An Economist article (2011) defined ‘elites’ as people who shape the world without anyone noticing. The rich and powerful leverage their privileged status to exercise decisive control over the way society is organised and developed. I am thankful that Gregory Aboud has opened this discussion. While he did not define …
Read More »Why for the upper class, silence is golden; Perry rebuts Aboud on cure for public ills
After digesting Gregory Aboud’s insightful commentary in the Trinidad Express, it behooves me to offer a retort. His “Silence of The Elites” piece is chicanery masked as concern for country and changing the status quo. Aboud may genuinely believe that he is offering a compelling and emphatic critique of his …
Read More »Daly Bread: Failure of ‘govt by giveaway’; T&T’s culture of opportunistic collusion
This column was one of the first among regular commentaries to identify that Government slackness was embracing criminality, and to make dire predictions about where this would lead. The assertion was met with dismay on the cocktail circuit. A well regarded commentator suggested to me that our governments were ‘mooks’ …
Read More »STREET VIBES: Empty treasuries make the most noise, empty ministers too
Repeat after me: “The Treasury is empty.” “The Treasury is empty.” “Again!” In psychology, there is something called the “illusory truth effect.” Essentially, it says that a lie repeated often enough becomes believable, not only by persons hearing it but also by the people repeating it. The term only gained …
Read More »What gets measured gets done: Our problem with analysing Budgets and Gov’t data
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” This is one of the first quotes you learn when trying to understand Monitoring and Evaluation. Given current realities in Trinidad and Tobago, it seems applicable. I recently finished reviewing the National Budgets presented during the period …
Read More »Daly Bread: Fake oil, true analysis; inside the belly of the State enterprise system
Fifteen years ago, shortly before becoming a columnist—as a guest speaker at an event organised by the late Lloyd Best—I characterised our political contests as a fight for the national cash register. I also asserted that in politics you can lawfully t’ief, based on the way the State enterprise system …
Read More »The ‘Big Pappy Life’: Daly considers the perils of our Ultimate Rejects lifestyle
Trinidad and Tobago is plunging downward right back where we fell in the mid-eighties having gorged ourselves on the proceeds of the preceding oil boom. A second round of energy sector riches have once again, in the famous Michael Manley phrase, “passed through us like a dose of salts,” but …
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