When Moses first saw the burning bush he was terrified.

Such was the persona of our ex-premier McKeeva Bush. He could frighten his opponents with a glare, a tirade, and waving of hands. One moment his voice would plead, almost to a cry, as he seemed hurt that his distractors could make such terrible accusations against him. Then, like a bolt of lightning his face would burn with rage and woe betide if you were the source of his outrage and standing in his path.

All this made for great press. His spontaneous asides would lash like a whip and his admirers would applaud them, even if a lot were downright rude.

I always felt sorry for the leader of the Opposition, Alden McLaughlin, who had to face most of this, and I have often admired him for keeping his temper and standing his ground.

When the Cayman Business Outlook (CBO) question and answer panel was announced with its three main “stars”, Alden McLaughlin, Deputy Premier Rolston Anglin and McKeeva Bush, I knew we were in for a great “rock ‘n roll”. What we got was a Mother’s Union Tea Party (without the tea and scones) because at the last minute Bush cried off, as it was the anniversary of his daughter’s death.

Standing in for Bush was UDP backbench MLA Ellio Solomon, who has tried to follow Bush’s style, but without the stamina and the experience.

Despite Solomon’s attempt at some disagreement, it failed and with McLaughlin and Anglin agreeing with one another nearly the whole time the debate became almost a yawn.

I had hoped either Ezzard Miller, or failing him, Arden Mclean, had been panelists but they were invisible too.

The main topics for discussion were vision for Cayman in 2020, taxation, gambling, minimum wage and one man, one vote.

There were no revelations or “shocking” suggestions to any of the above and the only real disagreement was on the one man one vote issue with McLaughlin fully supporting it, Solomon still arguing his national vote nonsense and Rolston’s – mmm – actually I’m not sure what he was saying. You’ll have to go to one of the other media houses and see if they made sense of where he stood.

No one came up with any sound proposal to solve our financial woes except for cutting the civil service, moving some essential services into the private sector so as to lower the taxes – that is if I am allowed to say the word – well it must be OK as “taxation” was one of the subjects.

Now what did they say about that? Ahh yes the word “hope” came into place. If elected, Anglin and McLaughlin both “hoped” to lower taxation and fees in order to attract more business and Solomon didn’t say anything I noted except he was not in favour of direct taxation even though he was voting for it when his leader, Bush, was going to bring it in.

Minimum wage – Solomon called for a review – always a good plan when you don’t want to commit yourself in public. McLaughlin said when he was Minister of Labour they had had a review and there was strong opposition to it from the business sector. Now that was hardly surprising. Anglin said when he had tried to bring in a minimum wage one of the blockers was Solomon!

That created a laugh and woke us up.

I did learn that there is a cultural phenomenon that discourages Caymanians from being employed in tourism. I have long suspected this is because a lot of Caymanians are naturally shy and not that there is any stigma attached to the profession. With the younger Caymanians coming forward now I think that will change. Both Anglin and McLaughlin wanted to see more Caymanians being employed in tourism.

Anglin did say something I really supported, saying it was important for Caymanians to be involved in the economy and he agreed with McLaughlin that it required a world class education. Patting himself on the back, he said this should be achieved when he rolled out the rest of his reforms. Bravo.

McLaughlin wanted the John Gray High School completed and he offered his support to the Shetty hospital.

I know there was more to this than I have reported but I did find my concentration waver as I noticed so did a lot of other people.

Now let’s hope we will soon have a visible Bush to liven things up a bit.