Opinion Article: Scott Leitch, Some New Points Please?, 21 July 2010

Some new points, please!

July 14, 2010

Dear Sir,

I wish to respond to the almost carbon copied arguments made my Robert Davies. Over the last few weeks he has been making more vocal posts in both the Royal Gazette and the BDA's Facebook page. His self-appointed notion that he has the BDA "scrambling for answers" is, as he says, "hogwash". The BDA have given their answers, and Mr. Davies assumes that by writing the same questions in either entire capital letters, or in more locations, that the answers will change.

Mr. Davies has been on a campaign to paint the BDA in a bad light because of his only two arguments. Firstly, that the three BDA MPs are false and that the BDA cannot answer his attacks, and secondly that the BDA is trying to censor him or simply "p*ss and moan" about his arguments.

With regards to his only major point, this has been hashed out on numerous occasions, all with the same accusations and the same replies. To assume that because members of the BDA have stopped rewriting their same responses means that they have no answer simply shows Mr. Davies' lack of understanding towards debate and disagreement. You can tell me all day that my favourite colour is red, and I can tell you it's green. Just because I stop replying to your argument does not at all mean I am secretly admitting to myself that my favourite colour is red. There is simply no point in reiterating my response.

As for Mr. Davies' continued point about the "exodus" of MPs, he fails to mention the "exodus" of those that have gone to the PLP as well. I have not seen such an attempt at discrediting those MPs by Mr. Davies as I have for those in the BDA. In my opinion, this is because they have entirely crossed over to the Government, and as such the UBP cannot touch them. What humours me is that as the BDA and UBP are two oppositions, so Mr. Davies appears to feel more threatened by those MPs in the BDA. The fact is that a large number of politicians and politically motivated people are leaving in this "exodus", some to the PLP, some to the BDA, and some independent. I have yet to hear of anyone leaving one group to join the UBP.

As per his assertion that members of the BDA are trying to censor him, or hide his "truths", I would simply like to point out that Mr. Davies' only "tactic" is that of opinion spam. He simply rehashes the same point in as many locations as possible. If even one person replies to agree (and it's never been many more than that), then he reposts the same point again, stating that he has a mass following. If someone disagrees, he pretty much copy/pastes his prior argument with a lot of CAPS letters, similar to the lovely bank phishing scams we get in our inboxes all too often. If there is no reply he says he has the BDA "pinned to a wall". The fact of the matter is that using this tactic will never lead to beneficial dialogue. What has been asked of him is not private dialogue so people cannot see what is going on, but to have a one-on-one dialogue where both sides can discuss their points with all their merit, and not let the back and forth punches be fuelled by a growing crowd. As we've seen in the playgrounds back in the day, that never solves the problem.

Mr. Davies probably has indeed encouraged more people to visit the BDA's party wall, but not to see his "points", just to see his point, spammed across it as if fired blindly at anyone who will read, accompanied with false statistics to support a notion which, while I'm sure has its supporters, is just simply not as popular an issue as he implies. The issue has been brought up, and discussed. Please Mr. Davies, bring in some new debate about other issues. I commend you on your passion and loyalty to your party, but let's steer away from the spamming and lean more to progressive discussion on the issues Bermuda is facing. That would be "a better way".

SCOTT LEITCH

Pembroke