IT IS well known when someone is desperate and at the end of his tether he abandons his sense of reality for fantasy. I can't help feeling that something of the sort is happening to the Government. It's either that or a public relations blitz.

Here we are with a $24 billion gap in the budget and a decrease in our tax-take and the Government calmly tells us that it is going to spend $4 billion in some sort of crash programme and $14 billion on a road programme. Nobody tells us, however, where the money is to come from. More than that we are told that the good Mr. Davies and his supporting circus is seeking a US$400 million loan in America when most analysts point out that he has already failed with a US$100 million issue last year and that the situation has now been made worse by the recent demonstrations. In any case if he does get US$400 million, how does he propose to pay the interest on it at something like 14 or 15 per cent when he already can't find the money to service existing loans? I have a terrible feeling that the Government has gone off its rocker.

Nor is it encouraging that the Prime Minister is indulging in a lot of bravado about the IMF. He says that had we settled on a Budget under an IMF framework "I as Prime Minister couldn't have rolled back the gas tax even if the country had burnt down". He adds "the IMF will never return to haunt us". This is a rather silly statement for had we had cheap money from the IMF it would not have been necessary to impose the extra gas taxation in the first place.

To return to the good Dr. Davies he estimates that around $50 billion, mostly for debt servicing, would be required in the current fiscal year. Yet he indicated that if he is not able to raise money overseas he would have to turn to the local market. The thought that he might be borrowing that sort of money from our own people in addition to our already enormous local indebtedness gives me cold shivers. Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.

Praedial larceny

Peter McConnell of United Estates of Bog Walk has made the excellent suggestion that the law should be amended to allow the use of non-lethal firepower against praedial thieves such as rubber bullets, tranquilliser guns and electrical stun guns. This would allow them to be captured. Capture is now almost impossible as praedial thieves are in many cases armed.

For years praedial thievery has been making life very difficult for farmers. Every so often the Minister of Agriculture says that a stop should be put to it. But nobody ever proposes any sensible method of doing so.

Indeed some farmers in desperation take the law into their own hands and kill the thief when he is caught but this kind of lynching is most unsatisfactory.

It would be interesting to see if anything is done about Peter McConnell's suggestion. If the Minister of Agriculture is really sincere about controlling praedial larceny one way of testing his sincerity will be to see whether he persuades the Government to take the necessary steps to make Peter McConnell's proposals a reality.

Thievery in general

Praedial Larceny is only one aspect, though a major one, of what has now become a national sport. I read that up to 6 per cent of the electricity produced annually by the Jamaica Public Service Company is stolen. The company estimates that this amounted to $780 million in 1998.

Not surprisingly this huge theft is committed by all classes, the major amount of it however, being theft by firms and the middle class.

This proves, if we need any proof, that Jamaica is fast becoming a country of thieves, if it is not that already.

I have an idea that our worthy citizens would steal Blue Mountain Peak if they could find a way of selling it.

Many people have criticised this column for being unkind to politicians. To tell the truth I rather admire them in an odd sort of way. Many steal when they can and lie their way out of trouble. They thus perfectly reflect a large number of the people they rule. One surely must have a grudging admiration for this expression of a true democracy.