One Nation

Had a great weekend with the youths spending time with us. We are ever so fortunate to have our children and grans all living on the rock. I know, I have said this a thousand times before but really we are very lucky to have found ourselves in this position. The trick is now to create the space for them to stay and have a successful, happy, healthy life on the rock. Someone told me today that there is one word that we all need to understand and that word is 'trust'. We as a people have been let down so many times by people who we put all our trust in. We would say 'this time, this is the one' and whatap it happens. The people we trusted let us down, break the campaign promises, start making the excuses about what really happened. After multiple times of that being the case why would I want to cast my vote? Imagine some go as far as to say 'there was a typo in the manifesto'. So how do we fix this? If for instance a promise is made for the Right of Recall...

Probably one of humankind's best ever rituals is a Saturday afternoon zzz, that's if you are not one to have both Saturday and Sunday which is seventh heaven. This weekend we are looking after the last child's children. He refers to them as the 'caimans' and after a horrifying scream of 'how can you say that' he simple says 'try and bade dem'. After my two hour slumber, hey I am a retired working man, I hear that the 'orange car' has gone missing. OK, I don't know what we are talking about but I look as though I am on top of my game and the search starts in earnest. Of course as always, different interests take over and soon we are on to many other things. As the night approaches and dinner and baths are in order for the 'caimans' I stumble upon the 'orange car'. The boy 'caiman' goes to bed tonight clutching the 'orange car' knowing that all is well with the world. Life is too short to be complicate...

I listened to the PMOTT make his statement today on the CL Financial issue. I thought he was doing quite well, very convincing with his spiel. After outlining the facts, as told to him presumably by the Minister of Finance, he then spoke about the fact that the Judiciary would be the guardians protecting and seeking the interest of the taxpayer. That got me worried. The same Judiciary which has shown itself to be an embarrassment, the same Judiciary whose head refuses to apologize to the national community and then immediately resign. Then out of the blue came the 'blackman' talk. Where in God's name did that come from? Why did the PMOTT think for one minute that he had to say that? He is the PMOTT and we expect that he would do all within his power to ensure the rights of all the citizens are maintained at all times. What is this 'blackman' to 'blackman' talk, are these the words of a statesman? I also felt very uneasy when he said 'Trust me'...

Tomorrow we recognize the 27th anniversary of the first ever Islamic insurrection in a country in the Western Hemisphere. After this length of time there are persons alive today who have never come to terms with that horrible murderous incident. These are innocent people who were directly involved in some way, either in the Red House or at TTT or at some other location. The trauma suffered by these ordinary citizens, these people whose lives will never be the same have never received any professional help nor compensation in any form to assist them to go back to their regular way of living. Like 1970, we as a people have failed to deal with a historic reality that has changed the lives of many. Successive governments have paid lip service to these events which in both cases are only recognized by a few people. History has a bad habit of repeating itself and when one does not want to determine exactly what happened it somehow raises its head again, only this time in a more powerful...

This week has me feeling so down about the rock and what really is our future. I have always considered myself to be Mr. Optimistic. Things would be bad, sometimes downright terrible with little or no hope and I would be there battling it out. The hard part is our present and future position is all man made [excuse the gender] and it seems that no matter what we do, how we vote, who we put our trust in, it somehow ends up bad. In 1956, the hope was there, a mass appeal, in 1986 it returned and was destroyed by 1990, in 2010 432,026 electors voted for the Peoples Partnership, in excess of 60% of the population. By 2015 a lot of the love disappeared and we found ourselves in a position of no-where once again. I use these years because the popular vote was there, the majority voted overwhelmingly for the winning party. Even though the winner in 1956 did not win by any semblance of a majority, over 80% of the electorate cast their vote. It is interesting to note that in 1956 the PPPG...

Helping a neighbor is probably one of the best things one can do as a human being. OK, his printer was not working and he needed to send a document and I was in a position to assist. It is the simple things that make us who we are and make us people. When one has to deal with the all else we get frustrated and downright vex, but a simple task makes us human again. So. I have ended my weekend doing yeoman service for my neighbor and I look forward to great things. And what of the rock? I have a real problem with what is happening. Can you imagine the hierarchy of the Defence Force being called into question as to what was the real story with the now infamous issue of who were the children featured in the using of firearms in Cumuto. This is such a simple issue whereby the parents of the children could have simply acknowledged the fact, explained the why, and moved on. Instead we have a whole set of bacchanal and confusion over a simple oversight and children being children. Of c...

Ended the week on a bit of a sad note. A man who dedicated his life to cocoa passed away on Thursday night. He was the last surviving member of a family of thirteen children, many of whom spent their entire life in Gran Couva 'in the cocoa.' He was close to 94 years old and a history of cocoa died with him. Imagine that age and not being on any medication whatsoever. 'Cocoa people' are very different to the rest of us. Reading the weather with no weather station, the dry season and bush fires with no fire brigade, black pod and witches broom with no doctorate in agronomy, waking up at a God forsaken hour every morning without an alarm clock, living off the land and having practically all fresh food on their doorstep, no WASA, good spring and rain water. Being able to not only keep zaboca for months on end out of season but to select the perfect zaboca depending on what time we were eating Christmas Day lunch, using a 'bush umbrella' if rain was falling, ...

The feeling one gets when in Tobago is just one of peace and tranquility. Today the familia headed off to Buccoo for a quiet BBQ and even though there was some rain, that did not change the price of cocoa. We had the beach to ourselves, bar one or two families who came and went whilst we were there. Just peace and quiet. When we were leaving the horses arrived with a group of children and I thought what better way to spend your vacation than to come to Buccoo. Of course the Buccoo Stadium was empty, what a waste of money. I am not saying for one minute we should not have crab and goat racing but to spend $100.0M on a facility that is used for a handful of days in any one year is sinful. Next to it is the Buccoo Multi-purpose Facility and on the beach is a broken down jetty for the fishermen, no refueling station no marina facilities for visiting yachts or sport fishermen. I guess the deal with fishermen is that if on election day fish biting then that is where the fishermen are go...

I hope we all survived the deluge. I thought that Tobago would have got the brunt of it based on the weather data but it seems that once again Tobago was spared but from the pictures being shown north Trinidad took some licks, including my Maraval. So many things happening today in the twin island state, meeting between the PMOTT and the LOTO - is no news good news? the 'Don' passing n orth of us - hope Grenada and St Vincent are OK, bacchanal on the airbridge - hope it's sorted by Thursday, CLF stories continue - will we ever know the truth, with an unprecedented crime wave and we cannot get the scanners working at the ports of entry -  yet the US authorities insist on new, more stringent airport security checks on flights into the US and that's not a problem. Both replacement Tobago ferries are heading to Trinidad. The Cabo Star , the cargo ferry, has past Curacao and traveling at 15.6 knots should be here anytime now. The passenger ferry,...

Back in the sister isle. I wonder if the residents of Tobago like to be referred as 'the sister isle' or prefer to be called 'Tobago' or 'the twin island state' or it really does not matter. The issue of Tobago and its call for self government is on the parliamentary agenda and I would think that having a PMOTT from Tobago and a commitment to have this issue dealt with we will be seeing something happening shortly. Can Tobago get self government, be able to raise its own revenues to the tune of $2.5 BN TT on an annual basis, have its own laws, it's own economic zone, ownership of mineral rights and a host of other issues dealing with self government? Of course who determines this? Is this a Tobago only decision or does a resident of Maraval have equal say as to the future of Trinidad and Tobago? There are many different views and I don't think that it's going to be that simple, by any means. I may not be able to boast of being a descendent of...

Happy Bastille Day! Today the French celebrate the most important day in the year except they refer to it as ' la Fete national'. Sounds like something we would do. It is to commemorate the storming of the Bastille on this day in 1789. The Bastille was a fortress-prison which was attacked by the people who obviously had a real beef with the then king, Louis XVI. It's a great story of a people defying the authorities and in this case the monarchy. France has never been the same again. As a result of what happened in 1789 in France, I happen to be born and living in T&T. Still not sure if I would buy a French made car! I know the story of the Tobago ferries will just not go away. It's like the Russian involvement in the US general elections, new things keep coming to light. The good news is that the MV Ocean Flower 2  is traveling at 18.6 knots and will be docking at Dutch Harbor on the island of Unalaska, AK tonight at sometime. When asked about the replacement f...

Things were quiet on the rock today, only one kidnapping. A Chinese national, perpetrators apparently caught, victim rescued. Possible a couple murders and various other criminal acts like car stealing, house breaking, just a normal day. This is not good when the population accepts criminal activity as a norm, an everyday occurrence. We start comparing yesterday or last month with other horrendous crime statistics and if we better that figure by one it means we are doing something right. So, is it that the kidnappings for ransom have started again, two recently. This is not good, one would think that if I stay out of certain areas I have a better chance of not being murdered. The latest kidnapping according to the police occurred at 7.30 this morning in Haynes St, St Clair not exactly hell town! In one of the updated print media reports during the day the victim was referred to as a 'Chinese'. Chinese?  Nothing about a Chinese National or a Chinese male, just Chinese. Rem...