I’ve never taken a poll. Don’t think I could. Peter Wickham handles them with ease. To each his own.
The SUNDAY SUN headline did grab me though: 6% Swing. I figured they were finally going to swing at least six per cent of those murderers in Dodds. I was wrong.
Maybe the poll came at a bad time. In all, 99.7 per cent of my correspondents commented on the “camel toe” pictures in the SATURDAY SUN. None mentioned the poll.
Wickham manages to be both a political commentator who doesn’t hide his personal preferences and a pollster, without conflict of interest. He’s obviously sweet on Chris Sinckler; not keen on Freundel or Owen. Owen did lampoon him in a hilarious YouTube video, implying that political commentators deliberately try to sway public opinion.
I couldn’t be that impartial. I recall doing lengthy surveys for the Ministry of Agriculture. After doing a few, and realizing how many more there were left, I got to hustling the interviewees with suggested answers.
“Leading the witness”, I believe lawyers call it.
Anyhow, I have little interest in an election at this time. Or, put another way, I can live with Mr Arthur or Mr Stuart. Froon has led us through a period of calm reflection, challenging those of us who have any sense to look for solutions and not wait on Government.
I personally like Owen Arthur. In my opinion, however, he needs to look beyond CARICOM for viable options to progress.
Here is a relevant Trini comment in response to Professor Clement Sankat, principal of the University of the West Indies St Augustine: “Sankat is a cool guy, learned, and well intentioned. But he, like so many scholars and learned people in authority, are in deep denial – really deep, deep denial about CARICOM. There is no CARICOM. It is dead. Have a wake, cry, pass the drink, and then bury the damn Caricom corpse.
“The world has moved on, moved beyond CARICOM and similar regional bodies. It’s now one global nation with few boundaries; with almost total freedom to move; to communicate with people thousands of miles away; to order goods and services with the click of a mouse; to import and export anything, anywhere; with easy movements; with trade and investment deals; with money and people moving globally.
“There is no point in CARICOM unless there is political union – that and God’s face you ain’t going to see, eh? Assimilate that, digest that, accept that, and stop the CARICOM crap. It has become another scheme to tap the T&T ATM, trying to squeeze every dime they can, with banana republic-like islands of a few thousand people with emperor-like leaders preening and prancing, big frogs in their small ponds . . . demanding more money, threatening T&T about how much they buy from T&T, blah blah blah.
“T&T has to look far beyond these rocks in the Caribbean Sea if we are to provide quality jobs for our tertiary graduates, if we are to earn more revenue to develop T&T, and if we are to diversify the economy . . . . You expect CARICOM to help in this? Get real . . . .”
I hate using long quotations but this is a reality we have to face up to, and the sooner, the better.
That apart, I hope that our future leader will forget the party politics and tackle ongoing issues like: Government workers who draw full pay but do no work; the nonsense that criminals who come into your house and kill you are not charged with murder; our pollution-damaged coral reefs; noise; vulgarity out of control; gas bottles leaking top and bottom; food security; politicians fostering a dependency syndrome with everyone waiting for Government handouts.
And let’s not forget genetically-modified foods. New Zealand has reportedly produced a genetically-modified cow whose milk is closer to human milk.
Unfortunately, like humans, the cow has no tail which could mean no cow-tail stew.
It may get worse. Some night when you lay hand on her breasts to milk her, don’t be surprised if she moos: “Not tonight, dads. I have a headache!”
Farewell to two first cousins: the Mighty Whitey on my wife’s side, Buddy Hoad on mine. Albert Churchill Eden was the last of the Fontabelle line, me the last from Vaucluse. We shared some good boy days.
• Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator.
