Guest Columns

On 18 October 2018, almost one year ago, a doleful Mr Ancel Roget was pictured, in a photograph supplied by the OWTU, between two prospective partners, announcing their bid to acquire the Petrotrin assets. One company, Sunstone Equities, appeared from the news report to be a facilitator of government-private sector …

In 1999, Clivia Jones went to school with a modest cornrow hairstyle only to be told by the Corpus Christi principal to fix her hair or stay home. This story came to mind when I read of two recent incidents. The first was of a Port of Spain schoolteacher spewing …

The consummation of this deal with Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd (PET­CL) might be the game-changer we have been looking for to change the work ethic of Trinidad and Tobago. But it will require a level of collaboration that we have not experienced in recent times. From one perspective, …

Wha allyuh vex with St Stephen’s College for? I give them right, full marks for their stance. Was it backward and discriminatory? Yeah. Was it disrespectful and, frankly, based on old racist ideas of beauty, comportment and respectability? Of course, duh. They no doubt would justify it on the grounds …

“Act 51 of the Summary Offences Act prohibits ‘indecency’ in public places specifically mentioning anyone who (a) is indecently attired; (b) performs any lewd or suggestive dancing or actions; (c) in any play, song, ballad or speech, uses language, or makes use of any recording, which is profane, indecent or …

Plural societies, such as ours, are prone to tensions and to pretend that it is a new thing is folly. What is new is the disrespectful disagreement we now witness as we moved from social polarisation (living in different communities) to issue polarisation (where we cannot agree on the essentials …

Hurray … election goodies have begun. The income tax amnesty has been extended to September 30th. But like an ungrateful voter, my response is a big steups. Unless the extension of time is accompanied by the release of refund cheques, we are all in the same place. The tax amnesty …

The unravelling of the contract between the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and Chinese construction company, Gezhou­ba Group In­ter­na­tion­al En­gi­neer­ing Co Ltd (CG­GC), is so close to the fourth anniversary of PNM’s 2015 election victory because it represents the collapse of a significant plank upon which the Keith Rowley-led administration placed …

Prior to the 1990s, the Jamaican business community lived a split life: families in Florida with a commuting businessman. That model did not work—investment plunged, making the businesses uncompetitive. By 1992, their dollar was reeling, causing much concern about social and economic stability. Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart then stepped up with …

John Lennon, the Beatle, in 1965, wrote these haunting lyrics: “You better run for your life if you can, little girl / Hide your head in the sand, little girl / Catch you with another man / That’s the end, little girl / Well, you know that I’m a wicked …

Sedition, careful, careful how you talking … hey hey! Sedition, careful, careful whey you walking Incompetent idiots have genuine patriots Always under escort in the sedition court. The Mighty Sparrow (Sedition) The Sedition Act, used recently to charge Watson Duke (and earlier Michael Seales and Abu Bakr), is a dangerous …

David Muhammad: “It is globally embarrassing, socially backward, and developmentally counter-productive, for any society that promotes ideals of free speech in the 21st Century to conjure up ghosts of the intellectually dark ages of as far back as the 17th Century [such as the Sedition Act]…” Police Commissioner Gary Griffith: …