Ah tiefin' computer time...
Dis article sums it up for me where dis Summit benefiting TnT, physically and emotionally. AGAIN, ah saying it have reporters who does come ein here, get dey pointers and next thing you see is dem receiving award for bess article
Singing praise for the Summit
Sunday, April 12th 2009
Trinidad Express I thought on this Easter Sunday that I should let everyone know that I saw a police car driving along the Diego Martin Main Road around 1 a.m. last Thursday.
Is it purely coincidental or is it that there's a major event on later this week and the troops are out in force, because in more than 15 years of residing in the area, a police car at 1 a.m. is a rare sighting.
We hardly ever see a blue and white-painted vehicle with flashing lights around here in the day, far less the night.
Alright, they say we shouldn't be nitpicking and bad mouthing our country with the eyes of the world upon us, but if that's the start of a new 'showing our presence' move by the Police Service-besides stopping drivers and ordering them to remove the tint on their cars-and it will continue long after April 19, then I'm all for it, especially if innocent people will no longer be shot and killed on the Brian Lara Promenade, in the heart of what will be the centre of the Western Hemisphere for the next few days.So, bring on the Fifth Summit of the Americas.
After all, I hear some Trini wives are telling their husbands to - just do it for the Summit - when it comes to any chores around the house that have been waiting years to be completed.
Like cleaning the clogged drains in the Beetham!
Or moving the many vagrants off the streets, or at least making an attempt to rehabilitate some of those lost souls, allowing them to share in the many bounties of this blessed land.There I go grumbling again, and would you believe that this was written the night before the first - dry run- in Port of Spain, 24 hours before the long Easter weekend, when everyone had something to do, with banks and offices closed the next day and all manner of things to be completed, like buying some hot-cross buns or getting the nicest salmon.
Oh gosh, I'm moaning once more, just before our big-shot visitors start arriving, the same dignitaries who will ensure that so many benefits come our way in the very near future, which would never have been possible without our hosting this gargantuan conference.After all, someone responsible for this massive outlay of scarce resources,
I think it was the Prime Minister, hinted at what a supreme saviour this Summit would be, at the same time patting himself on the back and pointing out in his usual humble manner that the main venue for the grand pappyshow, I mean occasion, was put together with great foresight.I don't know how much foresight it took to build a 26-storey tower that has no tenants, though. Surely, we couldn't have constructed such an edifice in record time for only three all-expenses-paid days in April.
But then that brainchild came from the same source that saw the value of a super stadium at Tarouba, where the earth doesn't sit still and our money-or more importantly our children and their children's patrimony-is still paying for a non-essential project-which failed to find the approval of almost every Tom, Dick and Harry from the time we were informed that it would be built.Even if the majority were in agreement about the Brian Lara Stadium, it still should have been completed by 2007 at the latest.
If you're too taken up with the Summit and are dry-cleaning your suit and trimming your hair to go and meet Obama, or you're a vagrant on the run from your cardboard box in Tamarind Square and don't have time to read the papers, that was two years and more than $500 million ago.
Hey, this is a country where Calders and Karens-come-lately-who control billions of taxpayers'dollars while their hustling brother-in-law's fax number is the same as the government agency he's trying to get business from, or own shares in a once-thriving conglomerate and still lead the bail-out of that now cash-strapped institution-are praised and approved by the highest office in the land.
And on the other divide, big men known as Ramjack take along innocent children to get their point across to an even 'bigger' man who is always just one step from the courthouse. And they want to govern this place.
Oh shoots, man, now I'm bad-mouthing the whole political oligarchy, and I'm not even a fisherman operating out of King's Wharf in San Fernando who will have his source of income disrupted for the entire week by a day trip to a bird sanctuary.
Hey, I have no problem with letting our guests see the many attractions of our country, but do they have to get back to town on the Water Taxi, and so inconvenience and take scarce funds out of the pockets of another group of artisans, besides the already sidelined ladies who operate the Breakfast Shed and have to put aside their pots and pans and clear out of the Red Zone?
Grumble, grumble, grumble...when I should be looking forward to the many things that this Summit can produce in our favour, including those monetary inflows from the Land of the Free, where one of their most venerable blue chip companies, General Motors, is close to filing for bankruptcy.
They're supposed to be our Godfather and send all manner of good things in our direction, yet they can't even see their way out of their own self-induced predicament.
So we should just be thankful for small mercies, that the murder rate is down to one a week instead of one a day, and they paved all the potholes around the Queen's Park Savannah, and cut down all the trees at the airport and in San Fernando, and built a pretty fountain on the waterfront, and put up a 'berm' along the Beetham Highway.But I won't go quietly into the night because I want to know about all the people who live here in T&T, year upon year-weren't we good enough to have things done for us without waiting for a colossal Summit that's going to leave us short of another $500 million?Didn't we deserve to get our just due as a matter of course?
After all, it's our money paying the grandiose bills.
But then you never know, and all these unaccustomed things we see happening around us, like policemen on patrol, and a whole lot of painting and cleaning and paving, except for the cutting down of the trees, may well continue long after the Summit.
And that's when cock will grow teeth!
