Here is another test for the failed Acting Commissioner of Police, Stephen Williams and the rest of the failing police high command, who do not want their performance assessed by reference to “murders alone”—even though murders continue at more than one a day and are committed with almost complete impunity. …

Trinidad and Tobago is plunging downward right back where we fell in the mid-eighties having gorged ourselves on the proceeds of the preceding oil boom. A second round of energy sector riches have once again, in the famous Michael Manley phrase, “passed through us like a dose of salts,” but …

The recent rally entitled Side by Side We Stand was focused on the appalling annual murder rate, with particular reference to the murders of women and children. The stimulus for the rally was the murder of Shannon Banfield found dead in a Charlotte Street store. The appearance at the rally …

This year 2017 is likely to be one of the most challenging for our country since Independence. My fellow columnists have already laid out for us the stark reality of spending more than we earn compounded by a voracious appetite for things foreign when our severely reduced earnings have meant …

From the buggery murder of Akiel Chambers, aged 11, last seen at a children’s party in an upscale house in Maraval, to the smothering of Shannon Banfield, aged 20, last believed to be in a store in Charlotte Street, there are continuous lines of slackness and callous indifference. Both Akiel …

As asserted before, it is gross inadequacies at the macro level of political thinking and action that have inevitably produced and made worse the problems besetting us. The political parties need to re-think their deep inadequacies. They have us entangled in a nasty web of wanton murder, impunity for killers, …

My musically accomplished friends tell me that to be tone deaf means to be unable to distinguish the difference in pitch between different notes. In common usage tone deafness has a wider meaning, namely a person unable to discern the different nuances of a situation. We had a local government …

“The potential to soothe the savage beasts of the nation whenever they appear in your communities and to put disagreement into less destructive modes. That is a challenge to which you must all rise. “Meeting that challenge must be prefaced by a search for self-esteem. I say this is the …

Over more than a decade, my columns have contained an explanation of what I discern to be the deficiencies of the systems by which we are governed and reference to some possible solutions. These columns also seek to show the link between those deficiencies, leadership condonation of them and the …

I entirely agree that the Cabinet reshuffle announced last week is not likely to produce better or cleaner Government. Our governance structures and processes are out of date, unreformed, tainted with partisanship and in some cases riddled with corruption. They lack public trust. By analogy to Chalkie’s “The Driver Can’t Drive”, …

Last week, I wrote of the ill wind of deep-seated race and class divisions. Let me acknowledge that the use of the ill wind description was one put to me in conversation with someone for whose intellect and creativity I have high admiration. I asserted that this ill wind drives …

I am satisfied that the restrictions on the use of firearms and prohibited weapons contained in the Firearms Act do not readily accommodate “threat assessment training” of politically exposed persons or their families involving the possession and use of firearms. However we live in extraordinarily violent times in an unstable …