We are suddenly experiencing a series of robberies immediately outside or at people’s homes. We have had three in just a few days. The latest was Tuesday (17) in Webster Estates as a woman arrived at her home. The robbers were armed. I knew something serious had happened as I was at a house near Webster Estates at a meeting and the police helicopter was making passes for a considerable time. Please be on your guard especially in the poorly lit areas and there are plenty of those. These crimes are easy to perpetrate and very hard to catch the criminals involved. If this continues unabated maybe the RCIPS might change their minds about providing some form of self-protection for its law-abiding citizens. At my home we have a very large German Shepherd cross who will not allow anyone near our premises without our permission, even persons who visit fairly regularly. I recommend medium to big dogs as a huge deterrent to this sort of crime.

“Time is of the essence” is a phrase used in contracts that means that the specified time and dates in the agreement are vital, mandatory and “by golly we mean it!” This hasn’t meant much here in Cayman when it comes to criminal matters as many cases take a very long time to be dealt with because of our overloaded court system. Only last Friday (13) it was revealed a convicted drug dealer received his judgment a staggering two and a half years after his conviction! There are not enough courtrooms and magistrates to deal with the ever-increasing criminal cases coming before them. It is no use increasing our police force ten fold to catch the criminals without the further step of a larger judiciary to try and convict them. You cannot have one without the other and then comes the question of where do we place our criminals? With the forthcoming Bill of Rights becoming law next November time will really become the essence.

I am blind and not only me – nearly all of us. We might have two good eyes but do we really see what is in front of us? We see it in witnesses at a trial where two or three people see a crime and their report of what they actually saw is remarkably different. The problem is our mind tells us what we think it is seeing and not what in actuality we do. At iNews Cayman we have THREE proof readers and still numerous spelling mistakes and other grammatical errors get through in almost every edition. Worse, we (and I am the most guilty here) we get politicians names wrong and what district they represent. It does not get picked up. It slips through to much horror after it is revealed by our readers. And it is not just us. How many of you spotted the glaring spelling mistake on the Pedro trespass warning sign that we photographed and placed on the front page on last Sat-Mon (14-16) edition of iNews? The sign spells ‘trespassing’ as ‘TRESSPASSING’. Do you still see the mistake? The person who made the sign didn’t, nor did the people who received it and neither did the persons who erected it. And neither did I until someone pointed it out to me.

I do have a reason for not seeing this. Time has robbed me of my real eyesight giving me a form of blindness because I am approaching 70. That’s my excuse. What’s yours?