Morris Cargill

AT THE end of last week, the marriage of Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones took place in England, the last royal marriage this century and possibly the last one ever. With the exception of our present Queen and Prince Phillip, the House of Windsor has had an unfortunate marriage record. The Queen has been a lady of impeccable virtue. In the early days of her marriage, Prince Phillip complained to his friends that Elizabeth's enormous enthusiasm for loving was putting him under a considerable strain. I have no doubt that that enthusiasm waned with time, but the marriage has lasted well, if these days somewhat frigidly, and Phillip's extra-marital adventures have been remarkably well-kept out of the press.

But the marriages of their children have been disastrous. It can be said however, that while these modern marriages have ended in divorce, at least this is a great improvement of the way in which their very distant ancestor, Henry the VIII, terminated his, which was by the simple process of having his wives' heads chopped off.

Most people of England are hoping that Prince Edward's marriage will be the one that lasts. There is a general feeling that if it does not, it will be the end of the House of Windsor. In any case, even now, anti-monarchists in England are agitating for an end to the monarchy, though the majority of the English people are still in favour of it. None-theless the monarchy is an anachronism and it seems unlikely that any institution so anachronistic will last for the duration of the next century. However, England will be enjoying this latest episode of their royal soap opera.

The civil service

There is no doubt that in recent years our civil service has been greatly deteriorating. In a recent column in The Gleaner, Errol Miller, writing about current talk shows, says that the students at the UWI found that the belief in colonialism was "incomprehensible". They are too young to have experienced the complete integrity of the colonial civil service and the colonial administrators.

No doubt those students, like the rest of us, have become used to a civil service which is quite often both lazy and corrupt and any current efforts to improve the service should be welcomed. However, the present Government seems to believe that this improvement can be brought about by an attack against the independence of the bureaucracy. The trend is to replace Permanent Secretaries with two-year contract workers. It seems as if the present Government would like to replace many civil servants in this way. If this is the intention, then a somewhat corrupt and ineffective civil service will be replaced by a batch of political toadies and lackeys. The present system should be improved and built upon rather than destroyed.

I supposed that our young people have been fed for years upon all the leftist propaganda about colonial exploitation and so on and are no longer able to understand the disasters of our so-called Independence or the enormous success of the Cayman Islands which under the terrible yoke of "wicked colonialism" have managed to achieve a standard of living some 12 times higher than ours.

FINSAC

It is high time that FINSAC gave the public full information about those indebted to it and the amount of the indebtedness. Both the Government and FINSAC have been hiding behind the excuse that financial institutions should not disclose details of their clients' affairs.

This is a perfectly proper attitude for banks and banking institutions, but FINSAC is not a bank. It is an institution supported by taxpayers to undo if possible the damage done by failed institutions, and taxpayers are entitled to know if these efforts are succeeding.

For instance, this column has been trying to find out the extent of the indebtedness to FINSAC not only of Eddie Seaga but of an assortment of PNP Ministers who were indebted to the failed Century National Bank.

Tax-payers are entitled to have this and other information and neither FINSAC nor the Government are entitled to hide behind unwarranted claims of confidentiality. FINSAC has been boasting about its transparency but up to now it has been about as transparent as a sheet of lead.