View Point

With the support of my colleagues from Disclosure Today, I have been conducting research into the underlying commercial arrangements for the State-owned hotels in T&T. Those are the decisive details which drive projects of this nature and from which the substantial public benefits ought to flow. The unhelpful responses from …

The annual reading of the Budget is a ritual. It is real only in that it determines what will be the cost of living in the short and medium term.  This year it imposed additional taxes intended to replace evaporated energy sector revenue in order to prop up a lifestyle, …

“Science is wonderful; it has given many truly wonderful gifts, negative and positive, from the atom bomb through computers to thalidomide to television to telescopes to space travel. “But will it ever be able to treat human stupidity—in buyers and/or in sellers? In doctors or in ducktors? I doubt it.” …

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” This is one of the first quotes you learn when trying to understand Monitoring and Evaluation. Given current realities in Trinidad and Tobago, it seems applicable. I recently finished reviewing the National Budgets presented during the period …

So the Finance Minister’s budget presentation is over; we all now know the major highlights. I make no apologies for not offering any red or yellow-tinted responses or comments or analyses. I want to break with the sterile ‘This was good’ and ‘That was bad’ tradition and discuss instead what …

I stopped watching many TV shows and movies a long time ago because they have apparently run out of ideas and are in the habit of using old shows and scripts—that worked sometime in the past—to see if they would work now. I am now convinced that I should also …

“No minister or prime minister can cause the DPP to prosecute or discontinue a prosecution… No minister or prime minister can instruct the Commissioner of Police to arrest anyone. These offices, which are part of the Executive arm, have their independence explicitly protected in the Constitution as is the Judiciary …

“Everybody was the way people should be all the time,” she continued. “Not mean and afraid but good to each other.” “She” is Marlene Dietrich; the person to whom she is speaking is Ernest Hemingway. It is 1950. No, I was not there; Lillian Ross was. I am reading the …

Dominica, I am sorry. I choose to say that in the patois of the headline of this column, consistent with the linguistic expression of Dominica’s national motto: Après Bondi, C’est la Ter—After God, it’s the Earth. Now, after Hurricane Maria, Dominica’s beloved Earth is a debris dump—its fertility disrespected by …

“It is our right to express anger when there is inequity in the responses to the cries for help. It is our right as citizens and taxpayers to challenge the use of public funds and to question corruption and inefficiency. “It is also our right to speculate over the misappropriation …

“The public consternation caused by the Government’s decision also calls our value system into question. As all Caribbean people can attest, anywhere you travel in the world, you are guaranteed lodging in the home of some friend or family. Hospitality is as Caribbean as sun, sea and sand. “Furthermore, for …

If you are a TV6 regular and you’re like me, you may have noticed two striking things on the number one television channel this week. The second, occurring on Thursday night, had to do with the results of the daily poll and told me something about me and the country …