Shameful! HOA still held in gym, says Skelton Cline
Political commentator and clergyman, Pastor Claude Skelton Cline said it is a “national disgrace” that the House of Assembly (HOA) continues to meet in a gymnasium nearly five years after Hurricane Irma damaged its original location in Road Town.
He made that comment on his Honestly Speaking radio programme this week.
“I’m sitting there looking at what goes out worldwide and has become a part of the public history, documented. To see the guys and the gals – the people that we elect – conducting business in a gym for so long a period of time. It’s a shame and a national disgrace.”
Skelton Cline said he called out the previous National Democratic Party (NDP) government on the issue and is now doing the same with the governing Virgin Islands Party (VIP) administration.
The House of Assembly, Skelton Cline said, is supposed to be a stately and sophisticated body and an anchor that communicates surety.
“We need to get out of gyms. We need to get out of every other building that is not the House of Assembly and conduct the people’s business in the requisite House that bespeaks who we are with all of its symbols and substance,” Skelton Cline argued.
The clergyman argued that too much injustice and mediocrity is accepted by persons in the BVI and said that residents of the BVI have become too comfortable in a bad place and their eyes have adjusted too well to the darkness.
While House sittings were relocated to the Duff’s Bottom-based gymnasium when the physical HOA structure was damaged during the hurricanes, legislative proceedings have not been held there all this time.
Legislators did eventually fix the building and returned to the designated space but relocated back to the gym because of COVID-19 and social distancing requirements.
It is not clear whether that is the primary reason why they’ve remained at the HOA.
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I believe that these VIP cronies believe BVI people stupid. I remember when the NDP used save the seed after the hurricanes the Yellow site wrote a story trying to create an issue about it even digging into the price that it was being rented for. Now fast forward, the Speaker now is renting the same space for going on almost two years and there is nothing wrong with that so the Yellow site wouldn’t write a story and we all know why. If you look closely at all these people you will see the hypocrisy dripping off their badly styled clothing.
The heard in silence big man gone sleep
Sheep by day and Wolfe by night hear who is talking the Bvi accepted you getting poor tax pases money for doing nothing now that you can’t get it you are crying go sit down .
If they go back to their designated space there would be no kick back.
What difference does it make where they speak from, gym or hallowed halls in some fancy overpriced building. In real estate is location, location, location. In politics it’s talk, talk, talk. Ordinary, tax paying people, Virgin Islanders included, are still living in places different to where they were before Irma. Life had to go on. Where were the members of the house at the time when we needed help to rebuild and the insurance pay out couldn’t even do the tear down and clear up. The people of this country are in a sad, dark place and I can say that most of us don’t really care, or feel bad about where the house of assembly meets or makes bad decisions from. And if that makes us look like we have become accustomed to mediocre then I can tell you that mediocrity became the new excellent long before that gym was even built, much less where the HOA was meeting or meting out nonsense from. They figured out how to be so special that they needed us to pay for supplemental insurance above the NHI or how much more they needed in retirement when most of us couldn’t consider retirement. Let them figure this out in their usual inimitable fashion.
I’m sure the little fake bishop has made out just fine with this arrangement
Mansions building from the ground up in 6 months….why deh heck it have to take more than 4 years to refurbish an existing structure? Mr. please be quiet.
A pity tongues don’t fall out when people talk shite.
They need to meet under a Tamarind Tree until the schools, garbage and sewer, water issues get fixed, just to name a few. You can spend all the money you have cosmetically but until you FIX the INFRASTRUCTURE you still got nothing! The BVI is so lacking in first world amenities.