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'Mary Alice'








It's been one of those starts to a very busy week. A person I got to know while I was MP for Chaguanas East, died last week at the age of 103. The first time I spoke with her I thought it was a middle aged person only to know on meeting with her that she was a centenarian. RIP Mary Alice!
A quote from another centenarian ' Don't look at the calendar. Just keep celebrating every day'. Good advice!

The rock is once again giving me a headache. Why do we constantly have to live in this high drama? Everything is a story! I notice that the CL Financial story is now on a back page somewhere but that the ferry service still will not die. How strange that no matter what is said or done by the authorities there is something that is just not sitting right. I guess anytime you have to pay twice the price for twice the age of anything then it becomes a story. Unless of course it's a valuable antique. The Cabo Star nor the Ocean Flower 2 are antiques, they are just plain old boats ready to be scrapped. Of course once again Tobago gets the end of the stick that nobody wants to be holding. No wonder Tobago wants to run far from Trinidad.

The award winning photo on the front page of one of the country's finest media houses of a uniformed woman police officer in a less than official pose just says that there is no news on the rock.  The same way that photo was published there is another winning photo of yet another police officer, this time on a horse. This time however the officer it seemed was actually larger than the horse. Is there no fitness requirement for officers in the TTPS?
But seriously, what of the uniforms of the members of the TTPS? Surely there must be a gender neutral uniform that can be worn by all officers. Why are WPO's still dressed in skirts for their regular duty? The men have moved from short pants and a cork hat why have the WPC's not graduated the same way?
Try running down a perpetrator in a skirt!

I have a problem with the issue of the 1%, the some haves, the not so much haves and the have-nots. The statements that are being made are creating a divide within the society that does not augur well for the immediate health of the economy and the future of this country.
Not for one minute am I dismissing the fact that there are people who live on the outside of the radar,  the destitute. I am not dismissing for one minute that there are not hard times in many families. I am not dismissing for one minute that the future families had planned might not be happening because of our current economic situation. I am not dismissing for one minute that there are families that did extremely well during the good times. Did we not all benefit in some way? The belief that only a certain part of the society benefitted from the largesse is simply not true. We all did at different levels, we all have to recognize that the fun part is now over and we all will have to work our way through it. To single out any one grouping is just plain wrong. There are many persons from all walks who have built businesses during the good times, creating employment, selling goods and services to the same 1%, to the State, to business generally and then what, we now blame others for our situation. No, that is not how the world works. We all understand the position that we are now in and we come up with a plan where we all participate in the fix. There will always be businesses that will do better than others, those normally have a much higher risk. Not all of us are willing to take that risk, hence others do better financially than others. During the oil boom in recent years there are companies that made billions in profits. I understand that TransOcean, the giant offshore drilling company, is now filing for bankruptcy. They just happen to have seven rigs cold stacked offshore in the Gulf of Paria. And this is how the world works.

Tonight's musical selection is of course the 'Rhine Stone Cowboy' guy. I must be getting old.

Good night and good luck!


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