Welcome to another episode of The News Navigators with me,
Jeremy Deacon. And me, Jonathan Sterling.
We're we're recording this on Thursday, February the 19th,
tomorrow, Friday is the budget. So we're just going to have a
little fun speculating about what might be in the budget and
who is going to please and who isn't.
It's going to please. And there was a very interesting
report released recently, the annual report of the Bermuda
Judiciary, which raised quite a few issues, not least about the
independence of the judiciary via their pay.
And it's a fascinating thought. I think first of all, Jonathan,
we, we both talked about this and I think it's only right and
proper that we should pay a short tribute or a tribute to
Ciola Wilson. I didn't work with Ciola a huge
amount, but I certainly came across her a lot and to me she
was a spiky character and I mean that in the nicest possible way.
I used to sit back at press conferences when she was there
and let her do the heavy lifting because she was not afraid of
asking the tough questions. She was not afraid of saying
taking no for an answer. And I just love the way she made
them squirm ministers and she wouldn't back down.
And, and to me, that is such an important part of being a
journalist. We need more people like her who
won't take no for an answer, who will say often on live TV or
live radio, that's not good enough.
And I and I think, you know, she was brilliant at that kind of
thing. Sheila was a good reporter.
And I do wonder sometimes how far she may have gone and
whether there was. Well, there would have been a
good chance, I think you know, of her being the black, first
black female editor and I think that's long overdue in Bermuda.
Royal Gazette, you mean? Of of any newspapers such as
Sarah now, but of the Royal Gazette now.
It's long overdue. But yeah, she'll be best.
She'll be greatly amazed and I know a lot of ministers will be
sighing a sigh of relief. She was certainly formidable.
I always celebrated her confidence.
As you say, she was willing to ask questions and she wouldn't
be fobbed off by by kind of misdirection questions.
She was laser focused. So yeah, it was very sad to hear
for passing the other day. It was, and I hope she's
somewhere up there giving Saint Peter the Pearly Gates a hard
time. I'm sure she would.
I'm. Sure she would.
Yeah. Rest in peace, Deola and our our
huge condolences to to her family.
Like I said, tomorrow's the budget eventually.
David Burt's last as finance minister.
I say that because I, I don't know about you, Jonathan,
keeping rumours that he wants to stay on as finance minister when
he steps down as premier. So this is the first budget
where he'll have significantly more money to play with because.
The. Corporate income tax will have
been collected and reports are suggesting an extra 600 million
or so in revenue on top of the usual revenue from taxes
etcetera. Now we had the pre budget report
last year. So I don't think there's going
to be too many surprises. We know that he's going to
follow the tax Reform Commission recommendations partially or
completely, he said, which among those were cutting the employer
payroll tax portion, eliminating duty on the production, supply
and delivery of electricity. It cost a living tax there.
Also looking at relieving health insurance costs for the
underinsured and the elderly. So I think we can see more money
into the health insurance system.
And also importantly, he said, I'm going to quote this, the
debt over assets rule over a rolling period of of three years
of at least three years, at least 70% of net corporate
income tax revenues should be diverted to paying debt interest
and reducing that debt or accumulating that financial
assets. So I think we know that we know
roughly what's going to happen. This is we all know the devil's
in the detail. The Tax Reform Commission did
bring out its waterfall system for corporate income tax and
very quickly running through it did say Stability fund 100
million a year debt sinking fund 200 million Senior healthcare
support 30 mil during short healthcare 12 million employer
payroll tax reduction 68. Low income healthcare subsidy
18,000,000. Utility tax relief 8 million BE
payroll tax reduction 24,000,000.
Employer health insurance subsidy 19,000,000 and the
elimination of the foreign foreign currency purchase tax is
31 million. As I said, a lot of those have
been indicated that are actually going to happen tomorrow.
How much in terms of money will be interesting.
What are your predictions, Jonathan?
Yeah. I mean, as you say, the CIT is a
bit of a, the corporate income tax is a bit of a game changer.
And this is the the first budget where that's happening.
And it's also, as you mentioned, the last budget that the Premier
is going to be giving as Premier.
Whether he is reappointed as a Minister of Finance in the
future, we don't know. The reason we say that,
listeners, is because the Premier has already said he's
not contesting the constitutional leadership
election for the PLP's leadership in this coming
October. And whoever becomes the new
leader of the PLP, and thus the new Premier, has the right to
appoint. There are ministers, and there's
no guarantee that David Burt will be made a Minister of
Finance. You might want to take a little
break. Yeah.
But at the same time, you know, with this being his last budget,
his last no one budget, you never know what's going to
happen in the future. He's going to want to go out
with a legacy. And I think his emphasis is
going to be on trying to get that, you know, that look, the
PLP has reined in government debt and we are now creating a
budget surplus going forward and an end to austerity.
I think it's going to try to go out with a bang, but like a
responsible bang, if that makes sense.
Yeah, a responsible bang. I think that does make sense.
I kind of, I think we know the cost of living is a massive
issue. Yeah.
And I'm sure there'll be a big emphasis on the cost of living,
whether that's through, you know, reducing fees on the
utilities, whether that's through a tax reduction for
employees and employers for their payroll, we'll see.
But that's the major issue. We had the reports about
inflation edging up last September, massively out of
date. But among that was a big rise in
food and among that also was a big rise in health insurance
costs. And, you know, those are huge
drivers of cost of living, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see
an awful lot of emphasis on that.
And there's also. A lot of on infrastructure as
well. Yeah, I was about to say there's
a lot of capital infrastructure which is coming to the end of
its lifetime and we need to re replace them.
Meantime's Bay is a massive 1. There's been long term, long
running talks since Hurricane Fabian about the the the swing
bridge, you know, Saint George and Saint David's type thing.
Well, the plans have been drawn up for that, haven't they?
But I think it was a 20 million price tag.
Yeah, and so FCIC. Well, but don't be surprised.
Don't be surprised. And there's also the, the
agricultural, I forget his proper name right now, but the
agricultural centre up by Cedar Bridge by prospect that's been
in dire need of economic investments and there's been
plans to build a new the agricultural centre there that
that's very important for local agriculture in terms of having
storage for their their crops going.
Well, that was if you remember the planning permission or
permission for that was given just before the 2025 election.
Yeah. And so I expect.
This. I mean, part of that was in the
in the last election, farmers and fishers were protesting.
Yeah. It was.
That was a huge piece of electioneering and actually I
think that was announced after the election was called and
probably should not have been announced.
Well, I mean there have been plans going back a couple years
to about replacing the agricultural centre, but I agree
it should not have necessarily been announced after Parliament
is provoked. Once the rate is dropped,
everything is supposed to go into kind of hibernation, No new
yeah. There's no policy announcements
allowed. Yeah.
Anyway I. Would expect that to be one of
the capital infrastructure. Things.
Yeah, yeah. I was going to say that
education infrastructure was going to be raised, but the
whole education reform system is in a bit of a hiatus.
I know we're going to talk about that more.
That's a polite way of saying for it, yeah.
The education reform system is somewhat paused at the moment
while they do a rethink. We're going to look at that
more, I think next week. Just to put that in, just to put
that in context, Crystal Caesar announced that there is a pause
and you can stay in middle, you can stay in middle school, or
you can stay in primary school. And it looks like the two
systems are going to run side by side.
So your parish and and middle school are run side by side.
Instead of getting rid of middle schools, they're going to stay.
It's all incredibly confusing it it really is.
But if Jonathan was saying that, we are going to have a deep dive
on that next week because it's going to take us a week to
actually research it and get. Out of it, another big factor is
of course, you know, government debts.
I believe there's a huge, huge loan that has to be repaid in
January 2027. I want to say around $600
million. It's around 600 mil.
Yeah, right. And I, I seem to recall there
was $500 million set aside for that.
Right. Well, I expect that to be in the
budget tomorrow. I think you raised the question
whether they pay the whole thing off.
No, I what I want to see is how much they put aside for debt
repayment tomorrow. I mean, no matter how much they
put in, there's always going to be someone saying that all of
that it's not enough and all of the CIT goes to into it.
I think I prefer more, more of the middle weight pay off as
much as we can, but also make sure that we're maintaining and
investing in the things that need to be done now.
I think that's very true. And I think, you know, the cost
of living is a really serious issue for Bermudians and
anything that can free up some cash or can subsidized the cost
of living in some ways really, really important.
We saw that cost of living report that came out last year
from under Minister Alexa Lightbourne and the Minister of
Home Affairs, and we had a podcast about it at the time.
And I think we noted that some of the plans were more like
concepts of a plan rather than actual plans.
So it will be interesting to see how the budget plays into that
because then you can see what aspects of that cost of living
agenda is now being prioritized. Well, I imagine if, if, if the
budget can only really focus on on finances.
So I imagine it'll be about putting more cash in people's
pockets. Through, yes, but you can see
what things are going to be financed.
Type thing it's going to be, yeah, it'll be interesting to
see. I think the main driver is going
to be tax relief though, in terms of.
Yeah. I mean, there's the they're
reducing duty on a lot of staple basket staples.
They did. Say they introduced they'd
increased that basket didn't they, of staples that were duty
free. They'll be interested to see
where there's a list of that. I agree.
Because I mean. I wonder if the capital projects
might be things like, you know, better investment in solar.
Could be, I mean Colonel, when he was the Minister of Public
Works he was trying to really drive a lot of the government
owned buildings to have more solar on it.
The idea being to reduce their BELCO bill and then save the
public sector money. And that seems to have gone very
quiet there, doesn't it? Yeah.
I mean, we have a new minister of the Public Works, Joshay
Hayward, and of course he's been focused more on the roads in the
initial stage. Joshay.
Adams mate, you're conflating 2 ministers that.
What did I say? Joshay Hayward.
My bad, I'm sorry. He's right.
I should have had him another espresso, but that that actually
raises a good point. Jason Hayward is many people I
hear are thinking he's a likely contender for the leadership
election coming up in October. You know, we we digress, but
it's worth it. I could have sworn at some stage
he ruled himself out. But it's funny you say that
because a couple of people have contacted me to say that on
overseas visits, when David Burt and Jason Haywood are both
there, David Burt is basically introducing him as his
successor. Right.
Well, the only reason I mentioned that is because with
the budget, we're going to kind of see me see the different
ministers and different contenders for the leadership
going to try to hog the limelight to, you know, raise
their profile. I mean, they're speaking more to
PLP members who are members of the public as well, but trying
to get their support for the upcoming leadership election.
So that's one thing that I am going to be keeping an eye on to
see what the different leadership contenders are going
to be saying about their ministry and the budget.
And that's the reason I was thinking about Jason Hayward
there. We also know Zane De Silva, the
deputy Premier and the Minister of Housing, he's already thrown
his hat in the ring and you know, housing is a big issue.
So I'd expect housing will be also something to watch in the
budget. Well, they have a serious press
conferences aren't don't they, after the budget.
So next week we'll see different ministers, we'll see which ones
stand up to the to the public and and the scrutiny and what
they say. It'll be very interesting to
watch. I agree.
But I think yeah, we, we can talk about cost of living
reductions as a certainty, infrastructure.
I think also those things to try and get job creation, increase
local spending perhaps and obviously the debt reduction.
There's a couple of things I personally haven't heard much
about and whether you have, Jonathan, I don't know.
I've not seen an awful lot about this stability fund.
And I think that's absolutely crucial because CI corporate
income tax revenue can be very volatile or will be very
volatile. I've not seen anything about
that. I may have missed it in terms of
maybe they named it something else, maybe they went into the
sinking fund and I missed it. But I think that's going to be
absolutely crucial. But I wonder also, you know,
that I'm, I'm taking this isn't an original thought by any means
because I, I saw it on a comment on, on one of the RG stories who
said that basically there's, there's the budget won't include
long term planning. David Burt has said it will
include long term planning and there is an opportunity there.
I just wonder in what form because normally kind of budgets
are in that for the next year, aren't they or two years often
to please the electorate. And I'm I'm not necessarily long
term, but I'm really intrigued as to what could be long term.
I mean, obviously the debt reduction is long term, but what
else could we be looking at? Hey, I'm kind of.
Well, infrastructure's kind of a long term thing.
It's got a long shelf life, so I would imagine that would be part
of it. We don't have a national
infrastructure plan to identify what needs to be done and the
priority, you know, to triage it.
That's something I think we should do because you're right,
budgets are often just one year term and that makes it hard for
you to plan longer term projects.
There's no guarantee that you're going to get the the support you
need for multi years. So yeah, I could see an argument
for even multi year budgets for some things.
Well, David by the Premier did suggest a budget every two
years, didn't they? And that's partly because of the
planning issues of, you know, having to plan every year
instead of every two years. But I'm just wondering, you
know, we whether we can see a substantial amount of money
perhaps being put in some sort of some sort of sovereign fund.
Right. For future projects or whether
we're going to see a long term plan funded over multiple years
by corporate income tax. And really interesting to see if
he elaborates more on this issue of long term planning.
I mean, it could just be universal healthcare, of course,
which has been a long time talked about and nothing's
really happened yet. I mean, I do expect the next
couple years to be a very volatile economically, globally
speaking. And that's of course going to
have an impact on Bermuda. I think tourism is probably
going to see a bit of a decline this year, especially from the
American visitors who we are largely dependent on.
Except we will see the reopening of the Southampton Princess in
the summer, which will have a massive impact.
But here where you're coming from and it wasn't, it was last
week, wasn't it? The Straits of Hormuz were
closed for a few hours by. Iran, Yeah.
I mean, by the time this this podcast goes live, there might
be another war going on, right? Somewhat.
Yeah, but just economically like America, I can see the American
people going to have a lot less liquid cash to to go for
tourism. Their economy seems to doing
quite well, bizarrely. I'm not convinced that that is
like it is at the moment, but I'm not convinced that that is
indicative of what's going to happen over the next 12 months.
I think it's a bit of a bit of a bubble going on on a few areas.
So all the more reason then to have some clarity, certainty
over this stability fund, yeah, which is going to be absolutely
massive, I think. It's also going to be
interesting how the opposition plays out with this because of
course they've got a new leadership.
There's still a little instability over in the
opposition camp at the moment. They haven't done a cabinet
shuffle. We came to the idea.
I think you were saying that you would expect the cabinet shuffle
to be post budget just to make sure that no one's not having to
learn a new brief overnight in. He got Doctor Keto and what is
this, his second budget now? Think so.
That's the shadow finance. So he's reasonably seasoned.
He understands how it all works. I actually I'd imagine he would
still probably be the finance minister, shadow finance under
any shuffle. But you know, it's going to be,
I'm really intrigued by the budget.
Is it David Burt's last hurrah? Is he going to do a, you know, a
legacy budget for him? Is he going to be sensible long
term planning millions upon millions in the stability fund?
He's got to answer the cost of living crisis the best he can.
It's all around quite interesting.
I know I don't because they've never had so much money to play
with. I mean, you've got an extra 600
million at your disposal. Yeah, I mean hopefully, but.
The temptation, Just go and blast it all.
Well, I don't know red or black, you know.
I certainly would like to invest it in things that increase our
self-sufficiency. So renewable energy to reduce
our dependence on imports, agriculture, there's no way
we're ever going to produce enough food to supply all our
needs. But I think there's a good
argument to increase our agricultural production or at
least to reduce wastage, to increase our self-sufficiency.
All of that gives us more sort of autonomy.
And we're seeing going ahead right now with the way America's
national security agenda is going there.
You don't want to be too dependent on them.
You don't have all your eggs in one basket.
So I do think we should start investing in things that
diversify our ability so that we can be more autonomous.
I agree. And I think in particular
renewable energy, what's wrong? Somebody breaking in?
I don't know. Yeah, you heard the dog.
No, it was a dog, was it? Yeah, it was barking, so I was
trying to find out what was going on.
It was right by my ear. When he's when he record these
things, well, thank goodness we are recording them.
Thing is, I can't edit them out. I think renewables is is
crucial. We hear a lot of talk about
renewables and nothing really ever happens.
Bringing me. I was thinking about what we're
seeing, what's happening in Cuba at the moment.
They've got this massive stranglehold.
It's really a crime of against humanity.
It might. Be I agree.
I agree. And Cuba is trying to massively
increase their amount of renewable energy capacity.
China's sending them ship loads of solar panels right now just
to try to function. And it's really distressing to
me to see how CARICOM is just kind of not doing anything to
support Cuba in this. Mexico's being strong arms.
Venezuela's being taken over as an American colony already.
Just the last week we had, well, just a couple days ago, the
Americans bombed the ship within the national waters of I think
Saint Vincent, not international waters anymore, but actually
within Saint Vincent waters. You know, they're just
steamrolling over our sovereignty from the Caribbean.
So that's why I was thinking about the need to increase
Bermuda's self-sufficiency. Well, I think we should do
anyway and wean ourself off oil because, you know, we I
mentioned that Strait of almost was closed only for a couple of
hours. You just need to close it for a
month and the oil prices are going to go through the roof.
It would be good to see kind of investment there.
I don't know, what do you think? Listeners, viewers, I we would
love to get your reaction to the budget once you've listened to
it. Or Reddit.
If you e-mail the news now, visit gmail.com or WhatsApp
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out, that's fine, just make sure you say so.
But we'd love to hear your opinions.
Hopefully we're all going to be a lot richer at the end of it.
The the other thing you mentioned earlier, Jeremy, was
the judicial report and that's always quite interesting.
It comes about this time of year, each year and it's always
very interesting reading. I don't think it gets enough
coverage in in other media. It didn't.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to pick it up, because
some extremely interesting take outs here, yeah.
I mean, I remember even last year's one was fascinating to
read, and this one as well, It's interesting.
You you, you'll have a different opinion, but I, I got 3 take
outs. 1 was the increase, continuing increase they say in
litigation between citizens and the government.
Unfortunately it doesn't list what they are.
There's been a few that I can remember rather reporting on or,
or reading about, but I'm really intrigued in that.
Which then actually leads on very nicely to the issue they've
got with judicial pay. Yeah, that's one thing I had
never really thought about too much.
So it was very interesting to see how the system works.
So right now they're tied to the civil service.
They're. Tied to the civil service, yes,
They don't have an independent body that sets their pay, so
they, the judges and Co, have been asked to rule on cases
involving the government. But they're paid by government,
so it raises this spectre of a lack of independence.
Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's
any actual indication that they are being influenced by their
decisions. But there's the optics as you
say, which is is key. It's the optics.
Yeah, and it's that extra. Firewall going forward.
Yeah, but it puts an extra firewall there, doesn't it?
Yeah. And like you said, there is,
there is no indication that's happening.
I must stress that. But it is like you said, the
optics and that there is potential there.
Sorry Judge, you're not going to get your pay your eyes unless
you rule for me. Yeah.
It it could happen. I mean it hasn't and I don't
think it would. But like you say, it's the
optics. My only question is then who
does determine their pay? I mean you don't want the you
don't want necessarily to let let the wolf in charge of the
hen house either, right? Not not that I'm saying judges
and wolves in case I'm ever in before court.
Careful what you say. I'm going to get hold before the
judge. Jonathan.
I want to get back into the island please.
OK. But I'm just saying, sure, how
do we make sure that they their pay is not self-serving either?
Separate body, independent separate body.
Whether that separate body gets money, whether he gets his own
revenue, whether he gets his own finance, I don't know.
I mean, it's still public. Money is no matter what.
It is I, I think there's that has to be sorted out.
But I, I've been quite intrigued.
I've never thought about it before that there does probably
need to be a separation there and then we can go back on these
in more detail. But I wanted to the the third
take out was Justice Wolf, who did the criminal division report
1 Wolf. And he's calling this 20 years
of young men who have been charged and convicted of
violence for offences is calling it epidemic proportions and
urging that it should be treated as a public health issue.
Very, very strong words from the judge.
Normally, you know, they don't get involved in things like that
too much, don't get a bit political.
But I think this is pretty political.
There's only one organization that can treat it as a public
health issue, and that is government.
I mean, Justice Wolf has been kind of on the forefront of this
from the judiciary for some years.
My I've always been quite impressed by his comments on
various matters. I have.
I've only met him a couple of times and that was to do with
Home, the homeless charity who's helping up with an draft
legislation. But he's an extremely committed
person, really is. But yeah, I mean, going back,
you know, continued increase in litigation between citizen and
the government. Now, why is that?
Is this because poorly drafted legislation?
And there have been examples of this.
Well, I mean, I'm not entirely sure which ones.
I'm not sure which ones they involve.
The ones that I can think of off the top of my head is the was it
mailboxes tried to sue Bermuda Post Office.
It won as well. I mean that was a classic case
wasn't it? Because the RFP had rules
haven't been followed properly. And the other one that I can
think of, I'm not sure if this really counts as government
because it's the regulatory authority which is autonomous
independent was the, I want to say a lot of the telecoms
carriers recently lodged a suit against the RA for price
controls. I haven't followed that in
detail. So I don't really know the
insurance and outs I. Think that's all good for the
process, but yeah, it's one common.
Digicel did that right. Yeah, but I mean.
I remember the judge saying that the telecoms companies have a
good strong case, but I don't understand the.
Things, there's probably negotiations going on behind the
scenes, mediations going on behind the scenes.
Those are the examples I got as well.
The others I got where sort of the AG versus the Information
Commissioner, but I'm not sure that really counts corporate of
Embleton I. Mean corporate.
Government against the AG. That's not quite government
against government, but they're both publicly funded bodies,
right? This is they they specifically
say citizen. Right.
And I'm intrigued by that. And they continued increase
potholes. I did a story once, they said it
wouldn't be impossible for people to sue government over
potholes if they could prove the damage was due to a pothole.
Yeah. I don't know, but I was just
intrigued to why that case And then like I said, we we talked
about the pay. I think probably it's a good
idea to get up a separate body. Yeah.
And while you're talking about that epidemic of violence, I
mean, we, we talk about that regularly.
We, we had those really heinous murders last year.
I fully expect us to see similar murders this year and next year.
I don't see any, any end to it, in a sense.
I know that sounds like I'm a bit numb or desensitized to it.
I am. We've had all of these tragedies
and I don't really know how to solve.
It well we've, we've had lots and lots and lots of panels,
discussions groups, organisations, the gang group
and the multi agency gang prevention team, the gang
violence reduction team. We have other national violence
reduction strategy goes on and on and on.
But I mean, part of it is going to have to be, you know, part of
it is an austerity issue and that ties back into the budget.
If we can increase investment into rehabilitation to reduce
recidivism in in prisons, that's great.
If we can have greater restorative or restitutive
justice instead of punitive justice, that's great.
But we also need to invest in tackling economic inequalities.
So that goes to the cost of living agenda.
We need to invest in better education and other
infrastructure. That's budget.
We just talked about the education reform.
It's, it's not a, there's no quick fix to any of this.
It has to be multiple fronts if that makes sense.
Totally agree, everything comes into play in this.
I totally agree. It's interesting the wolf is
talking about extremely early intervention starting at the age
of five. Talking about life skills being
taught in schools. I don't know if that happens
now, but you know, really, really early intervention.
I think that's probably a good idea if it doesn't happen now.
He's also talking about introducing a full time
psychiatric care in the in the prisons.
Which in fact doesn't exist. I'm shocked that we don't have.
What's that? I'm shocked that we don't have
that at the moment. If he, I mean, I'm assuming the
judge knows, therefore that's why he's put it, put it in
there. And I'm shocked we don't have
that. I mean, that ties him to the
rehabilitation aspect, you know? Exactly, exactly.
But I, I like everybody knows now in the year again, I had a
fascinating radio programme about how psychiatrist goes into
prisons and he has bottles of potions.
They're all different smells and he uses them and talks to the
prisoners about where it takes them.
And often it takes them back to their childhood or a happy place
when they get married or something like that.
And it was such a good idea. It got them to reminisce about
good times. You know, if we don't have that
kind of thing. Not that specifically, but
psychiatric care. I find that quite quite.
Unbelievable. We've covered mental health
issues. We did a whole series on
adolescent mental health recently, so there's just so
many things to that need worked on.
It is, you know, as we said, the budget's here.
Maybe some of these things can be channelled with money by the
budget. One thing I meant to look into
in the judiciary report is I know last year they were talking
about even the infrastructure asked challenges that the courts
face, and I meant to look into this more recent report to see
if any of that has been addressed.
I didn't get a chance to see that.
I don't know if you saw anything.
I didn't say anything about that.
I did see the age-old issue of facilities.
Yeah, and that just leads to backlogs of cases as well.
Well, actually one thing they did say the backlog had been
addressed. There wasn't a backlog.
There was one case going back to 2012 I think, right.
And I think that was because they just found the person or
something like that. But the, the, the backlog had
been substantially tackled by the looks of things, but there
was still complaints about space and of course not in this
report. There's been ongoing concerns
over safety of judges and and prosecutors and defence as well.
That wasn't addressed in this report.
But yeah, there are bigger issues going on the court, not
just this, but yeah, but to call it, you know, to call it an
epidemic, judge, call it an epidemic.
But you know what we we talk about an epidemic of violent
crime. It's an epidemic of Rd. deaths
as well. Nobody.
Well, I mean, since our our previous podcast when we talked
about Rd. deaths has been another Rd. fatality. 15 years
old girl. Yeah.
How sad is that? You know, she'll try to like
before her. Yeah, I.
Can't imagine how the family and it's I can't imagine.
No, I can't. I don't want to and I mean that,
I just don't want to because it would just be such a depressing
thought. But again, you know, will we see
that in the budget? Will we see the Road Safety
Council's budget quadrupled? No.
Well, they were talking about introducing more speed cameras,
right? So we'll have to see what's in
the budget for that too. Are the new cameras doing speed
now? I don't know.
I know they've talked about it. I am about, I'm kind of torn
between it in terms of civil liberties.
But yeah, it's a. Tricky 1, isn't it?
You've got to balance that life and death, and to me life and
death Trump's civil liberties in a way not to dismiss the civil
liberties whatsoever. I would be very, very concerned
if these cameras started using AI technology to try and
identify people that would be serious concerning in terms of
civil liberties. I don't know, maybe we're
waffled enough. We're going to be back on
tomorrow afternoon, Friday afternoon, give our thoughts on
the budget. We'll do a podcast special and
we'll try and highlight a few things to explain what they mean
to you or how they could affect you.
Day tomorrow. It's going to be a busy day.
And will Debbie Burt leave a legacy?
TuneIn tomorrow. All right, I will see you
tomorrow, Jonathan. Sounds good, man.
Take care. See ya.
Bye.