A poverty/rich credo from the early 2000’s:

The haves

the have nots

and…the have yachts

In the market don’t fret

to buy, sell, hold or bet

the colour of quiescence is gold

but red for ‘iffy’ equities unsold

 That was all happening in the early 2000’s. But, since the 2008 crash more sober epithets are now in vogue. This was an explanation of what was happening from the website Marketwatch:

 Two decades of cheap money helped turn Wall Street over to the traders. That led to a very different way of doing business. Wall Street's new culture can be summarized in one powerful quotation:

"With a trader, the goal of every minute of every day is to make money ... so if running the economy off the cliff makes you money, you will do it, and you will do it every day of every week.” Wall Street's culture is without a conscience, reveling in $100 million profit days. Traders act like cocaine addicts. Their brains have warped Wall Street's ethics so badly they can't think of anything but bonuses. They've lost their moral compass.”

Besides the ‘way out’, and to some the ‘preposterous’, idea of building a bridge in the northern Bahamas there is another aspect of transportation in the Bahamas that should be discussed. It has been mentioned already that the longest distance one can drive in the Bahamas is about 100 miles (from the north to the south of Abaco). Yet the average trip length by private vehicle in most places in the Bahamas is probably less than five miles and the islands have no hills to speak of and a total absence of snow or ice - all of which would make it a perfect venue for electric vehicles (ev’s). The electricity incidentally, could be obtained fairly easily from locally derived wind, solar and tidal power.

It would take a brave government to tackle this problem head-on but, providing there was an economic incentive, it could be an amazing world ‘first’ for the Bahamas to take the lead in phasing out the personal internal combustion engine. Manufacturers of electric vehicles would be delighted to have a ‘test’ location like that offered by the Bahama Islands and might even offer the incentives necessary. As a first step the use of hybrid vehicles might be encouraged and even mandated for private transportation, but then, after a transitional period of several years, the only new vehicles permitted for private transportation would have to be propelled solely by electricity. On a related subject F W Smith the CEO of Fedex offered a plan to reduce the cost of transportation and reliance on foreign countries for energy. His solution: electrify short-haul transportation. Fedex has begun to do this with its own fleet which includes 365 hybrids and 43 electric vehicles. He claims that electric transportation is 75 to 80% less expensive per mile than internal combustion engines (source: Barrons 8/1/11).

By 2020 it has been suggested that more people will visit the Bahamas for heritage tourism than for sea, sand and sun (and perhaps even gambling?). Since Grand Bahama was settled relatively recently it might be a good question to ask what heritage sites could Grand Bahama Island possibly exploit?

Well, actually the answer is that there are quite a lot. The following is a list of just some of the island’s heritage attractions – many of them latent and presently unexploited:

• West End – the heritage settlement par excellence of the bootlegging era, there is also the West End Seafood factory (with associations of Wennergren and the Duke of Windsor’s visit) and the later memoria of the Butlins Holiday Camp venture
• Deadmans Reef – an important Lucayan Indian site on the beach near the Buccaneer Club (a design for a monument has been proposed)
• Ministry of Tourism historic sites (in 8MR, Pinders Point and Freeport)
• The multi-townships of Eight Mile Rock - potentially an interesting Grand Bahamian religious experience for Sunday mornings
• Holmes Rocks – a natural beauty spot (best approached from the Paradise Cove Beach Club)

The first time I met Hannes Babak he was fresh off a plane from Vienna with a roll of drawings under his arm. The drawings, prepared by an Austrian firm of architects, were for a high-rise building on Lucayan Beach. These were the grim economic days of the 1980’s in Freeport and he arrived fresh-faced with the blessing of the Port Authority to commence a major construction project. But first he had to get building approval and that would entail employing a local architect to ensure that the drawings met the local Building Code. On behalf of a colleague I was one of several architects he met. I reviewed the drawings that were competently prepared except they did not show a secondary emergency exit from each apartment and the elevators for a multi-storey building were seriously undersized. I politely pointed this out but Mr Babak was in Teutonic determination mode and would brook no changes. The interview was quickly concluded.

I should add as a footnote, the building was eventually constructed and, though the colleague I represented was not chosen to act as the local architect of record, the elevators were in fact later re-sized and an alternative egress from all apartments was provided. The completion of the building was a creditable addition to the Freeport skyline and encouraged Mr Babak to use his entrepreneurial skills to seek more commercial opportunities in Freeport…more about that later (see also a new publication: ‘The Port at War’).

Hannes Babak was later appointed Chairman of the Port Authority shortly after Julian Francis resigned and in no time became the lightning rod between the St George and Hayward camps in the battle for the ownership of the Port Authority. For many months hardly a day went by without some news about him, his contract with the Port Authority, his work permit, his supposedly conflicting interests and so on. Finally he lost his position with the Port Authority, saw his investments turn south but then presumably sought legal recourse because of his employment agreement. This was supposedly resolved through arbitration and it was rumoured he would receive $10 million from the St George camp and $10 million from the Hayward camp as a settlement. If the payment was ever made he will have done quite well from Freeport considering the economy has produced so many hardship cases …