View Point

For many years I have described the low self-esteem plaguing many of our youngsters and its relationship to violent crime and anti-social behaviour.  The now widespread fighting in schools is a related phenomenon. Much of my personal knowledge of the self-esteem crisis comes directly from dialogue with some youngsters to …

I can’t hear you, brothers and sisters; your silence is deafening. It is a source of great concern to me that, in our very active pro-march and protesting society, I am hearing nothing about any plans for any churches to commemorate the great event that took place on 31 October …

Prank or otherwise, there is nothing funny about rape. We are a nation which has seen its fair share of rapes over the years, many of the victims in their early teens. Despite the large number, however, I can remember not one single occasion when a rape was thought to …

I must give credit to Kyle Skeeto Amos for the headline of this piece. His contemplation on the nature of our democracy is nothing short of brilliant. That said, I want to use another story, the one about the hikers and the lion, to perhaps identify why there is no …

The more I hear about the issues surrounding the casinos and gaming industry, the more confused I get. My confusion is probably going to come through clearly here. I mean, who exactly is the villain in this piece? Who is the victim? It have any at all? Kinda fitting, I …

I have to return to the prevailing conditions of instability which are obvious to me but now as a post-script to my tribute to Roland Quesnel, my revered teacher, a contemporary of mine, Randolph Peters, wrote that, like me, the person who most impacted his intellectual development was Quesnel. He …

I am no hypocrite. So before someone, having read what I have so far written, attempts to stick that label on me for not practising what I preach, let me have a stab at elevating the fuel subsidy debate. I totally agree with the sentiment that the subsidy in its …

Finance Minister Colm Imbert announced an increase in fuel prices with immediate effect. Cue outrage from all quarters in the immediate aftermath. “Cheap Fuel is the bedrock of our society!” they clamoured. “Raise the cost of transport and everything else goes up! It’s common sense!” As tired as these arguments …

There are co-incidences in life that it is sometimes difficult to treat merely as co-incidences. My revered teacher died on Wednesday last, aged 90. Some years ago, he sent me a document entitled My Last Will with a request that I keep it for him “as an official document.” This …

“Why does Minister Imbert not address the foreign exchange leakage by the NLCB? According to the terms of their contract, IGT are supposed to transfer technology to locals. Yet, after a 30-year contract, no such transfer has occurred and Trinidad and Tobago continues to lose over US$350m annually.” The following …

“Built in 1927, The UWI’s oldest hall of residence on the St Augustine Campus still pays tribute to a man who was in the vanguard of the genocidal late 19th Century European imperialist project in Africa, which brutally wiped out large numbers of many ethnic groups while using forced labour to plunder the …

If a visitor to your house confessed to you that he is a pluviophile, what would you do? Lock the kids in their rooms, not let him out of your sight and call the police at the first opportunity? Sorry, you got that wrong! That’s a paedophile! Farmers, gardeners and …