Skip to main content

'Teacher Lucy'



May Day is significant both as a spring festival in the northern climes and of course as the International Labor Day. The latter was started in the 19th century by the communists and socialists and strangely enough in commemoration of an event in Chicago.
May 1st on the Rock is just that May 1st. Within recent times a couple trade unions have recognized the day but our big labor celebration is on another day. On the Rock, you get to celebrate Labor Day twice and get paid for it.

The dreaded SEA examine is happening this week and if you somehow forgot one is reminded by the number of photo-ops taken by persons of import. These persons visit schools hand out 'SEA packs' (consisting of pens, pencils and other trinkets), call for all God's best wishes on the poor children and to me scare the hell out of these kids who are about to sit an exam that will mark them forever. The SEA is as bad as it gets and to further stress the kids is simply not something that should be allowed. I understand that there is to be yet another change in the SEA starting next year which will further cause fallout from those children who do not enjoy the top academic positions. So we will be celebrating the 99.99% average score, determine the winner - boys and girls, and banish the rest to a life of great difficulty. Ban the SEA!

The PMOTT's reaction to the Venezuelan 'refugee crisis' has raised some eyebrows. The Archbishop of Port of Spain has called the action taken by the Leader as 'stingy'. When the PMOTT made the statement about 'no one will allow T&T to turn into a refugee camp' was very unfortunate, to say the least. The government was wrong in how they carried out the exercise all very clandestine and they need to understand that. This is a neighbor in trouble and the citizens of Venezuela will remember the actions. Regimes come and go, but we will still be living here and our neighbors likewise. Not one word of comfort, simply 'get out, now'. Very stingy indeed.

I keep saying that something is very wrong with this administration whereby every single move they make something goes dreadfully wrong. After Sunday's revelation by the Minister of Finance that the Ministry of Energy got the revenue figure wrong and to date there is nothing conclusive from any of the Ministries involved. Today is day three of a misinformed statement that will greatly affect our international standing and neither Minister can confirm what is what? We do not know as yet how does the S&P gather the information required? This is the umpteenth time the Rock is being rated. What is the traditional way of reporting revenue figures? Is it an estimated total revenue or is it an actual revenue and who is supposed to compile the information and how is the figure audited? This is not 'Teacher Lucy' school statistics, this is the Government of Trinidad and Tobago.
The same way we cannot get audited figures for anything whether ticket sales for Tobago Jazz Experience or School Feeding and everything in between or who authorized the payment of $150,000.00 in hush money the same way we will never know what happened with S&P.

People are constantly asking me what 'are we doing?' Meaning what if anything is happening with our politics. I smile and say 'soon'. What else can I say, I have no idea. The citizens of the Rock have to decide how they want to move the country forward. The quicker they work this out the better. The one thing I will say is that what is there now will not take us further and therefore a new political direction must be determined. Yes, it can happen!

Good night people of the Rock and good luck, you may just need it!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

'apology' expression of regret at having caused trouble for someone

Today Trinidad and Tobago was on fire. The discussions on the 'apology,' discussions on the status of the Parliament, everybody is now a certified meteorological expert reporting rainy season rain, people were out and about being very assertive about things that many of them did not really understand. Heat in the place! The statements being made, which caused the 'apology' to then be made, were being said, I think, without really understanding who we are as a people. This is 2017 and we still are having trouble in coming to grips with many social and historic issues that strangely enough are being discussed every day in many places and yet it is only a problem depending on who makes the statement. Let me say that the statement that was made was, even though to many factual, however it rubbed people the wrong way. This is where I have a problem. You read columns written by certain persons that under no circumstances will offend any sector of the society. That same posi...
2 comments
Read more

'aghhhhhhhh'

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...
1 comment
Read more

'poor iguana'

The fauna in Maraval has sadly been reduced by one. Our dog is still the hunter, one owl, one manicou, many zandolees and yesterday one young iguana. Maya, the bull mastiff, loves the hunt as much as she loves Crix. As much as we try our best to support the flora and fauna nature just takes control and the outcome is not always pleasant. We see nature at its finest in recent events in our neck of the woods. As horrific the end result is we can only look on in awe as to the power the natural world has. Poor iguana! It will all be over soon. The killer hurricane will be gone and we can only hope that 'September remember' applies. The territories that were in fact impacted will take a long time to recover, many of them very dependent on the tourism industry and with the season approaching it does not augur well for them. Stories coming out of St Martin are not good. The looting by gangs of armed individuals sends a very negative image to potential tourists who probably though...
2 comments
Read more