National fools day

THE EDITOR: I am proposing a motion to be adopted by public opinion that the nation takes on board and declares each April 1 a National Public holiday to celebrate our propensity to embrace fools and our great tolerance of their foolish ideas. In 1999 we reputedly wanted to “brand” TT and here we can do it, being the only one in the worldwide community of nations to honour foolishness as a cherished national resource.

Far from removing Parliament from its historic seat — to be converted into a Prime Ministerial Palace, hang the mere $38 millions spent on (loosely, very loosely) “renovating” Whitehall, good only, under our present grand schemes, to accommodate the PM’s Secretary or Chauffeur — the self important and self highly overrated Manning may now decide on a five-sided sky scraper with a centre-pointed, faceted roof, to be erected on the geometrical centre of the Queen’s Park Savannah and to be nominated as Patriots Pyramidic Pentagon”. Not to be outdone by the famous Waterloo Temple-in-the-Sea, Manning’s successor may advocate a PM’s residence situated off the Port-of-Spain wharfs, in the Gulf of Paria, to be connected to our capital by a Golden Arch Suspension Bridge, along which only the Prime Minister’s gilded carriage, drawn by a team of six white horses, is allowed. (We have the architect for same readily available).

Another may buy a small Channel Island as his baronial seat from the proceeds of his “struggle for the poor and dispossessed” (which amazingly has turned out to be an extremely lucrative endeavour)! Who mad? The Governments we get or ourselves for tolerating them? We want a holiday on April 1 and a Monorail to the St Ann’s Hospital — if we going more mad let’s go in style!

GEOFF HUDSON
Port-of-Spain