Paul Nedd has taken up his new position as Secretary of Council and suggests the missing link to improve things on Barbuda is dialogue with the Antiguan Government. But he is completely wrong to say we are totally dependent on government; it’s actually the opposite. We are (most of us) independent thinkers, and so we are independent of government, and we have to be. Creating a dependency among voters is their raison d’etre. But since Irma we have been dependent on aid and international goodwill and of course we must move on from that. We have more hope in the justice of the law and the traditions that have sustained Barbuda independently over hundreds of years that now they want us to abandon, than in a dialogue with an oppressor.