Premeditated grandcharge

It was as if everyone knew that this was just grandcharge to give our lame government an appearance of rescuing us, themselves and the Oilfield Workers Trade Union from a crisis which was never going to happen. The population treated the impending crisis with all the indifference reserved for storm or hurricane warnings. On the Friday before the threatened OWTU “shutdown” bars were full, the Christmas ‘flu was being named “Trump”, not “Strike”, and commentary on Facebook was exposing the whole farce as “grandcharge”.

And quite rightly, the population took the phalanx of pseudo- angry blue shirted OWTU officials with more than a grain of salt. Pantomime poseurs, engaging in a rare work opportunity starred on TV as erectors of “strike camps” which they, we and the government knew would never be needed. This government, “Red and Ready” before we voted out the UNC last September, are still shuffling, like the lame and the blind, hoping to take a footstep one day, and unashamedly telling us that they are still groping.

This dance of the lame seems to have not been noticed by the media in general.

But for all the government’s continuing retreat, recently formalized by “going to the mattresses” (to borrow a mafia term) and holing up in the still un-named Prime Minister’s Residence for two days, they emerged with nothing to offer us in terms of hope, far less salvation.

The sense that our nation is adrift is palpable. Under siege from street gang gun crime fuelled by the cocaine trade, the mounting evidence of some of our citizens’ complicity with and participation in the ISIS atrocities in the Middle East and elsewhere and our crumbling infrastructure, there is no leadership from any quarter to give us Hope. By now we know that Red and Ready was a sick joke, as there is absolutely no competence from any quarter of government.

Prime Minister Rowley seeks to justify, but not apologize for his incompetence by claiming they “now reach” into office, so give them a chance! We have tried, and rightfully discarded the UNC for their corruption, and they now sit, as the ineffective PNM had been, and will be again, hurling empty insults and threats at each other.

Two “oil booms” have come and gone, each leaving us bankrupt in financial and in terms of ideas, far less solutions. And none of the other Estates have any idea on formulating, far less the competence to undertake, the initiatives and projects needed to get our country moving again. Other Caribbean states struggle to keep their economies afloat, this because of rising commodity prices, particularly oil, gas and petrol. We produce and sell these products, at artificially created excessive prices, and yet we go broke twice within thirty five years. We are the laughing stock of our poorer neighbours, and we carry no sense of shame about the state we have brought upon ourselves and our children. Fat businessmen, fat politicians and fat trade union leaders spar at each other with abusive grandcharge, and we are stupid enough to take one side, two sides or whatever.

A huge sector of our economy, indeed the very heights of the economy, is owned by the State.

Please do not tell me it is we the People who own it, for we have no say whatever in managing or controlling the corruption, mismanagement, over-staffing and laziness that are all endemic in our State enterprises.

How many directors and managers can we find every five years? The storage tanks at Petrotrin are rusting away before our eyes. When will one of these rupture before our eyes and bring dreadful calamity upon Marabella? But we do not even notice this, although the tanks are displayed nightly upon our television. The incompetent managements we recycle with each election apparently do not notice such things. When the dreadful and exploitive TLL and Texaco owned these facilities, the refinery was rustfree with shiny paint and pipelines colour-coded to show the products which flowed through them. But “is all we own now”! “We own” to leave to rust away, “we own” to ignore into collapse.

We have become a nation where “maintenance” is the money ignorant errant men pay to the courts for where they left their sperm.

Come on, Peter! You spoiling the fete. Is Mas’ time now! Check out the fetes: See how sophisticated we are becoming? You could wine and jam with the proletariat, or flaunt your style at the All-Inclusives (Doh mash meh new shoes!).

We playing Grandcharge for Jouvert this year, sponsored by European Liqueurs and complete with wee-wee trucks and other accessories.

And Rowley says the oilfield workers will work to earn their nice new increase. Preme d i t a t e d Grandcharge is the Mas! Get in your sec