By Raffique Shah
September 16, 2007
Last Thursday most Italians decided to deny themselves their supreme daily delight-pasta-because of what they saw as an unreasonable increase in price. A one-kilo pack of the wheat-based staple had increased by 27 per cent, now priced at around TT$12. This was as shocking a protest as one could get in Italy. I had my first taste of spaghetti-cum-meatballs, liberally sprinkled with parmesan cheese, at a sidewalk restaurant in Florence back in 1966, when my Regiment friends and I, then cadets at Sandhurst, toured Italy. During the ten days or so we traversed the country-Genoa, Rome, Naples, Venice-we learned a whole lot about spaghetti, pasta, cheeses and wines. But with spaghetti everywhere, we learned how it’s eaten the Italian way, with the odd combination of spoon and fork.
Continue reading Welcome to the upside-down world
It is a sad state of affairs when mediocrity is the highest standard to which a nation aspires. For as long as I could remember, the people of T&T have bemoaned the poor quality of service they receive from public health, police, education, transportation and virtually all government ministries. So I thought that people would be happy to learn about the poll which shed light on the dismal performance of many government ministers. Yes! A poll was needed to identify these slackers as much as a light is required to see the sun. Nonetheless, the pole confirmed what the public had always known – government ministers are incompetent, lack vision and are incapable of fulfilling the mandates of their ministries. Despite all appearances, they are trapped in a Third World mentality. How else can one explain the sorry state of social services in T&T?