From what I know of Jude Scott he is a well respected and learned man.

He is an accountant, a former partner of Ernst and Young (he was with them for 23 years) and former Global CEO of Maples and Calder.

He served as chairman of the board of Cayman Airways and on the Ministerial Council for Tourism and Development.

Over the years, Scott has served on various boards and committees of the Cayman Islands Baptist Church, Cayman Islands Society of Professional Accountants, Cayman Islands Stock Exchange, Cayman National Corporation, Constitutional Commission, Education Council, Financial Services Council, Hedge Funds Care and the National Recovery Fund.

He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration (Accounting) from Baylor University.

All very impressive.

He is standing as a Coalition for Cayman (C4C) candidate in the May General Election and is seen to be one of their strongest candidates for office.

However, at the Chamber of Commerce district forum last week in South Sound, he has gone completely against not only the political trend but a seemingly large number of public opinion by stating he was not convinced a new cruise ship terminal was the best thing for this country.

His argument is that the statistics regarding cruise passenger numbers that broke records were a direct result of extreme circumstances that were not repeatable. He gave as an example of swine flu in Mexico that had caused cruise ships to call here instead. He argued the growing competition in the region could prevent the numbers from being as high as people think, even with a pier.

“We now have competing ports that are owned by cruise lines, so they don’t have an incentive to drive traffic here,” he said.

He called for a thorough environmental impact assessment to understand the impact if government does go ahead with the proposed project.

“We need to evaluate from a national perspective how this fits in with our overall tourism strategy,” he said. “In isolation it sounds very sexy and a great silver bullet solution that will put lots of people back to work, but we ought to look at how it meshes with our stay-over visitation strategy. The reality is we are a small population and we have to be careful we don’t over invest in mass tourism, which has a direct impact on the quality of the experience of our stay-over visitors, who are going to be frequenting the same places that our cruise passengers are going to visit.”

Before making this controversial statement it would have held more weight if Scott had produced some hard facts to support his argument.

He only had to listen to the shop owners in George Town, the tour and taxi operators and used his eyes when cruise ships are anchored in the capital to see how flawed his argument is.

Even when the cruise ships are diverted to South Sound the difference in revenues are noticeable.

The numbers are decreasing Scott and it has nothing to do with over inflation of numbers due to swine flu in Mexico or any other natural disaster that has benefited us.

31 Years ago when I arrived here the government of the day had been looking at permanent moorings for cruise ships. The cruise ship berthing facility has been moved from West Bay, to South Sound and even East End. It has been talked about and more and the last thing we want now is another delay whilst some intellectual theory of whether encouraging “mass tourism” fits in with our country’s overall tourism strategy.

It does, Scott.

If you continue on this path you might fall off the edge and plunge into the abyss as you might have a theory the earth is flat. Now that would be a sure way of committing political suicide.

I applaud your bravery but ………….