Stupidity kills. That’s not an exaggeration. Stupidity coupled with ignorance is an even deadlier combination. Just Google ‘Darwin Awards’. Weeks ago, I predicted a rise in Covid-19 cases in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). It wasn’t difficult to foresee the current spate of infection growth. A little time spent learning the …

Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh said today that the nation’s schools remain on course for a 1 September restart and apologised for an error in his weekend update of the Public Health Novel Coronavirus regulations. On Saturday, Deyalsingh updated the public health ordinance with an order that all primary, secondary …

The Montrose Government Primary School is the latest school to announce the closure of its doors today due to exposure to a Covid-19 patient. Acting County Medical Officer of Health Dr Jeanine St Bernard informed the principal Arifta Seepersad today that the school should be closed immediately to ‘prevent the …

The Office of the Prime Minister (Gender and Child Affairs) confirmed two positive Covid-19 cases at St Jude’s School for Girls today. A child and a staff member tested positive after presenting with flu-like symptoms. The OPM and Children’s Authority of Trinidad and Tobago are ‘currently working with the management and …

If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, we have heard a million times, bamboozle them with bullshit. Ralph Maraj is the exemplar par excellence of that message. On the post-4pm news segment of the i95.5FM afternoon show early last week, Maraj leapt to the defence of UNC Political Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar. …

“[…] It should be obvious to all that the most likely winner of a 100 metre race (no pun intended) is the participant who gets the ‘jump start’. It is in these circumstances that the ‘false start’ rule becomes operative and the race line-up is reset. “[…] What is undesirable …

Louis D Brandeis was a well known Justice of the US Supreme Court. In 1913, three years before his appointment, while an outspoken advocate for financial and government transparency as a means of curbing corruption, he wrote a piece in Harper’s Weekly magazine in support of the regulation of banks. …

Trinidad and Tobago’s tally of locally transmitted infections since 20 July now stands at 30 persons in two weeks, as the Ministry of Health confirmed another seven positive results for the novel coronavirus this morning. Three of the positive patients are ‘contacts of recently positive Covid-19 patients’ while four are …

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 Ministry of Health confirmed four new cases of Covid-19 today, which takes the number of active patients to 33. Trinidad and Tobago has now diagnosed 173 positive cases since the onset of the pandemic. All four new cases are locally based cases ‘pending epidemiological investigation’, which suggests new clusters …

“[…] We have bought into the Western, capitalist idea, that the individual bears sole responsibility for their success or failure—history and current extenuating circumstances be damned! This, of course, is a fallacy, a distortion of the truth that absolves us, and the rest of society of any responsibility to our vulnerable …

“[…] The very prosperity that slavery brought to British capital was to eventually make slavery redundant. The capital accumulated throughout slavery led to investments in science, technology and engineering, created the industrial revolution, brought into being productive forces based on machinery, speeded up the process of proletarianisation of the British …