Having lived in Jamaica from the late 1950s until the late 1970s, visited almost every year since, being in touch almost daily, and having associated with the people at all levels of the society and the economy, I believe that I am better equipped to throw rotting tomatoes at the Jamaican people.
I believe that we in Barbados are still smarting over the Myrie case, and that is why harsh and intemperate accusations are flying across the sea waves. Another nail in the coffin for a CARICOM settlement or even an extended Caribbean Court of Appeal!
So the Jamaica Daily Gleaner got into the act and expressed an opinion to which we have said Butt Out. Should we not have expressed similar indignation to Standard & Poor’s, the Inter-American Development Bank, Moody’s and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – except that we have already given the IMF the bird? Are we “frighten” or do we select whom to insult? Launching a tirade against the Daily Gleaner is another red herring diversion from the issues that seriously confront us.
It sounds like we are trying to stifle outsiders’ opinion of us when we are so dependent on the assessments and assistance of people on the outside. You go cap in hand to a Jamaican company (Sandals), then you berate another one (Daily Gleaner), and for what?
If the service of babes and old people is and will be the yardstick of the minister’s peripatetic exercise, he should start walking now, like in the Johnnie Walker advertisement.
Almost every day there is somebody killed in Barbados. Some gruesomely have their throat slit, some shot in the head, some stabbed in the heart. Maybe we should all drink Gramoxone, that seemingly delicious green liquid that looks like fruit juice when diluted with water.
The word on the street is that it is believed that the Medes and the Persians do not get similar treatment; that it depends on who you are and who you know. An old rugby song that I used to sing comes to mind:
“It’s the rich that get the pleasure, it’s the poor that get the blame. It’s the same the whole world over, isn’t that a bloody shame.”
I do not think that we are now in a position to sound off and to refer to other Caribbean people as ‘rot’. In fact, if we were to take the time to peruse King James’ perception, we would find that our good Lord whom we worship, in particular every Sunday, says “first cast out the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye”. (Matthew 7:5).
We have a beam in our own eye when all of our policies are directed to political and individual survival to the detriment of society at large.
Our beam has been obscuring the eyes with regard to the increasing poor begging for succour, begging for lodging or repairs to house (hovels) and emasculation of the middle class who are the bedrock of the country.
Government, in the face of advice to the contrary, continues to rack up debt upon debt and creates a potential rift with the hotels and restaurants by offering an uneven playing field.
The returns of the latest move are yet to be seen, but maybe in 2015 with Government being the one having to fork out $500 million so as to allow a tax-free status to an institution (whose main contributions will be wages and incidentals), coming to Barbados for the next umpteen years will be a master stroke.
The slippery slide continues as Nero and his orchestra fiddle. The almost daily deliberations on our foreign exchange position by the chiefs seem to have eaten of the tree of life and hence condemned to dust or labour pains.
What the Wild Coot outlined as where principally our foreign exchange is going cannot be gainsaid, but nobody is listening. To reverse this would be to offend the banks’ credit card thrust when they are being asked to pay asset tax and also force the Central Bank to reduce Government’s vital support.
For the life of me, I cannot understand how a Barbadian can say that a downgrade means nothing to Barbados. Even with a BB plus we were unable to borrow at a reasonable rate. To compare Barbados to the United States is like comparing Culpepper to Barbados.
• Harry Russel is a banker.
