Inane Statism

What do you get when you cross 1984 and Alice In Wonderland?

Bumbling Bureaucratic Statism.

Now, put that on a scenic island in the Atlantic with beautiful beaches and you have Bermuda!

Last weekend my sister Linda and I decided that we would meet in Bermuda for a couple of days of tourism and relaxation. She was flying from New York and I had a later flight from Washington, DC.

When I arrived and entered the customs/immigration area, I was surprised to see her waiting for me inside of the secure area. She had obviously not cleared immigrations and I feared the worst - lost or expired passport.

What had happened was, from the point of the Bermudian government, almost as bad. Linda had committed the egregious crime against the state of not knowing what hotel she was staying in! She had delegated the task of finding suitable lodging to me and I figured that we would wing it and find a place once we got to the island.

I had, however, known enough to write "Fairmont Hotel" on my immigration form where it asks in which hotel you have a reservation. So when I arrived and saw that my sister was being detained by the head of immigration, I took out my immigration form and pointed to the name of the hotel (that I had only minutes before read about in the in flight magazine).

Having detained my sister for over an hour, you would think that he would be interested in my showing him some proof of my reservation - or perhaps that he would just pick up the telephone and confirm the reservation - or perhaps that he might just have easily let my sister use his telephone to find a room.

NO! The Bermuda rules say that immigrants have to fill out the form completely and that without the name of a person's home or hotel on the form, you are not allowed in the country.

So with the flourish of my ball point pen, we were allowed entrance into the inner sanctum of Bermudianism where we were able to spend a lovely 24 hours free of any further Orwellian Inanity.