According to Feeles, the administrative system at the St George West District Magistrates’ Court (Port-of-Spain and environs), which requires accused persons who were granted cash bail by a magistrate to produce bank statements for the previous six months to prove that their bank account had sufficient funds to cover bail, was arbitrary and unfair.

He said the requirement for continuous money in the account is absurd. “People may fear money could have been allocated via criminal means. But there are very common legal ways that funds can be acquired to satisfy the necessary bail requirement such as fund-raising events, donations or a family coming together to allocate the required cash,” he said.

He intends to seek a meeting with Archie in an attempt to have the system changed.

Feeles and his association is acting on behalf of Benjamin Yearwood who, despite being granted cash bail in the sum of $10,000 by a magistrate in March, has been unable to access bail as his wife, Terry-Ann Lester, cannot provide a minimum balance of the bail amount in a bank account for the last six months as being demanded by the Clerk of the Peace III.

“Why is it that poor people are unable to access freedom particularly when a magistrate has set bail?” Feeles asked.

“This also puts a strain on the prison service.” Also lending support at the impromptu press conference at the Hall of Justice, Port-of-Spain on Friday was Jerome Henry who is before the court on charges of wilfully neglecting his son, Josiah Henry, who drowned in September after falling into a drain in Belmont, and who was also unable to access bail for a month due to the same demands by the Clerk of the Peace III in his case.

Henry and his sister, Joanne Henry, spoke of the unfairness of the system as poor people.

Travel literature has existed ever since people began occupying new territories and conquering foreign lands to expand empires.

The travel document in the form of writing, songs and the visual – paintings and photographs – became media through which the chroniclers of empires created and spoke the nation into being.

The conqueror and the conquered, the migrant and the native claimed, reclaimed and re-imagined their spaces through these works.

The Trinidadian voice within the travel-writing genre is perhaps limited mainly to VS Naipaul and it is therefore with great anticipation, that we welcome the latest addition to the negligible repertoire.

On November 29, the book launch and art exhibition, entitled Travels with a Husband took place at Soft Box Studios, St Clair. The exhibition curated by Nisha Hosein was developed from an idea that she had brought to Patricia Mohammed and Rex Dixon over two years ago and which happily coincided with their idea to pull together their jottings in book form.

In Travels with a Husband, Patricia Mohammed, well known film-maker and Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine and Rex Dixon, British- born, Trinidad resident painter, take up the lighter side of a global education in a life together of companionship and travel that spans over two decades. In the book, they curate memories with humour and pathos, combining text, sometimes nonsense rhyme, with Rex’s illustrations, of encounters from Australia, Japan, India and Namibia, Canada and the United States, from the Caribbean – Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Cuba and Haiti, and from Northern Ireland, London and The Hague. Each entry in the book, whether visual or text, is an idiosyncratic experience and aesthetic feel of place, giving the reader a snapshot of that moment in travel time.

Professor Elizabeth Walcott- Hackshaw, in her remarks on the opening night of the exhibition and book launch, described the book as a ‘quirky’ collection. Indeed it is. One is reminded of the work of Will Self and Ralph Steadman at first glance. While we receive humour, we are also treated to a studied observation of the spaces and cultures through Mohammed’s eyes. Complimenting the essays, are not only Dixon’s intriguing illustrations, but poems and postcards in his handwriting. These pieces add a feeling of intimacy, as if one is privy to a personal journal. Though Dixon comes across most times as an unwilling traveller in Mohammed’s narrative, his poems suggest a personality that finds humour through the darkness. ‘Exhibition Blues’ is a particularly frank and humorous piece on the artist’s view of the academy and audiences that attend the exhibitions. Another, ‘Hotel Inglaterra’, pulls past and present together in the manner of a time-traveller – the traveller out on the sunny streets of Seville conjuring through memory the ghostly presence of the Moors. These are well-read travellers and, while the places that they visit, come to life through people, events and personal observations, the books that they have read also contribute to the shape of their vision and experience of space.

Most of the text is Patricia Mohammed’s.

In her introduction to the book she notes that ‘One of the perks of a fairly successful academic career is the opportunity to see the world through relatively privileged circumstances…” These are not casual vacationers, though some travels are vacations.

The pair usually enters new spaces through work-related activities.

Travel is a means of exploring their respective disciplines. The momentum of each country – its cultures and sights – is brought back to Trinidad where memory becomes a medium through which the small, island space is expanded. In the artist’s studio in Maracas Valley, a painting comes into being. In the study up the hill, a text begins to take birth. We get peeps into locations like Oxford and Haiti, Namibia and India. Yet even uneventful days in Mayaro have something to offer.

On her process, Mohammed says, “The way that I’ve worked is organically. I go where the work is taking me. You do a piece of history and that history reveals gaps and that gap moves you on to fill that gap. I’m constantly filling in blank spaces. That is where I think and try to imagine ‘what does it do for me as a person and how do I make that knowledge available to others? I keep hoping that any gaps that I leave out, someone will fill in. I’m also telling stories as part of a conversation with others.’” The exhibition Travels with a Husband runs at Soft Box S t u d i o s Ga l l e r y, 9 Alcazar Street, St Clair until De cember 30.

Workers of the Solid Waste Management Company (SWMCO L) which operates the landfill had blocked the entrance in protest against their working conditions.

They were protesting the filthy conditions of their lunch rooms, locker area and toilets and showers. The toilets were apparently clogged and overflowing and the facilities were overrun with rats.

With the threat of garbage piling up in the country’s streets, the Minister of Public Utilities took action.

With media in tow, former Minister Ancil Antoine visited the facilities and cleaned the toilets, lockers and lunch rooms. All this for the aggrieved workers, who lifted their blockade and all was well again.

Should we really feel good about this apparently positive initiative by a Government Minister? The Minister himself was, a few months later, dismissed from his post and from Cabinet. The media, and all of us, were so impressed with his positive and apparently effective action, that we praised his initiative! But now I ask what follow up action the Minister (or you or me?) would have, or should have taken following his having to walk out of his office to go to clean the toilets of the workers? Did he summon the chairman of the board, or the CEO, or the chief operating officer of SWMCO L to ask why the workers’ facilities had reached this state? And if not, why not? Well all of these senior people would have probably been most offended to be asked why the toilets are clogged with filth. “You expect me to clean toilets and exterminate rats?” they would be asking. But they, and successive layers of management and supervision below them, just happen to be responsible for just those activities.

No, we do not expect them to personally scrub toilet bowls, but we should expect that under their management, toilet bowls get cleaned, and someone is actually responsible for the workers that are actually supposed to do this. And that person will ensure that cleaners, detergents, scrubbers, mops and the like are available for the designated workers to keep the toilets clear and clean, and the lunch room, and the locker room, and to ensure that the workers who use these facilities do not destroy or despoil them.

But we can be sure that none of the above has occurred. We can be confident that from board chairman down to supervising janitor (if the latter post even exists) nothing has changed. And nothing ever will, because at no level in governance is maintenance of anything a basic requirement. This is why PSA president Watson Duke can shut down government buildings that are dirty and unhealthy and elevators and air conditioning systems are malfunctioning.

Nobody is cleaning, servicing and fixing anything, and no one is responsible for ensuring that these tasks are performed.

And it is not just buildings which are suffering from the wilful neglect by everyone in every area of governance.

PTSC buses, Ministry of Works’ vehicles, police cars, all pile up in derelict graveyards because they are simply never serviced, small problems are never fixed. The vehicles simply die and then rust away.

And roads and bridges break up before our eyes, unnoticed by anyone in authority. Burst water mains eat roads and create landslips, the oil storage tanks at Petrotrin are rusting away before our eyes. Nothing is fixed until failure is complete and expensive replacement is the only option.

So why is all this appalling, abject failure confined to governance of our country? The people who work for government and State entities own their homes, and their vehicles.

How come their homes and vehicles are clean, sanitary and well maintained? How come this appalling lack of maintenance does not infect the private sector to the same extent? The answers lie in the complete abdication, over the last half century, of any degree of responsibility in governance to clean, service, repair on time or care for anything. But why? The misuse and lack of care for everything which we own borders on sabotage. It is almost a wilful destruction of working environments, equipment and other assets. It is what leads to flooding and landslips as well.

But if we can understand the value of taking care of our equipment, buildings, roads and yes, our lands, then we will greatly improve the quality of our lives, and save millions of dollars currently wasted on failures and rebuilding. Maintenance must be seen as an investment, not an expense.

I call upon the Prime Minister to make 2017 our Year of Maintenance— of everything! Please recognise that this will lift our pride in what we do and what we own as well, bec a useclearly that is also required of us.

Can we understand that?

The Christmas shopping season is upon us.

The annual splurge, the 12-monthly flushing of wallets, the once-ayear festival of credit card-bashing.

It’s the time that strikes fear into the hearts of those whose bank account doesn’t measure up to the joy in their soul that wants to be expressed in material terms.

For some people, this lemming- like rush to the shops has been pre-empted in recent years by the emergence of Black Friday, a ludicrous American contrivance that still feels somehow wrong to this observer. Wrong because when the word “black” is used in such a context it usually means something bad.

It’s the colour of mourning, the ties and armbands that tell the world somebody has died and we’re sad about it.

Black Wednesday was a financial crisis in 1992 involving the struggling pound Sterling. There were Black Mondays in 1987 and 1929, both involving stock market crashes.

Black Tuesday was the day after the 1929 Black Monday.

Whoever invented the name Black Friday did so with complete disregard for convention, because it means something good: the day when retailers, who barely scrape by the rest of the year, suddenly receive a deluge of cash that puts their bank account into the black. And the rest of us can’t begrudge them that. It’s like the shopkeeper’s equivalent of harvest time for farmers.

So some people may well be doing their Christmas shopping early these days, taking advantage of the bargains that used to come in January, when it’s too late.

The traditionalists, though, still do it all in December, and it is then that we become not just customers but idiots. In our own line of work, whatever that may be, we are experts and the rest of the world is a collection of halfwits who don’t understand.

It’s different when we take a walk outside at lunchtime, though, with a mental checklist that for some is concrete and unalterable: cardigan for grandma, and she doesn’t like pink; blood-curdling video game for son, and don’t be frightened of the weirdos in the shop. For such intrepid purchasers this is like a military exercise, carried out with a hardnosed, blinkered determination.

For the rest of us, Christmas shopping is a nerve-jangling search for inspiration, our vague ideas waiting for a eureka moment when we can see our loved-one’s face creased with delight at our perceptiveness.

As one who belongs firmly in the second category, one year in London I took a sixty-minute break from selling bottles of wine to people who barely knew how to spell the word and entered a large chain store that had started as a stationery and newspaper joint before expanding to include music, posters, games and suchlike. Suddenly it hit me like a bolt from the blue (grey, actually): I would buy everybody an album. For the benefit of younger readers, these were 12-inch vinyl discs containing recorded music and each came with a colourful, informative cardboard sleeve. Yes, a bit like CDs, but a lot better for rolling large cigarettes on.

My brothers and my sister, no problem. I knew what they liked.

And the parents, well, even if I didn’t hit the mark, they would appreciate the gesture. A line of self-justifying thought formed quickly: you can agonise over these things for days and still get it wrong, so why not just go for it? Go with your gut instinct.

Half an hour later I was back in the wine shop with a couple of heavy bags and a feeling of satisfaction. I was particularly pleased with the choice I had made for my Dad: a pop/rock album (a genre which he didn’t like) by Ian Dury, a wordsmith whose lyrical skills and sense of humour I thought would cross boundaries.

The head of our household would be surprised, sceptical, disappointed and then, bam! He would understand and would treasure the album forever.

That night I shared the secret with my younger brother, who gave me what can only be described as a withering look. “Have you considered,” he said weightily, “the track that starts ar”:*&es, ba@#$ards, &$%^ing c*()+s and pr?><s”? He was right. The song is called Plaistow Patricia and the album is New Boots and Panties. And playful, fun-loving Dury had prefaced it with a completely uncalled-for tirade of obscenities. Even after a couple of beers, two dry martinis and a bottle of burgundy, the old man was not going to think it was funny.

I kept the album for myself and made a much more conservative choice to replace it. But that was it: presents in the b a g ready to be assaulted by my wrapping skills.

Mission accomplished.

We see it in our interactions with our politicians and business leaders, we, like children, look for someone who will take all our troubles away.

“Clean the waterways that we have fouled! Rebuild the schools we have encumbered with garbage and weeds! Clear the backlog of the courts that we have created by our laziness, violence and greed! End the corruption, but don’t stop the Carnival! Come and save us from ourselves, but don’t change us!” Into this the Church presents Advent, the moment when we give vent to our longing for a Saviour. We put up lights of wreaths and trees and we sing the ancient songs.

So why does nothing seem to change? We are skilful at avoidance, we call to a saviour but sabotage any work of transformation that demands a change in our regular way of life.

This is one reason why tinsel and plastic dominate our preparations for what we call the ‘coming of our Saviour’, because if we turned aside from the glitter and the noise and the hustle, we might just hear His invitations: To level the mountains that we have erected between one another by our walls and ‘not talking’ and our boxing of people into categories of race, colour, class and religion etc, etc, that allow us to refuse to see them as sharing from the same inadequacies that cripple us.

To fill up the valleys created by ignorance and fear that allow us to see the other as a threat, a competitor, a rival, instead of as a partner, a companion on the road of life that passes along the ways of our common home.

To stop turning everything into a saleable commodity – education, health care, justice – so that our values are less dictated by the bottom line and more by the welfare of the greatest number of our fellow citizens.

To be satisfied with enough’, so that more people can share at the table. But we will only do this if we recognise and acknowledge that we need help.

To call for a Saviour is to acknowledge that by oneself, one is incapable of getting out of the hole one is in. It requires clear sightedness, humility and acceptance of help, qualities that we associate with weakness and stupid people. But take a quiet look inward, we are all weak and in need of wisdom.

Let Advent be the time when we face the truth – crime plans cannot save us, new buildings cannot save us, a change of faces in the seat of power cannot save us. God can, and wants to. But we have to allow a radical change of heart that welcomes the other as relative and not as enemy, as co-worker and not as rival to be destroyed; that understands that salvation is a deep matter and not a ‘one-and-done’ statement.

It is to decide to put your steps in the way of the Lord and not to return to the idols of power, pleasure and greed.

Happy Advent, the Saviour is coming!

Did he anticipate that so many citizens would escape his loving arms and go away beyond his reach? Over the years many poor nations became eternally grateful for Castro’s sharing of medical knowledge learned from his Russian friends, but what of the suffering of Cubans living with a stultifying, demoralising embargo? Thumbing your nose at the rest of the world only looks good on paper.

Is it that the days for oldstyled revolutions are over? Consider what is happening in Venezuela, previously under Hugo Chavez and now under Nicolas Maduro? Can we be like that in TT ? To each his own and we do not need a similar type revolution in TT . We can admire the high levels of health, education and sport for each man and woman, but do we need to be told from on high when to laugh, when to cry and not make a profit? Nobody should be better off than the other? Perhaps only the people at the top? Many decades later, after all the killing, the dramatic standoffs that almost led to nuclear world war, all at Fidel Castro’s hands, was it worth it? An American commentator used the words “increasingly irrelevant” to describe Castro and the Cuban Revolution in the living world. To me, those days of the revolutions for civil rights that enabled equality of food, health and housing belong to a dream time.

People marched in Poland, in South Africa, in Germany, in Cuba. We look around and we see people who have chosen to live simply. They crave no enrichment. Then we see those who live solely for profit.

What has now become suspect is the necessity for some to want to enforce uniformity.

It is a form of dictatorship to decide what is best for the individual who does not wish to live the socialist dream and make that person toe the line.

Fighting in the jungles and emerging with your flag held high is now the stuff of movies.

Gone are the days of altruistic self-denial.

LYNETTE JOSEPH Diego Martin

In TT we have to deal with flash flooding regularly, when flood waters rise and fall quickly with no advance warning.

However, urban flooding is due to land development where permeable soil is replaced with paved surfaces, resulting in flooding when there is prolonged rainfall.

Floods can also result from deforestation and quarrying.

During heavy rainfall one should be alert and be prepared to evacuate in the event of flooding. Before doing so be certain to shut off electricity at your home or business.

After the flood waters subside one should return with caution, and be sure to dispose of contaminated food and to boil drinking water.

North Coast villages of TT , I empathise with you. I feel your pain.

AV RAMPERSAD Princes Town

It appears that all that is required is for an allegation to be made and the man is automatically considered suspect, whether there is evidence or not. The consequence of such an orchestrated attack, as it appears to the interested observer, must be a retreat to a defensive posture, which militates against respectful dialogue.

This is not to suggest that many men are not guilty of such allegations or that they have not contributed to the perception, but all men cannot be painted with the same brush and it is a disservice to the development of gender equity to approach the matter with a bias. Dialogue must commence from a point of mutual respect for it to have any chance of success.

Reading the comments of so many of the people who have embarked on this new aggression makes one fear for the position of men in the society.

KARAN MAHABIRSINGH Carapichaima

The voice of the powerful and resilient “no vote” emerged the real winner, sending a clear and concise message to both parties and both leaders that the real power lies in the right index finger of the electorate.

The preliminary figures from the Elections and Boundaries Commission indicate that approximately 34.34 percent of people eligible to vote actually cast their ballots last Monday. Compare this figure to the 43.60 percent voter turnout in the 2013 election. The decrease of ten percent is alarming.

This difference should be a cause of concern for both the Kamla Persad- Bissessar-led UNC and the Dr Keith Rowley-led PNM.

All other parties – Independent Liberal Party, Congress of the People and Movement for Social Justice, whose accumulated votes amounted to under 500 – failed to capture the interest of the population along their respective campaign trails in the run-up to the election.

It doesn’t take a renowned political scientist to analyse the outcome of the election and give a final verdict – the people of TT are fed up of the “rum and roti” politics. The “no vote” or low voter turnout can be seen not only as a form of disinterest in the political affairs of the country but also as a cry for help – a cry for good governance and a cry for strong leadership to take TT into developed world status.

Could this be the dawn of a new era in the political landscape of TT ? Are the 66 percent of people who did not cast their vote willing to sever their political ties in the general election of 2020? Or will this bold statement grow fragile with the duration of time? Only time will tell.

It’s up to both leaders of the major political parties – the UNC and the PNM – to capitalise on the message sent in last week’s election: serve the people, serve the people, serve the people.

VARSHA SANKAR via email

I attended the symposium to make a contribution on youth development since I believe sport is an aspect of youth development.

After the first hour, though, I realised the symposium was specific to sports. Nonetheless I submitted my intended contribution for whatever it is worth.

The period of life which the youth represents is the most productive and useful period by virtue of the budding or growing energies they are endowed with by nature.

In order to create a generation of young Trinidadians/Tobagonians equipped to take on future challenges and achieve their full potential, the youth must be in good health and make healthy and balanced choices.

Youth-specific health issues must be addressed through targeted programmes.

Balanced nutrition and healthy lifestyle information must be provided to the youth. They must be encouraged to engage in sports and recreation in order to ensure their physical well-being.

There is need to instil social values and promote community service to strengthen nationalism in the country. It is important to build national pride and ownership in the youth through a programme of education on social values including respect for diversity and the importance of harmony.

Youth must be encouraged to participate in community service and development activities in the most backward areas. They must have a strong sense of moral responsibility towards their fellow citizens, especially those who are less fortunate than themselves.

The questions I put to the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs were: * Is there a systematic assessment to understand the current status of the youth? * Is there a concerted effort to identify the range of stakeholders working on youth development, to analyse the impact of their activities and determine how these stakeholders can be aligned and leveraged to more effectively support the youth? A stakeholder-mapping exercise must be undertaken to determine the number of stakeholders, the scope of their activities and the impact they have on youth development.

I don’t know if it is possible in these times of economic hardships but the Government must increase its investment in youth in order to capitalise on the opportunity they present. All government departments must make a determined effort to ensure youth main-streaming across sectors and policy areas.

There are tools that can be leveraged in order to promote youth development: the social media, which enjoys high penetration among youth, and the network of existing youth development organisations.

The ministry responsible for youth development should publish a biennial report on the status of youth in order to inform the nation about progress against indicators, highlight key achievements and identify new and unmet challenges.

The report would also serve to inform the youth about various government initiatives for their development A youth policy must aim at providing an overview of the state of the youth. It must highlight key issues and challenges faced by the youth and it must elaborate quality, excellence, equitable access and full participation in order to create a better life for all residents.

Supporting and promoting the development of youth must be one of the foremost priorities across all sectors and stakeholders of the nation.

CUTHBERT SANDY Point Fortin