What a horrendous week! On Friday 18th, Dr Terrence Farrell, discussing the future of our economy, pointed to the need for disruption in the way the country’s business is done—using as an example BP’s strategic pivot  (‘bold, fraught with uncertainty, risky but highly socially responsible’).  He asked us a most …

One can be forgiven for mistaking last week’s public quarrel as the harmless flaring of tempers. It is not. The sound we heard is the whimpering sound of our dying democracy. Like 1990’s guns and fiery fury, this unseemly quarrel is one more corrosive chipping away of our long-standing political …

In the furore about local football and the appointment of a normalisation committee by Fifa, a proper appreciation of Fifa and its workings is missing. To accuse Fifa and its inner core of corruption is like accusing a tiger of having stripes: it is there, so what? Fifa can best …

The Urban dictionary defines dissing as ‘utterances of a (dis)respectful nature’ and goes on to add ‘not doing right thing… not showing common decency’ and ‘not creating balance in our world’. Twice this week, we were forced to witness our leaders dissing us and contributing to keeping our world off-kilter. …

Since 2002, the annual ALJGSB ‘Distinguished Leadership and Innovation Conference’, with cutting-edge lessons taught by global thought leaders, has been chock full of our local business leaders. Yet the recent Ramsaran imbroglio unmasked glaring shortcomings by some of these same business leaders. These missteps have real-life consequences for us as …

Trinidad and Tobago is a nation of immigrants. We may have come on different boats, but we are in the same boat now. Between the drop in oil and gas prices and their depressed demand, the consequent lack of foreign exchange and the Covid-19 economic shock, we could be set back …

This week had two apparently disconnected stories whose link we may not have discerned, but which profoundly affects our future. The first was the Express’ report on the alleged TT$549M EMBD bid rigging case which noted: ‘…some of the same contractors donated financially toward the current government…’ The second is …

The decision as to which party or person to vote for in our General Elections is seldom a single-issue decision. It is folly when our pollsters try to imagine that we vote based on ‘what is the biggest issue confronting us now?’—since many such issues are themselves complex. In the …

Lewis Carroll’s classic ‘Alice in Wonderland’ encapsulates our nation’s present predicament and many of our leaders. He could have been describing Trinidad: “There is a place, like no place on earth. A land full of wonder, mystery and danger! Some say to survive it, you need to be as mad …

“A single spark can start a prairie fire,” Mao Zedong, 1930. This observation came back to my mind in the witnessing of the events of the last seven days. Mao had meant then that the revolution would start small but was possible in China—not too different from all the recent …

Last Saturday, three men were shot dead in their neighbourhood at about 2.30pm. Six hours after, the newspapers went to press not knowing the identity of two of the men while the other one was more likely to be named as ‘Warlord’. They were nobodies. On social media, some rejoiced …

As adopters of social media and smart phones, we reveal a lot about ourselves each day. We tell the world about our likes and dislikes, habits and families via Facebook and Twitter. We even disclose our travel plans to persons we do not know via Waze and Google. We expose …