Politics

Conflicting Signals on Inflation

By Stephen Kangal

Last year, National Security Minister Joseph assured us that crime would get worse before it got better. Crime has intensified. Last week, Junior Finance Minister Enill, following in the same vein of PNM spin doctors assured that inflation would get worse (more than 10%) before it got better (single digit). Meanwhile, while POS is overheating and being ghettoised by the skyscraper landscape, we, the 300,000 poor, must lose the purchasing power of our scarce hard-earned dollars and await the effects of this over-used worse-better syndrome.
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General T&T

Exposing ethnic disparity in TnT

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By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
November 02, 2006
Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

Trini PeopleNow that the Divali and Eid celebrations have ended, it is this citizen’s civic responsibility to opine on the nature, respect, acceptance and tolerance of ethnic expressions in T’n’T.

At the outset, it must be stated that the current playing field is not one on which every ethnicity finds an equal place. The reality of ethnic reciprocity just does not exist vis-a-vis each other’s annual celebrations.
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General T&T, Politics

The delusions of a Prime Minister

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Posted by: Errol F. Hosein

The ongoing behaviour of Prime Minister Patrick Manning suggests that he is driven by the ghost of Dr. Eric Williams. One must note that earlier in his career as Prime Minister, Mr. Manning referred to himself as the “Father” of the Nation. I suspect that he has not fully recovered as a result of what appeared to be a political “faux Pas” to the casual observer.
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General T&T

Labour strife repeats itself

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
October 29, 2006

Now that the anti-people, anti-labour PNM government has declared “open war” against the labour movement in T’n’T and its attendant workers, albeit the expendable lumpen proletariat, it is apropos to take a look “back in time” at the labour movement’s anti-colonial struggle against the Euro-British colonial government circa 1937-38.
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General T&T

Living on the edge

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By Raffique Shah
October 29, 2006

In debunking UN-fed statistics on poverty in Trinidad and Tobago in my column of last week, I suggested that we may be victims not so much of poverty as of wanton, wasteful consumerism. I pointed out, too, that the poverty line needs to be re-defined. Whereas 30 years ago a salary of $3,000 per month meant affording a middle-class lifestyle, today that means living on the edge. But one wonders if a re-distribution of the nation’s wealth would bring us closer to eradicating poverty or not sink us deeper into debt.
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General T&T, Politics

Statistics and damn lies

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By Raffique Shah
October 22, 2006

Two years ago a report from some UN agency stated that 300,000 people in Trinidad and Tobago lived “on less than US$1 a day”. Today, with oil dollars gushing through the country, we have managed to lower this number to, I think, 170,000 paupers. When I read statistics like these I vigorously shake my head, trying to figure out if I am living in T&T or on some other planet. Although I cannot claim to know every district in the country, I try to figure out how these highly paid experts come up with their numbers when I don’t see evidence of such indigence.
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General T&T

President Richards’ Laments About Foreign Values

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Now there’s concern?

By Corey Gilkes
October 18, 2006

On October 6th, during an inter-faith service, President George Maxwell Richards gave a speech lamented the creeping influx of foreign values and cultures into our country. According to the Express newspaper, President Richards, “spoke of mass media images of ‘glitter and glamour’ and ‘easy living’ from foreign metropolitan areas’, which young people are bombarded with…” and that “many young people, faced with these images, were willing to give up their heritage.”
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Violence

Male Arrogance, Abuse and Intimate Relationships

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by Ras Tyehimba
October 17, 2006

Recently, I read in the media of the incident involving Anita Lutchmepersad, who was forced to leave her home because of the threatening abuses of a ‘close male relative’. After she left, he burnt down the house and drank detergent in an apparent suicide bid. According to one newspaper report, the male relative had seen a text message from one of Anita’s co-workers and misinterpreted it, getting in to a fit of rage. Another newspaper report told of Devica Mahabir who survived being poisoned, beaten and burned but was left horribly disfigured by her husband who killed himself after murdering her lover. What are the factors at play in such scenarios? How do so many relationships which SEEM to start off so good and which are supposedly based on ‘love’ be filled with so much mistrust, pain and abuse?
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