By Michael De Gale
July 08, 2008
T&T is not a failed state; it is a state whose socio/economic policies, ineffective leadership and lack of vision is failing its citizens. It is a state which has consistently failed to effectively integrate large sections of the African and East Indian populations into the wealth creating mechanism that would give them a stake in the country. This failure manifests itself in misdirected values, social deviance, questionable morals and increasing violence. Consequently, with the exception of the elite, a struggling middle class and an increasing number of foreigners, the great majority of citizens in this small but oil rich nation remain poor; marginally more than hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Continue reading Poverty is Not a Virtue
Police were on a manhunt in Central Trinidad last night, after another toddler was murdered.
LAST Friday, the House of Representatives debated a motion to confirm or strike down the Police Service Commission’s (PSC) nominee for the position of Commissioner of Police, Senior Superintendent Stephen Williams. Speculation was rife beforehand that the Government would reject Williams on the premise that he was too young for the top job, that the selection process was flawed.
Where do the neophyte Ministers of the PNM regime get the idea that taxpayers’ money is not taxpayers’ business? Was this what they were taught at their retreat last year, which was also at taxpayers’ expense, to learn about their responsibilities? Or are they merely falling into the easy contempt with which politicians too often treat the citizens of this country?
The news that the United States still officially included former South African President Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) on its terror watch list and that the US Senate only moved last week to correct this absurdity has come as a shock and eye opener to many.
When I was growing up in Tacarigua, Gilbert Jessop, the priest of the St. Mary’s Anglican Church, employed David, a homosexual servant, who was cook, maid, chief bottle washer and the master of his house. Rev. Jessop, the son of the famous English cricketer of the same name, was a bachelor and so David directed the daily routine of his house. Most of the young men in the district liked the arrangement because it gave us free reins to the pastorate which Rev. Jessop turned it into a mini–club house. Rev. Jessop was a master at table tennis–no one ever beat him in a game–and an efficient cricketer. He was the first person I ever saw play the game golf which he did on the Orange Grove savannah.
With NFM announcing last week that the price of wheat flour is set to rise another 29 per cent, there was the usual groaning and moaning from consumers, blaming “de govament” for rising food prices. Really, you’d think these people have just landed from Mars, that they are unaware of the global food crisis, of inflation eating into people’s pockets just about everywhere in the world. You’d think, too, that by now everyone would have adjusted their spending habits to meet escalating costs through focussing on “needs” as opposed to “wants”.
THE Law Association yesterday questioned the legality of the “lock down” of Richplain by the Defence Force who set up camp in the Diego Martin community after the Father’s Day murder of Corporal Ancil Wallace and his best friend Noel Charles.
Teachers feel “disempowered” and “abandoned” on the issue of corporal punishment and classroom control as students mock them saying “Government say yuh cyar do me nothing”.