Cozumel

Is Anguilla turning into Cozumel without the water skis?  Besides the old canard of the value of our people, Anguilla’s principal resource is its famed beaches.  We will never be a Singapore or a Switzerland.  Those countries were truly without any resources save for their strategic locations.  They had something else to capitalize on, and to make their people rich and comfortable.  They practised a strict attention not only to laws but to rules and standards.  That is something that our spoiled and semi-literate Anguillian children have not attained in this generation.  So, given the special significance of our beaches in providing employment and attracting investment, we would expect that the authorities would do their utmost to attend to their safeguarding.  Anguilla’s beaches should be sacrosanct, dedicated to the public use, and with all private structures forbidden to be built on them.  This has actually been our government’s claim for decades.  So, it is important to express outrage when the rules are broken by one of us. 

Vehicles are not permitted to be driven on the beach.  If it is not a law, then it is certainly a well-publicised rule.  This rule is being broken more and more, particularly by locals.  Sandy Ground and Rendezvous Beaches are becoming more and more like a racetrack.  Visitors have the rule that it is illegal to drive a vehicle on the beach pummeled into them by all the tourist literature.  Can we locals not follow the same simple rule?

So, you can imagine my disgust and dismay when I saw this fellow streaking by in some sport vehicle, at full speed, and making a racket of noise, on Meads Bay Beach. 

It seems clear to me that no employee of one of our major new resorts would take it on his own to joy ride on the public beach like this.  One has to assume that he had been sent out by his supervisor to test fly the vehicle.  Maybe they are going to enter it in Le Mans next?

Of course, it may have been part of a conspiracy.  Perhaps he had been instructed to keep the beach clear of tourists between Viceroy Hotel and Frangipani Hotel?  Could it be that he was actually on duty, and not sloping off as I at first suspected?  No, I decided, too far-fetched.

I guess it was just sheer Anguillian slackness, and a few old tourists on the beach did not count.  Besides, it serves them right.  Who told them to come and pollute our beach with their sad presence?

At last, even the best of things must come to an end, and one must return to boring work.

In my humble opinion, this fellow in question should be investigated by the police.  If he has committed an offence, he should be prosecuted.  If not for what he did, at least pour encourager les autres.  He should next be fired from his job.  He should be given a job letter that makes him permanently unemployable in any part of the tourism sector.  Following that, management at Viceroy Hotel should call all construction staff to a meeting, and advise them that anyone joy riding on the beach will be summarily dismissed.  It is not only illegal, it brings the establishment into disrepute.  Then, every resort in Anguilla ought to be requested by the Tourism Department to do the same thing.

Does no one around here have any standards?