CHALLENGE MINISTER Steve Blackett, and his wife will tackle you.
Eleanor Blackett did just that on Facebook this week and caused somewhat of a furore.
Addressing the minister, a blogger wondered how the country could have “plummeted” to 19 downgrades and questioned his statement on possible election violence.
“What gives you the right to use you position and high office in the opportune time to give answers to some of our social problems to make the world think that blood will be flowing in our streets come election?
“Sir, I believe that you have become so far removed from your very ministry that you have relegated our people to a place of violence that we have shown not to be a characteristic of ours. . . . Your vision, Sir, is seriously flawed and condemning to the nature of who we are as Barbadians,” the blogger said.
Eleanor responded: “(It) was not plummeting when you were raking in the dollars for the 50th anniversary of our Independence. As far as I am concerned, the minister was spot on. Apparently you are not privy to the bombastic threats meted out by some supporters of the Opposition. Let them speak peace to their people. As for you, continue to bury your head in the sand.”
After some interaction, she added: “Your submissions are not only biased political . . . , but yardfowlism. You can say what you want but I too have a voice. BE OFF!
In response the blogger wrote: “Eleanor Blackett, you are the first person who has ever levelled the term yardfowlism towards me, for what reason I would never know because you don’t know me. I have nothing against your husband but I have a deep love for my country, so his statement rubbed me wrong.”
Spitting in the air
BASED ON WHAT Cou Cou is hearing, Richard Sealy may live to regret certain statements he made this week in Parliament.
Word of this comes from two people who identified themselves as being part of “the Sandy Lane and Blue Boxcart crowd”, which Sealy, the Minister of Tourism, disparaged for participating in the Barbados Labour Party’s March of Disgust on Saturday.
They said that in Sealy’s bid to belittle the effort, he went too far by making the statement, and contend it amounted to negatively highlighting white and upper-income Barbadians.
One irate individual said Sealy’s words will come back to haunt him and the ruling party because he slighted people who were not BLpites. He said a number of them only decided to march because of the two downgrades in seven days and the Prime Minister’s illogical response. He stressed that though the vast majority of those identified are high-income Whites, they were Barbadians first and not aligned to any party.
Furthermore, he said it was their love for Barbados in the face of the deteriorating economic situation and Government not seeming to take it seriously, as judged by the Prime Minister’s remarks, that motivated most of them to march.
The other reminded that the DLP’s guiding light, late Prime Minister Errol Barrow, and the former head of the now defunct conglomerate Barbados Shipping & Trading, the late Sir Douglas Lynch, were confidants. Indeed, Sir Douglas was reportedly the first person formally admitted to the DLP and later contested a seat for the party. And he was not the only white. He said that for that reason alone, DLP ministers need to realise that Barbados is not a Blacks-only country with poor people, and should stop dropping remarks to make lighter-skinned, “better off” Barbadians feel as if they don’t matter.