By Raffique Shah
Sunday, May 18th 2008
I have spoken with Calder Hart only once, when he belatedly responded to a call I had made to UDeCOTT seeking to talk with him on a story I was working on. It turned out that he had been out of the country when I had tried to reach him. He was very polite, even effusive, promising to talk with me anytime, on any matter concerning UDeCOTT. He came across as a journalist’s delight: most people in his position normally refer lowly plebs of the Fourth Estate to some PR “spin doctors”, who, in turn, ask for questions to be formally e-mailed to them, and then take forever to give half-answers.
Continue reading Nothing to hide, nothing to fear
Five months ago, the PNM was elected to serve as the Government of the people of T&T although it received 43 per cent of the votes. 
There should be no tears shed over Government’s decision to hold parliamentary Joint Select Committee meetings in camera, and not on camera. Already, members of the Opposition and some independent senators have expressed outrage, accusing the Government of using its majority to muzzle MPs and senators. Many people who follow parliamentary proceedings also view the move as one to deny the public the right to follow the proceedings of these committees. It reeks of cover-up, they argue.
TWO Trinidadians and four Venezuelans were yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment for trafficking cocaine in what the trial judge said was the “largest amount to ever pass through the courts of Trinidad and Tobago.”
In his 1972 article titled “The meaning of development”, Professor Dudley Sears argued that “a country which had doubled per capita income could not claim to have experienced development if poverty, inequality, (inflation/ spiraling high cost of living, food shortages, human safety/security, level of crimes) and unemployment had not been reduced.”
A woman, charged with having sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old boy without his consent, was yesterday granted $80,000 bail and ordered to stay 100 feet away from the young man.