The amended Development and Planning Law made the front page of the 17 Oct. 1974 edition of The Caymanian Compass as it generated much debate in the Legislative Assembly. A new section in the bill restricted the removal, without written permission, of sand, pebbles, gravel, stone, coral or other filling from any area “between high water and five hundred feet inland thereof, or from any land covered by water”.
The photo on page one, headlined ‘Wait Until the Cows Come Home’, shows Crewe Road in a very different light, with cows causing issues with rush-hour traffic. The line of vehicles behind the sauntering bovines shows who was ruling the road.
The focus of the editorial was freedom of the press. With the Inter American Press Association holding its annual meeting in Caracas, Venezuela, at the time, the editorial said, “we join the rest of the Western Hemisphere in condemning the seizure of the independent press in Peru”. Not only as an affiliate of the press association, “but in our own right as the publication of the Cayman Free Press Ltd., we register our condemnation”, it added. Soldiers in Peru armed with submachine guns had seized six plants printing eight newspapers, which “was carried out in drastic totalitarian fashion”. The editorial continued, “While it is unthinkable for us to foresee such barbarous treatment to the Press in these parts, we make bold to say that the full level of understanding of the functions of the media has not yet attained the desired height”.
On page 11, a story on the new representative for Crown Agents included a photo of Willy Hansen with Chief Fire Officer Kirkland Nixon; Aline Merren, secretary of the Cayman Islands Corporation; and Captain John Ellison, the director of civil aviation. Hansen, who was to be based in Bridgetown, Barbados, was expected to spend three years in the Caribbean.
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