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'watchie kongs'



One of the great things about living on the Rock is the friends and acquaintances you have over a lifetime. When you add up how many people you know personally, family, friends, neighbors, work buddies, people you interact with for different reasons, one can easily count a couple hundred people. My life partner says that I am the only person she knows that has three hundred close friends. I do, I can't help it if I am that popular!
One of the issues of having many friends is that you have many friends die. This year I lost a couple good friends. You used to go to funerals when old aunts and uncles died, now we are the old aunts and uncles. On Friday yet another good friend was buried, RIP Boyer.

The Rock is hot this week. We have the annual fiscal measures being presented tomorrow at the Parliament. The Minister of Finance will sum up his Government's performance in the last financial year and then present his fiscal plan for the coming 2019 period.  Tomorrow people will be buying cartons of cigarettes, rum, and filling their fuel tanks on their cars in case any new taxes are implemented. It is truly amazing to see people rocking their vehicles, trying to get every liter of fuel into the fuel tank, attempting to save a dollar before the introduction of new taxes. That is a real Trini thing!
What is the Minister going to say tomorrow? First, he will blame the last regime for squandering the patrimony, then he will say how great he was in keeping the finances of the Rock together, omitting the fact that he has borrowed $25.0bn to keep things together. The issue of Petrotrin will arise which he will simply pass off as part of the daily business of running a Government. He will make no mention of other State-owned enterprises which have to be sold off to stop the hemorrhaging and or dependency or sovereign security using public funds, like WASA, CAL, National Quarries, NFM, PLIPDECO, FCB, NGC, PATT, AATT, PTSC, T&TEC, TSTT, LATT, and others. The time has come for the 1970's experiment to stop. No longer can a government be attempting to run a commercial enterprise in competition with private enterprise. Do not start with the '1%' stupidness.  Government is not a business, it is there to provide services to the citizens. A government cannot run a carpark far less for an oil company or commercial bank. The concept of job retention is old hat, let the market forces determine the economics and viability of an enterprise. Texaco and Shell sold their refineries for a reason, they could not make money, full stop. Instead of buying the refineries to save jobs the government of the day should have invested in the same Shell and Texaco, now a subsidiary of Chevron. Shell reported profits in excess of US$4.0bn,  Chevron reported profits of US$3.4bn in the last fiscal. That to me makes a hell of a lot of sense. Same goes for commercial entities like FCB. Why does the country own a commercial bank? Why do we own a quarry? Why do we own a flour mill? two (2) commercial ports, an airline? What for? None of these represent an issue of national security where we would want to control a particular organization for security reasons, it is all about control, nothing else. The hard part is we do a terrible job, costing the taxpayer billions. Our sovereign fund should have invested in BP, Shell, BHP, Atlantic Energy and a number of the companies on the Pt Lisas Estate.

So, we are all glued to the Parliamentary proceedings tomorrow and the political divide will either praise Cesar or denounce him. Same ole same ole! But we all continue to work and make a serious attempt at creating a wonderful place for our children and grans to live hoping that the dreaded day of  'We are leaving because the Rock no longer has a future for us' arrives. The way things are going I truly believe that there will be another migration, soon. Well, my life partner and I will simply idle our way through the next phase of our life, happy like pappy. No cold breeze for me!

Happy Budget Day tomorrow, fill your gas tanks, buy your cigarettes and wash your 'watchie kongs' for the 'Mother of all Marches' on Wednesday. Maybe a little too late!

Keep cool, good night and good luck!



  

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