Public Outrage Did Not Break Jet Deal

by Heru
March 20, 2008

Manning's TT$400 Million Jet Dream CrashesThe spokesmen for the government on the Bombardier jet deal have been trying to convince us that the deal was aborted because of government’s insistence on a strict anti-corruption clause, and not because of widespread public outrage.

Guess what? I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt on this. It certainly shows them in a worse light. Instead of being guided by the concerns of the population, they have stubbornly taken the position that they are not.
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Manning’s TT$400 Million Jet Dream Crashes

Patrick Manning's TT$400 Million Jet Dream Crashes

A ploy that did not fly

March 19th 2008
trinidadexpress.com

Caribbean Airlines (CAL) will want the citizenry to believe that its decision to stall the plan to acquire an executive jet was based on the high principle of being determined not to go ahead with the transaction unless the contract included a watertight or, perhaps, more accurately in the context, an airtight anti-corruption clause.
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Inauguration of TT’s President

Public scarce on President’s big day
Judging from the crowd that turned out to President George Maxwell Richards’s inauguration ceremony at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Mucurapo yesterday, it was clear that the people of this country prefer to party to the max with the President during Carnival, than to see him sworn in for another term of office.
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Manning and the Jet Stuck in Public Outcry

by Heru
March 17, 2008

Manning And The JetPatrick Manning and Caribbean Airlines have been facing widespread public outcry over their attempt to purchase a $400 million luxury jet from Bombardier for the government’s official use. Minister of Works Colm Imbert, Minister of Finance Mariano Browne, and Caribbean Airlines’ chairman Arthur Lok Jack have been the main defenders and spokespeople for the government on this issue.
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The High Cost of Living: A Sufferer’s Perspective

HouseTHE EDITOR: I’d like you to allow me a small space on your website to address one of the many elephants that occupy this large room that we call Trinidad and Tobago. With all the recent talk about the high cost of living I think that this would be a most appropriate time to do so.

I recently read a short article in the Trinidad Express about the high cost of house and apartment rentals in Trinidad and Tobago today. In the article, a number of landlords defended their exorbitant prices saying that the costs of building materials have gone up and therefore to cover these costs, they have upped their prices. Fair enough, right?
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Caribbean Airlines ‘gouging’ taxpayers

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, March 16th 2008

Manning And The JetAS I listened to billionaire-businessman Arthur Lok Jack reel out the numbers surrounding Caribbean Airlines (CAL) decision to purchase a Bombardier Global Express SRX, I was puzzled. If anyone knows anything about basic “counting”, it should be a billionaire. If anyone knows about price-gouging, it’s invariably the very wealthy. After all, that’s how most among the super-rich become wealthy. At his media conference last week, Lok Jack reeled out some numbers that stunned me.
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DNA Test clears rape accused

By Andre Bagoo
March 13, 2008

ViolenceA MAN who was charged with rape and who spent four years in prison after being identified by two women at a police identification parade, was yesterday set free and exonerated by DNA evidence which proved his innocence. It is the first time DNA has set an accused person free in a court of law in this country.

The man, who was arrested on November 19, 2003, had been charged with one count of rape, two counts of grevious sexual assault and two counts of robbery with aggravation in relation to an incident with two women on November 18, 2003 at a trail in Bon Air, just off the Priority Bus Route.
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The Sheriff of Wall Street

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 12, 2008

Eliot SpitzerIt’s kind of sad. A brilliant governor with an exciting future brought low because he couldn’t keep his penis in his pants. From all reports, he seemed to be happily married with an adorning wife and three devoted children. Yet, he could not resist the lure of high-class prostitutes on his occasional visits to Washington, D.C.

He needed the exhilaration that comes from living on the edge; the excitement that transgressive behavior generates. Here is a man who knew the dangers of getting involved in a prostitution ring trying to hide the payments he made and sources from which these payments came. He had prosecuted such rings before. Yet, the unfolding drama called for a playwright of Euripides’s stature (he was a Greek playwright), to capture the tragic nature of Governor Eliot Spitzer’s fall from grace.
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Youths, Violence and Values in TnT

‘Chickens come home to roost’

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
March 12, 2008

PeopleThe recent stabbing death of teenager Shaquille Roberts at the Success Laventille Composite School speaks volumes as to the overt breakdown and rapid, exponential decline and failure of all aspects of young life here in TnT.

The fact of the matter is that the 18th-19th century inherited/ imposed/ accepted Euro-centric British education system has not only totally failed the youths in TnT but, most viciously, it has also successfully imbued in them a sense of worthlessness, nothingness and unpreparedness.
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Against public opinion

By Raffique Shah
March 09, 2008

Manning And The JetWhen the furore over government owning an executive jet first erupted last year, I was among the very few persons who saw nothing wrong with it, and I wrote as much. I argued then that the Prime Minister could be likened to the CEO of an oil rich country, except that his responsibilities were far greater, and that right here in Trinidad and Tobago there were several conglomerates that owned such aircraft. Indeed, across the world, most governments own, or have assigned to them, aircraft ranging from small executive jets to huge jumbo-jets.
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