Skip to main content

'mucho aqua'

Rain, rain and more rain! Left sunny Chaguanas after lunch and driving north saw the northern range covered in low hanging clouds, decided to go through the Santa Cruz route after hearing that the capital was flooded yet again. The one thing I noticed whilst driving through the pelting rain was that there was more water on the road than in the drains.
It is obvious that major work is required to fix the drainage system across the island. With nonexistent drainage or drainage that simply does not capture the runoff because of bad design the roadways are going to be flooded at the great inconvenience of the users. Pictures of the annual flooding is a serious indictment on the engineers and managers of the agencies responsible for these matters. Imagine the capital city is under water in a matter of minutes and not too many people care. I guess the Member of Parliament for POS South had other things on her mind and flooding was not one of them.
The Mayor of the capital city was also not too concerned about South Quay, Cascade, Woodbrook and St James. You see not being an elected position sometimes the priorities are re-directed.
Whatever happened to the famous 'gully suckers?' waiting on spare parts, maybe.

I got home just in time to view the media conference hosted by the PMOTT. I am still not sure the actual reason for having this media conference as the only thing I gleaned from it was that the PP Gov't was as guilty as hell for many things and that the Integrity Commission had no integrity. Why was the question about the firing of the Minister not properly answered? There was no issue with the person of interest known to the police being present at the swearing in. I have a major issue with the fact that a Cabinet Minister supports and condones a person who is of interest to the police. Should this interest be developed further what will be the position? A phone call requesting a hands off approach? Like I have already said is this why you can have drug blocks across the street from a police station?
The biggest take away from today's media conference was that always check your list and make sure that the media has a mic to be able to ask questions. No mic at a media conference, maybe the Minister of Communications should have been dealt with at the same time, imagine embarrassing the PMOTT. There was a long pause after the PMOTT invited the media to ask questions. I think the media was as confused as to why they had been summoned on this very rainy afternoon.
And the now twice fired former Minister remains as an MP, remains as a Deputy Political Leader of the ruling party and the Chairman of a Parliamentary JSC.

The island state continues to make me wonder if any time soon we will finally understand what responsible governance is. Judging from man in the street interviews and general comments it would seem we are a bit further away as the thinking is  'OK, maybe she should have done it differently but that does not mean she should have been fired.' What? What is it that the general population thinks about being in government, once 'is we' it is not a problem, everybody gets a bligh. The same thing happened in the previous regime when ministers were being dealt with. 'Is we boy' leave him alone.
No, this nonsense has to stop and whether you are a Deputy Political Leader, a Member of Parliament, a Cabinet Minister and more so the PMOTT, you have to account to all the people of the Republic, not just your circle, you are now a representative of all of T&T.
One day we will get it, and that's the day we start becoming a nation. In the mean time we do what we are doing and the result will be the same, mediocrity.

The good thing about the constant rainfall is of course the aquifers are replenished. I knew there was good coming out of the flooded roads and drains.

T&T, do not lose hope, it will happen, come hell or high water!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Peace and quiet

When you hear the words 'perfect' or 'the best' it makes you feel like a million dollars. Human nature is weird, a simple compliment can turn a whole story into a week of joy! And, yes, I am speaking about the Sunday night popcorn! Apparently, tonight was exceptional. I hope the rest of the week translates into 'perfect'. The horrible news of the deaths of two cyclists over the weekend came as a real shock. We both know a number of people who cycle for good weekend sport and to hear of Joe Brown being killed in an accident was truly heart-rending. When we heard of the accident we started to think of all the people we know who cycle and just hoped it might be somebody we did not know. Is this how it works, you hope that it's not someone you know, what about all the people who actually know the person? Truly a sad day! RIP Joe and Joanna! The issue of cycling and motorists is one that every country I am sure goes through. Is it that the main roads are for...

price of fried chicken

One of the things I think I learnt in politics is that it is better to 'take in front before in front take you'. By coming up front and dealing with a situation is by far the preferred way rather than others setting the tone, you must control the narrative. Seeing the pictures of the MP in Washington D.C after recovering from a long illness was for me a sad indictment of how we treat people on the Rock. The MP became ill almost a year ago and even though the population knew of it the Government tried every which way to disguise, deny, gave information that did not stand up to scrutiny, avoiding the inquiries and basically telling the citizens to mind their own business. All the Government had to do was level up front with us, yes he was ill, he is suffering from 'X', he is in recovery, the Parliament has determined that he should be given leave of 'Y' months, we will keep you posted, full stop. No, instead we are given the old 'heave ho', with the pop...

'probeslematic'

My mention of the 'zaboca boat' the other night had some people perplexed. The 'cocoa men' would slice the zaboca length ways, cutting the zaboca into two or three slices, depending on the size, and after removing the outside skin would insert onto the inside of the slice all kinds of magical fillings, shrimp, homemade salad dressing and whatever else you wanted. Truly the fruit of the God's! A great reminder of where we live is the loud refrain of ' sooooooooiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllll manure! ' Every now and then we would be visited by the white pickup loaded with garden soil and manure. I am not sure how many vendors there are but it seems that there more than one or else that guy really moves around. With four probes being launched into the ferry fiasco it seems things could get a bit 'probeslematic'. Things on the rock are rocking! The fun part is that the Minister of Ferries is now saying that 'the whole process has to start over even ...