Okay, so who’s playing up with their Count at the Ministry of Finance? Just hours after, Chutney Soca Monarch (CSM) promoter George Singh declared that the competition would be scuttled due to a withdrawal of funding from the National Lotteries Control Board (NLCB)—after a directive from the Ministry of Finance—the …
Read More »Daly Bread: Playing with the priests; the cost of looking the other way
Following last week’s column on the self-esteem crisis, which looked at the circumstances which contribute to the breeding of heartless persons, I was reading an interview with a rape victim who has written a debut novel entitled Dark Chapter. The book explores the traumatic experience of the author, Winnie Li, …
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 »Budget analysis: Online tax fiasco, ageing population, diversification dilemma and more
Two Tuesdays ago at a meeting in Mt D’or, Minister of Finance Colm Imbert boasted that there were only two people who knew the contents of the budget, the Prime Minister and himself. The subsequent applause for this revelation is symptomatic of the nature of our state. We are accepting …
Read More »All state enterprises are not the same; why large-scale privatisation can be detrimental
“Indeed, the government has to find ways to generate some savings, but wholesale attrition of state-owned entities cannot be a forward-looking strategy. “Especially when looking at them from a profit-loss point of view loses a sense of how some of them may contribute to our recovery and our economic prosperity.” …
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