restaurant, so Don had to dig into his reserves and act as a stand-in.  A delicious meal as usual: 

1. Don and Maggie at Hibernia Restaurant

 

2. Don spectacle-less at Ola’s Restaurant

One adventure we enjoyed was taking advantage of Kathy Haskins’ special rate for a “staycation” for locals at her Shoal Bay Villas Hotel, and spent a lovely week playing at being tourists.

We have enlarged the family with three more mutts from AARF (Anguilla Animal Rescue Foundation).  The two biggest take it in turns to spend the night inside on internal security guard.  The other four are on duty patrolling the outside.  We take the usual precautions urged on all retirees everywhere of trying to be home before nightfall, and ensuring the doors are all locked before we go up to bed.  If we are driving home after dark, we use the automatic door lock, and shut the windows.  With the coming layoffs in the public and private sectors, we expect civil disturbances, including home invasions of the elderly, to increase.  There is no evidence of this occurring at present, only our naturel paranoia.  Remember the old warning, “Just because I am paranoid does not mean they are not really out to get me.”

 

3. Maggie playing tourist at an empty Shoal Bay East beach

Our only overseas visitors were Gad and Ruth Heuman, friends from the Association of Caribbean Historians, who stayed at Carimar Beach Club.  Don enjoyed lecturing the Professor Emeritus of Caribbean History all about the history of Anguilla – Don’s version of it, anyway.

The yard occupied most of Don’s waking hours.  He has dug up almost every cubic centimeter of dirt and wheelbarrowed it outside the fence.  Only the pots in the vegetable garden will contain dirt.  The surface of the yard is now completely covered in concrete and gravel.  He is making good on his promise to himself that he will not spend his old age weeding Anguilla rock stones and pretending to keep a garden.

 

4. Don with 3 of the 5 children proudly showing off the graveled, dirt-less front lawn

 

The rest of the family (Morocoys) at dinner

Kitchen scraps and garden clippings, as you see above, go to the tortoises (the peafowl were lost in Hurricane Irma in 2017).  In Anguilla we have both the yellow leg and the red leg varieties.

 

6. Cheap labour employed to gravel the yard

The pandemic has been kind to Anguilla from a health point of view.  The few cases we have had were all caught either by testing at arrival, or at the second compulsory test taken towards the end of the guest’s obligatory 14-day quarantine.  Most of the staff employed in the tourist industry were laid off but received a monthly allowance from the Social Security Fund by an amendment to the Act made to permit this irregular use of the Fund.  The money won’t last much longer.

Keep safe, and hope to see you in the New Year.

Pandora's Box

 

In Greek mythology, Pandora was given a box by the gods and warned that she must never open it.  But Pandora was curious and the urge to open the box overcame her.  She looked in it.  Horrible things flew out of the box.  These included greed, envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty, war, and death.  All of life’s miseries were let out into the world.  Pandora slammed the lid of the box back down.  Only hope remained inside the box.  Ever since, humans hold on to this hope to survive the wickedness that Pandora let out.

So, we warn against opening Pandora’s box.  This means that when someone makes a single, simple miscalculation it can be a source of endless complications or trouble.

Today, Thursday 22 October, members of the Constitutional Reform Committee, including me, received an email from the Ministry of Home Affairs with a draft Order in Council attached.  It says it will be signed by the Privy Council on 11 November 2020.  That is barely 14 days away.  It will amend our 1982 Constitution.

It is true that the proposed amendment appears to be of minor significance.  It merely prohibits the House of Assembly from appointing one of the two ex-officio members, the Attorney-General or the Deputy Governor, to serve as Deputy Speaker.  In future, the Deputy Speaker must be one of the elected members who is not a Minister of government.  It is not a big issue.  That is not the point.  It is the way the government is going about amending our Constitution that is the concern.

No one has explained to us what is so wrong about one of these ex-officio members being called on occasionally, in case of the Speaker’s illness or absence from Anguilla, to act as Speaker.  Nor has anyone explained why it must be a sitting member of the House who acts as Deputy Speaker.  There are several qualified, experienced, and unemployed ex-Speakers.  Any of them would, presumably, be willing to donate their services in case of emergency for a day or two.  In exchange, they might be entitled to be called “Honourable” for the next five years.

There is no issue of principle against a person from outside the House being elected Deputy Speaker.  The Constitution permits the Speaker herself to be elected from outside the House.  The present one is elected from the community.  We originally did it that way because the numbers in the House are so few.  If an elected government member is appointed Speaker, the number of debaters is reduced.  The quality of debate is diminished.  What if the government has a majority in the House of only one?  The proposed amendment would destroy that majority if no opposition member agrees to be elected Deputy Speaker.

Instead, we could have the Constitution amended to allow any person who is qualified to be elected to the House to be made the deputy Speaker, like the Speaker herself.

It is apparent that that our government has with the British government come up with this, in my opinion, meaningless and unnecessary plan without any warning or explanation to us.  No doubt, it was instigated by either or both the A-G or the DG.  They must have felt they were being imposed on.  They must have put pressure on the government to do this thing.

There was not a hint this amendment was coming.  The draft is dated 30 September 2020, so they have been working on it in secret for some weeks or months.  During all that time, our government did not think it fit to consult with us the public or to get either our input or our consent to the amendment.

It is an insignificant amendment, someone will say.  That is not the point.  A Constitution is a contract between the people and the government it elects.  A contract is made between two or more parties.  It is not permissible for one party to unilaterally amend a contract.  No, not even to change one word of it.  This is not written in the Constitution.  It is a fundamental, unwritten principle of modern British colonial constitutional law.

The British government has promised us repeatedly in the past that they will never permit our government to go behind our backs and negotiate a constitutional amendment without our approval.  If the amendment is so insignificant, why not try first to secure our approval.  If we were asked, it would not be difficult for us to show our agreement.

First, explain to us why the amendment is a good idea.  Explain what ill it is intended to cure.  Explain exactly what in the present structure is inconvenient.  As a lawyer, I may understand what the amendment is intended to achieve.  But the average Anguillian on Island Harbour beach or the South Valley main road needs to understand too.

Do not make the same mistake the previous Administration made and rush to make an amendment without consultation and agreement.  There is no indication even that the Administration intends to submit the proposed amendment to and seek the approval of the House.

The first time our government tried to amend our 1982 Constitution without public consultation and approval was in the year 2007.  The proposed amendment was to change the name of the Royal Anguilla Police Force from “Force” to “Service”.  We learned of the proposed amendment just days before the Order was to be signed in London by the Privy Council.  Our government apparently considered the amendment so minor that they made no effort to inform or seek the consent of the people.  I wrote an article about it on 17 January 2007.

The public uproar at that arbitrary and arrogant act on the part of our government was so loud that the Privy Council heard it.  They withdrew the draft Order just 10 days before it was intended to be signed.  In the end it was never signed.  There is no doubt that if we had been consulted, we would have agreed to the change.

We recall that just last year the previous Administration, in cahoots with Lord Ahmad of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, amended our Constitution without real public consultation.  They deleted some of the provisions recommended for deletion by the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Committee.  But they did not do all the recommended deletions.  They inserted some of the new provisions recommended by the Committee.  But they did not do all of them.  And they invented some new provisions of their own.  These were not recommended by anybody.

We were never given any real explanation why the proposed provisions of this 2019 Amendment Constitution were so important that they had to be rushed just before the general elections.  It was obvious to all of us that the intention of the amendments was to try to give the outgoing Administration a political advantage before the elections.

The result was a fiasco.  We ended up with a miserable abortion of an Amended Constitution.  And the government lost the election.  This betrayal of the people was, in my view, one of the main reasons why the past Administration were defeated at the polls.

There are barely two weeks between this first revelation of the proposed amendment and the day it will come into effect.  Explain to us why the amendment is so urgent and critical that it must be rushed in this way.  We are not so dumb that we cannot understand.  We are not sheep who can be forced to accept any arrogant act by government.

We endured enough secrecy over the past five years.  We did not appreciate this treatment.  The present Administration should be concerned about being compared to the last one.

We can learn from previous mistakes.  We can take the time to explain.  Ask us to accept the amendment.  Perhaps consider all the amendments that are needed and bring them all into effect at the same time.  There is no rush.

The precedent was set by the 2019 Amendment Constitution.  This Administration now feels free to negotiate constitutional change with the British government without consulting us.  Yes, there has been an announcement on the daily news bulletin that the Order in Council is going to be signed on 11 November.  But that is hardly consultation and agreement.  There is a political price to pay for perceived arrogance.

Those that wish to take advantage of us will now say that Anguillians do not place any value on the need to be consulted before our Constitution is amended.  There is nothing now to stop the British government from arbitrarily amending it in the future without even our government’s consent, far less ours.  We have opened Pandora’s Box.

Anguilla in Quarantine

 

Anguilla is a typical small island developing state.  We have a tiny population of twelve thousand persons.  But we are required to provide most of the basic services for our people that large states do.  We have the same number of people as a small village in the UK or Nigeria.  But we are obliged to have a similar infrastructure as London or Abouja, including police, customs, and immigration departments.  While the world’s economy was booming, we were easily able to pay for this luxury.

When the international leisure industry was at its peak, we could pick up the crumbs to meet our public administration bills.  Before terrorism and money laundering became a world-wide issue, we could provide liberal financial services to the international community, and cream off some of the wealth to cover our government costs.  That has all changed now.

Unlike the islands around us, Anguilla has managed to stay Covid-free since the first 3 cases in March 2020.  We have done this by imposing strict quarantine and border control regulations.  So long as we maintain quarantine regulations and border closure, we can be relatively confident that we will remain safe.  At present, we insist that anyone arriving must quarantine, initially at government’s expense, in a secure location for between 10 and 14 days, depending on whether they come from a relatively Covid-free country or not.  They must also pay a charge to cover the cost of their quarantine and the ancillary services, such as food and security personnel.  But, with the economy collapsing, the good sense of these regulations is now being questioned.

From what I hear, hotel guests are cancelling their reservations for the 2020/2021 winter season.  As a result, it seems to me that most of the major hotels of Anguilla will be obliged to shutter for the season.  Restaurants, water sports companies, car rentals, holiday apartments, and other tourism-related businesses will be forced to close.  The excuse being given by some cancelling guests is that Anguilla’s quarantine restrictions prohibit their arrival on our shores.  They say they are going to spend the winter instead in Antigua and Saint Lucia.  There, they say, the Covid-19 regulations are much laxer.  We will have to wait and see.  Personally, I very much doubt there will be much tourism to Antigua or St Lucia in the coming 2020/2021 season.  Reservations in October do not automatically equate to warm beds in December.

Unemployment increases daily.  The hotels, especially the foreign-owned ones on Anguilla’s coastline, are now pressuring government to open.  We read that they accuse us of being unreasonable in our quarantine regulations.  They loudly proclaim in the press, and on TV, and radio that it is government’s fault that staff are being fired.  They say that, if only the quarantine regulations were slackened to be the same as Antigua and St Lucia, the staff would all be back at work.

This is all nonsense, of course.  Any thinking person who keeps up with the international news knows the truth.  It does not matter if every quarantine restriction is removed.  Few visitors will come to the Caribbean this winter.  Only the most reckless US or European traveller, careless of his or her health, will visit us for a holiday.

There is the problem with air lift.  We read that the world’s major airlines are mothballing their planes and laying off their staff.  Air France, Air Canada, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, each are applying for tens of billions of dollars from their governments to help them keep afloat.  They will likely not get it since there is no more money.  The cruise lines have all laid up their ships.  It is not likely they will get any more bail outs.  It seems to me that it will take another decade, if ever, for them to recover.

The bottom line is the leisure travel industry as we knew it pre-2020 is dead.  Few international travellers will be arriving on any Caribbean shores.  In my crystal ball, I see a full one half of the luxury hotels of Anguilla abandoned.  There will be palm trees growing out of their windows before long.  Most of the luxury restaurants will have sold their pots and pans and shut for good.  No more caviar and champagne.  From now on, we dine out on johnny cake and corned beef.  We must find other ways than tourism to occupy our time and earn an income.  And none of it will be due to the strict quarantine regulations now in force.

Perhaps most ominous for Anguilla’s economy, a recent report in the newspaper indicates that government’s revenue from taxes and licences is less than half what was budgeted for this year.  This revenue is needed to pay our bloated public service their salaries and other emoluments.  The situation is not sustainable.  Something has got to give.  Logically, with only half the revenue, we must cut our costs by a half.  Either we let go half of the public service, or they all stay on, but at half of their salaries.

Even with cost-cutting, the Anguilla as we know it is not sustainable.  The nanny-state that Anguilla aspired to be in the good times is now out of our reach.  We cannot afford any more subsidised education, health care, or social services.  These will shortly have to be met by user fees.  We must cease paying the cost of hospitalising in Panama our gunshot gangster youth.  These social services will soon be a thing of the past.  We just have not realized it yet.  And it is nothing to do with the strict quarantine and border control regulations.

Then, there is the possibility of coming international political and economic instability.  Trump has threatened that he is not going to leave the White House in January.  If civil disturbances break out in the United States this winter, there will be no airlines flying out of Kennedy or Miami International Airport to the Caribbean, even without the pandemic.

It may not happen on election day, November 3, or on December 14 when the Electoral College meets.  But, if by January 21, Inauguration Day, there is turmoil all over the United States, there will likely be no leisure travel from the US to the Caribbean.  If this occurs, we cannot blame either Covid or the British for the resulting economic catastrophe.

Then, there is natural traveller caution.  Covid-19 spreads fastest through the air in confined spaces.  In early 2020 at the start of the epidemic, cruise ships were centres of infection.  They are all laid up now.  I expect that, with a few foolhardy exceptions, they will not resume their cruise schedules until 2022.

Everything depends on the availability of a safe and effective vaccine.  The epidemiologists have explained why one will not be approved until early in 2021.  Even then, it will not be widely available to us until mid- to late-2021.  Without being vaccinated, no sensible person will choose to go on holiday overseas by sea or by air.

Meanwhile, doubts and confusion about vaccinations are being spread by anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists.  These operate both locally and internationally.  Recent surveys in the USA and Europe reveal that the result is that, even when a vaccine does become available, it will not quickly be taken up by everyone.  It may take years for most of the public to enjoy the benefits of vaccination.  Which one of us is going to be so negligent as to travel unvaccinated to a foreign country with medical services of an unknown quality for a holiday, amid a pandemic?  Even if Anguilla opened promiscuously, abandoning all health precautions, I do not believe that a single additional passenger will risk arriving on our shores at this time.

The conspiracy theorists are not helping.  Anguilla’s more racist conspiracy theorists are now filling the airwaves with dire warnings.  To hear their panicked voices, the UK public health system is putting pressure on Anguilla to shut our borders.  They express certainty that the white British are out to punish poor little black us.  Quite why the British would want to do such a thing to Anguilla is anyone’s guess.  But anti-British feeling, fuelled by a pernicious and ingrained racism, is prevalent among certain elements in our society.  As if the British have the slightest interest in causing Anguilla any harm!  They would probably have to pay to bail us out of it in the end, anyway.  But, there never had to be any good reason for conspiracy theories to flourish in the best of times.

Anguillians must face a new reality.  Nothing will be the same when this pandemic is over.  Public services will be pared down to a minimum.  The days when the Anguilla public service was used as a sponge to mop up the unemployed and the unemployable are over.  We can no longer afford to employ five persons to do the job of one as we presently do.

There is the little matter of our failure to enforce our own tax laws.  No enforcement proceedings have ever, to my knowledge, been brought against a single tax defaulter in the modern history of Anguilla.  We can no longer afford to continue forgiving persons who neglect to pay their taxes, as we have done for decades past.  If we do, why should any foreign taxpayer contribute to our self-created folly.

One last prediction.  The next time our government appeals to the British government for another hundred-million-dollar bail out, we will finally lose our entitlement state of mind.  The British deficit is presently about £300 billion.  I see the British PM responding to our Premier with these words, “Colonialism has been over for a long time.  We have looked at the books.  It appears that Anguilla has never in its history contributed anything to the British Treasury.  Do you not think it is about time that you helped us with our fiscal deficit?  We were thinking of a token contribution from you in the region of ten million US dollars.  How about it?”

If my cautionary words appear exaggerated to some, hopefully they will serve to counterbalance the ridiculous claim that our health quarantine regime has been imposed on our government by an oppressive and uncaring British government.

Sandy Ground Marina MOU

 

Effective 31 May 2020, the outgoing Anguilla United Front government signed a memorandum of understanding (called “a Definitive Agreement” but referred to in this article as “the MOU” or “the Agreement”) with a Swiss Group to develop a marina in the Sandy Ground’s Road Salt Pond.  The objective of the project is said to be the development, construction, and operation of a mixed-use mega-yacht marina, waterfront, and resort at a cost of some US$270 million.

A few short weeks later (on 29 June) the AUF lost the general election and was replaced by an Anguilla Progressive Movement administration.  The APM administration inherited the MOU.  Residents of Sandy Ground are calling on the new administration to repudiate the MOU.  They oppose the MOU on several grounds including that it will disrupt the village, poison the people, and produce no benefit to the country.

A first look at the MOU reveals that it is essentially a real estate development project.  The document says that the Developer will build a 150-berth marina.  Crucially, it will also build a hotel and sell ocean estate lots, port town villas, seafront residences, sea view town homes, and commercial space.  The real estate units are to be sold as condominium and time share-type properties.

Some of the objections advanced by residents of Sandy Ground include engineering, environmental, feasibility, and amenity issues.  Let us look at some of them.

The engineering objections to the development of a mega-yacht marina in the Road Pond are formidable.  The pond was apparently created in prehistoric times by a sand bank forming across the middle of the bay.  Experts can tell us approximately when this happened.  It is likely to have been many thousands of years ago, perhaps as long ago as a hundred thousand years.  During the intervening period, and from time to time, glaciers covered large areas of the earth causing sea levels to lower.  Subsequent melting of the glaciers  resulted in rising sea levels.  The result was that the sand bank was sometimes above and sometimes below the surface of the surrounding sea.  The present village of Sandy Ground is constructed on this sand bank which is no more than 10 feet above sea level.

During the periods when Sandy Ground was above sea level, sea water permeated through the sandy bank and filled the trapped bay behind.  This formed the familiar Road Salt Pond.  As the water in the pond evaporated, crystals of salt precipitated out and sank to the bottom.  For thousands of years, this salt lay unmolested on the bottom of the pond, gradually becoming compressed as more and more layers formed on top the previous ones.  Presently, the water in the pond is no more than some six inches deep.  Below that is a thin layer of mud and a much thicker layer of fossilized salt.

The old-timers among us recall when, some thirty years ago, the US TV entertainment billionaire Bob Johnson owned a villa at Cove Castles Resort in West End.  He first proposed to the then Government a project for converting the Road Pond into a Marina.  He is supposed to have had a geological survey of the bottom of the pond done to determine the feasibility of dredging it.  This survey is said to have found that there was a layer of some forty feet of rock salt overlying the deepest part of the rocky limestone basement.  One of the reasons why he was said to have dropped the idea of a marina was the advice that it would take a great deal of blasting to remove this rock salt layer.  Sandy Ground village would have to be vacated, and the people located elsewhere for a period of up to two or three years, while the blasting was carried out.  This proposition was too expensive even for a billionaire, and the project fell through.  With increased development in Sandy Ground village since that time, temporary relocation of the villagers is likely to be more expensive now than it was at that time.  No doubt Government has a copy of this feasibility study, or with a little effort can get access to it.

Even if the residents of the village do not have to be relocated, questions have been asked about the quality of the air once the mud on the bottom of the pond is disturbed.  We are all familiar with the great stink that comes from the pond from time to time.  The question is asked if a disturbance of the mud layer will result in the air flow over the village being poisoned.  Only a feasibility study of the mud layer and its qualities will reveal the true situation.

Residents doubt that another marina in the Leeward Islands is feasible.  Why would any boat owner choose to dock his mega yacht in an expensive little island like Anguilla when the established marinas of nearby St Maarten, Tortola, and Antigua are willing and able to provide all their necessities?

Reading the MOU, one gets the impression that the main interest of the Developer is not the marina but the sale of condominiums.  The proposed marina appears no more than the hook to bring in purchasers of the luxury units.  If that bait fails, the feasibility of the real estate aspect of the project also fails.

What evidence do we have that this Developer has US$270 million to invest?  The question must be asked, whether after the “great financial success” of Starwood (remember them?) and other failed projects, any other than an idiot would take this project on?  Could this project be another case of a penniless “developer” obtaining a licence or agreement with a view of going into the market to find money?

Hurricanes pass through the Leeward Islands (of which Anguilla is the most northerly) nearly every year.  Any boat (whether berthed or beached) remaining in an Anguillian harbour during a hurricane will suffer catastrophic damage.  We have seen what happens in the existing nearby marinas.  For this reason, luxury boat owners sail their vessels to Trinidad or Aruba for safety during the hurricane season which lasts for some six months.  The existing marinas in St Maarten (where they have an international airport and marine supply and diesel repair infrastructure in place) remain half-empty for much of the year.

It is notorious that insurance companies do not insure boats that remain in these waters between June and November.  Which mega yacht owner will choose to leave his valuable boat in Anguillian waters uninsured during the hurricane season?  Any new marina built in Anguilla must plan to close for six months in every year for want of business.  The associated hotel and condominiums will probably be unoccupied during this period.

With the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic, the holiday and cruise industries have collapsed.  The number of people who will venture overseas by ‘plane or by boat for leisure in the foreseeable future will be limited.  Mega yachts are more likely to remain safely moored in Florida or in Monaco than sailing across the seas to under-resourced destinations like Anguilla.  It is not likely there will be any market for the projected marina, hotel, or condominium units until the world-wide economy has recovered.  This must take at least the next three to five years.  Investors are not all stupid people.  The economic feasibility of such a situation is much to be doubted.

Article 8 of the MOU provides for Environmental Impact Assessments to be carried out.  Government is obliged by the MOU to approve all construction subject to adequate environmental and engineering studies.  If the Developer fails to commence work within 3 years of the effective date, Government has the right to revoke the Agreement.  It is likely that this provision will operate to save the people of Sandy Ground from the planned economic and other inconveniences that they were facing.

Article 11 provides that in the event of any disagreement between the parties, they will submit the issue to arbitration.  Government may only terminate the Agreement if the arbitration process concludes that it has the right to do so because of a material breach by the Developer that cannot be amicably resolved.  It is likely that the failure to carry out the planned development in the coming three years will provide Government with the opportunity to bring this misconceived project to an early end.  It would be quite wrong for Government to give in to public pressure and terminate the Agreement without a good reason as contemplated by the Agreement.  They will probably lose any resulting lawsuit and be obliged to pay the Developer damages.

The new administration has been lumbered with this MOU by the outgoing one.  There is probably little or nothing they can do at this time to get out of their obligation to let the preparation and planning move forward.  What the Government’s expert advisers must look out for is the opportunity in due course to use the escape clauses in the Agreement.