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 …

The letter ‘When would real equality come?’ by Anand Beharrylal, QC—carried in the Express Monday 15  June edition—reminds me of an Aaron Levenstein quote: “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.” His comments were suggestive but do not provide a full picture …

Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF head, in a conversation with the Washington Post last week described the economic situation brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic as a ‘crisis like no other’. For her, the impending crisis was a  ‘great reversal’ that was wrought with much uncertainty. She foresaw significant job losses …

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin. We can ignore what we faced on 8 June in the Queen’s Park Savannah or face it and propose to change it. Late that evening, a video surfaced of a police …

“Every politician who has tasted power, and many who counted for little, has gone to war with the media. If they didn’t, that would signal that journalists were not doing their jobs, that they were too busy prostrating to power to do their duty to country.” Raffique Shah, 30 March …

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley in his opening remarks to his economic recovery team said: “…Covid-19 has unmasked the inequalities that exist in the economy and at the wider societal level…it has also demonstrated that all segments of the society are at risk.” These sentiments are in line with those …

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before,” Rahm Emanuel, (2008). The context for that quote—which is really a riff off one made by Paul Romer, who in …

HG Wells (1945) summed up our perception of the present times, “a jaded world devoid of recuperative power…ordinary man is at the end of his tether”. More than half of us are feeling great uncertainty. Both the business community (90%) and the general public (75%) believe that the economic challenges …

“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by our responsibility for our future.” — George Bernard Shaw. To accept the virus-induced lockdown was, for the most part, a no-brainer. To exit is not. Indeed, the public comments of the major business organisations show us more …