Silence over noise

This year, I assigned myself the painful task of monitoring public opinion on cynical breaches of the law, common decency, and the duty of community care when it comes to noise pollution in our country.

Yes, I have been constantly reminded of the assured futility of such campaigns. “Drop it, Wesley. Ain’t gonna happen” is the now routine response to my view that there are ways to assess the state of our civilisation, and the phenomenon of noise impunity is one that should be firmly resolved.

Like-minded individuals and organisations have become used to the fact that vocal protests are easily drowned out by the near and distant clatter of bamboo, squibs, and all varieties of noisy pyrotechnics quite pointedly controlled by legislation, including but not restricted to those related to the storage and use of explosives.

If we were to discuss only the law-breaking features of this subject, we could point to the fact that there is no shortage of legislative guidance. There are our Noise Pollution Rules under the Environmental Management Act, the Explosives Act Chap 16:02, the Summary Offences Act Chap 11:02, and the Public Holiday and Festival Act Chap 19:05. But this goes beyond what the laws prescribe.

Every now and then, we are thrown the mamaguy of “zero-tolerance” policy. My notes and past dispatches on this can fill volumes on the subject. And though I am aware that I am not alone, there appear to be sad signs of battle-weary retreat by others.

There has been the gradual muting of dissent resulting from awareness of the fact that neither decision-makers at the highest levels nor street-level noisemakers seem willing to at least reflect on the multi-dimensional damage being sustained.

There have been times when hope appeared. Eight years ago, then Public Administration and Communications Minister, Maxie Cuffie, declared unequivocal commitment to address the issue. He went further down this dark, deserted alley on this matter than any other government minister I can recall.

I had hoped that even as his Cabinet colleagues eventually dropped the campaign, and in the sanctity of his retirement, Cuffie would not have abandoned the cause. Ditto former commissioners of police ostensibly no longer under the yoke of surrender to economic muscle, imprecise statute, political pressures, and misguided notions regarding what constitutes cultural norms.

On the latter point, I have pointed before to the fact that around the globe there have been longstanding “cultural practices” that have been found to be harmful and which reasonable people must continue to oppose.

There is sufficient evidence that our noisemaking at selected times of the year causes physical and emotional harm to people, animals, and our natural environment.

There are interest groups in T&T that have explored the matter in detail, and I will not recount the numerous examples cited, except to add that exceptions to the locating of “acceptable” levels of noise do not always consider their impact on wildlife with direct and indirect implications for our endangered biodiversity.

I once sat in on an eye-opening discussion by experts contemplating expansion of the reach of our Noise Pollution Rules. In the end, politics and “the culture” reigned.

The TTSPCA and other animal care organisations are (sensibly) focusing on coping mechanisms rather than on their past enthusiasm for ameliorative measures.

Letter writers to the press have become less strident in their condemnation. Perennial contributors such as “DF Redmond” of Laventille (I scoured the list of electors for the name but could not find it, but I am hoping that protection through anonymity is not the case) are increasingly being marginalised.

Let me quote him/her in his last submission: “Is this a civilised country? Is this a real place? How could bars, tyre shops, mini-marts, car wash establishments, idiot car DJs, etc, seem to have an untrammelled right to disturb entire neighbourhoods, and nary a word from all these patriots?

This paucity of genuine, impassioned responsibility is as much a crisis today as our worsening crime situation.”

My old friend, Neil Reynald, chimed in a few months ago by invoking the links that enjoin the different forms of criminality: “Despite legislation for noise disturbance/littering/gang activities/illegal firearm ownership, these activities continue unabated and without control.”  

Maybe it’s just my imagination or lapses in my monitoring of public opinion on this, but could it be we have begun queuing meekly and silently like lambs to the slaughter in the face of a connected string of criminal behaviour?

“Zero-tolerance” needs to extend beyond the platforms of official edict. Silence over noise is not an option.

The habits of democracy

By this time next week, the formal, global news agenda would have narrowed so tightly that even the tiniest gaps will be finding little meaningful space for other things, including matters of urgent importance to the rest of us in these tiny, united states of the Caribbean.

Mass atrocities including ethnic cleansing and genocide in several places are already ill-expressed as skirmishes on the margins of what is really important. The slaughter of children and babies in Palestine some kind of routine, justifiable proportionate response to another form of “terror.”

Mention of last week’s BRICS encounter, the Commonwealth Caribbean case for reparations, the ongoing deadly travails of Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan; rising criminality in hitherto unlikely places, and the climate crisis everywhere; all relegated to specialised attention in even more manipulable social media spaces.

In the context of this potential for hijacking of the public space, I had to make the point to hemispheric folks two weeks ago that it might be a mistake to consider the convening and execution of elections (as important as they are) as a solitary indicator of democratic affirmation.

For, had this position not provided guidance of sorts, we would have had to conclude that democracy too often nowadays produces results inimical to the pursuit of peace and people-centred development.

Not only now, but elections have long produced unsavoury characters and effectively destructive political agendas. Perhaps there can, in fact, be a tyranny of the masses through elections and not as an exceptional outcome.

It is however also true that sham elections in so-called one-party states do not fool anybody anymore.

Yet, obsessive preoccupation with this single important(!) element of the democratic process can also have the collateral effect of inferring the supremacy of process over outcome and effect. In the end, I would go with CLR James’s reference to the things that comprise “ancient habits” – or longstanding principles of public behaviour.

The academics probably have another take on this, but I think it is important to employ James’s language to broaden understanding of the instincts that drive us toward inclusivity, a sense of equity, acceptance of justice in its purest manifestations, and informed decision-making even through the fog of multiple crises.

These are things that do not descend on people overnight. It is the stuff of practice and habit. You can tell in the public space nowadays wherever autocratic behaviour is present including the easy resort to edict instead of painstaking reliance on responsible self-regulation.

This holds true in civic spaces as well. Those community-based and non-governmental organisations – some of them captured by partisan, national interests. The sporting associations with highly durable leaders, the cultural groups that know only one way, and general resistance to innovation and change in other quarters.

All these things signal levels of measurable democratic practice, notwithstanding relatively seamless leadership selection processes.

Next year, there will probably be seven national elections in Caricom countries. You never know when (and we have discussed this before) some prime minister or president will withdraw that note from his/her back pocket and declare the intensification of campaigning that never really ended five years ago.

Now that that “other” election is over, listen out for T&T, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and St Kitts and Nevis in 2025. Now think about the things that best characterise their respective observance of democratic principles.

You would probably realise that addressing the clear deficits goes beyond electoral systems – however much reform is required.

We can go state by state and remark about the extent to which, outside of election time, there has been a tendency to orient decision-making and the implementation of changes through wide collaboration and engagement at all levels. Then, add to this the human rights dimension which represents supreme observance of the principles that drive democracies.

For, in observance of the universality and indivisibility of human rights we can assess the quality of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled.

So, no, elections are but one indicator of the existence of a state of democracy but nowhere near everything about it. Look near and far. Are we participant and/or distant observers of true democracy?

I never tire of advising my Latin American colleagues that in the Commonwealth Caribbean there is no “democratic relapse” as is being observed in other places in the Americas. Ours is a far more nuanced reality to be observed and dissected. But we are still not where we ought to be.

Locating responsibility

At the height of some of the more punishing pandemic measures when official policy remained challenged by the urge to err on the side of extreme caution (if one erred) there arose pugilistic doubt about the role of personal responsibility in addressing the risks then at hand.

Inspired largely by political preference and apparent ignorance of basic tenets of the development process, one sceptic (who should have known better) accused me of being among an emerging cohort of “personal responsibility evangelists.”

I had at the time argued in favour of people in their individual and collective spaces ensuring that conditions for their own safe conduct prevailed, whatever the official dictates, or lack of them.

We believed that “the government’s” role in the success or failure of the effort to negotiate a great unknown was of perhaps lesser status than communal conduct and care - however much the recognisable impacts of uneven social conditions and personal privilege.

It is the kind of nuance that is being clumsily explored by the Minister of National Security in the face of seemingly unrestrained criminal depravity. There is much to navigate, on that score including police malpractice and incompetence, partisan haze, and the cynical exploitation of grief. So, it’s perhaps best to leave that there … for now.

The point is being far more clearly articulated in the different but not unrelated responses by the informed to rising road deaths, injuries, and property damage.

Yes, the roads are appallingly bad (potholes and even moderate speed don’t mix), we do not believe in proper signage, defective traffic lights are left unattended, there need to be more life-saving highway barriers, route design and construction sometimes do not make sense, ad hoc changes in traffic flows often lead to greater chaos, people operate car repair shops on the street, and there is inarguably deficient enforcement of the law.

There is also room to assess the true deterrent effect of harsher traffic penalties beyond the common wisdom that people respond to that kind of official threat even when the law is not comprehensively policed.

And, yes, I was recently ticketed on a particularly difficult morning - foodless and en route home from the funeral of a friend - for having my cell phone in my hand while driving. On that note, if you hear I have been ticketed for drunk driving or speeding, have the matter thoroughly investigated on my behalf!

That said, $1,000 and 3 demerit points later, I am still kicking myself and not the polite police officer. Some might say he could have spent his time chasing after bandits and robbers. But had it not been for people like me, perhaps he could have been so assigned.

Instead, there remain people who are driving and texting, speeding, drinking/drugging and driving, bullying others in smaller vehicles, breaking the red lights, driving on the shoulder, stopping suddenly in the middle of the road. In the process, a growing number of people are being killed and maimed on our roads.

So, yes, I think traffic tickets are part of the required policing measures even in the broader context of extreme, violent criminal conduct. This was captured, in part, by the broken windows theory of the 1980s which suggested that the diligent interception of “lesser” offences reflecting deviant social behaviour (reckless driving in this case) can have a positive impact on the general environment required for more peaceful, law-abiding societies.

I remember as a reporter over 30 years ago matching traffic deaths and murders as the statistics raced competitively against each other. Today, they are both recognised as significant public health challenges even as murder by deadly weapon now vastly outstrips reckless highway slaughter.

In both cases, there is a strong case for changed personal behaviour. Sharon Inglefield of Arrive Alive is correct: “We have far too many serious collisions on our roads, ALL of which are preventable and avoidable. We must set a better example of road user behaviour, drive defensively, plan our journeys and obey the rules of the road.”

There we go again – “personal responsibility evangelists.” In the meantime, we probably do need more police, more barriers, better road signs, speed cameras, demerit points, fines, traffic lights, speed limits, and speed bumps.

All because these things fill the void left by people who dare not take responsibility for their own wellbeing and the rest of ours. It’s like that time when even a state of emergency proved incapable of getting us to wash our hands.

 (Published in the T&T Guardian on October 23, 2024)

The final innings

(First published in the T&T Guardian on October 16, 2024)

My favourite cricket team anywhere nowadays is the West Indies Women’s T20 squad aka the West Indies (w) … with a small “w”. The “real” West Indies team requires no such qualification since everybody knows when we talk about Caribbean cricket, we are referencing the West Indies (M).

It’s one of those things about “cricket lovers” that the West Indies dominated version of the sport ended on or about August 28, 1995, at The Oval in London. The West Indies (M) scored 692/8 and declared in their final innings.

There meanwhile appears no lasting impression, among this cohort of supporters, of the May 1976 encounter between the West Indies (w) led by Trini Louis Browne vs Australia (W) at Montego Bay in Jamaica. The first ever by a West Indies (w) team.

Much has since happened to render it unsurprising that “cricket lovers” would not have noted with much enthusiasm (if at all) the West Indies’ (w) face-saving win over Scotland on October 6 at the Cricket World Cup – the very day Faf du Plessis’ SLK beat Imran Tahir’s GAW at the CPL T20 final in Guyana.

Apart from the fact that CPL does not present country versus country contests, the mismatch between things “Caribbean” and “the West Indies” has more than once been noted here.

In this regard, I am again interested to know about the keenness with which the recently completed Clive Lloyd and Deryck Murray Caricom Report on “West Indies cricket” will be received when it reaches brutally disinterested ministerial desks in Port-au-Prince, Belmopan, Nassau, and Paramaribo.

The report follows last April’s Caricom Regional Cricket Conference held in T&T and hosted by PM Rowley. Since then, the region has again hosted a flag-waving Caribbean Premier League – “T-Twenny cricket,” to quote one commentator – everything “branded” for maximum returns. A six is no longer merely a six but now a mis-named “maximum” (since we know that more than six runs can be scored off a single ball … but who cares?)

This is not cricket for those who only know about cricket. It is a grand show not to be casually dismissed by “cricket lovers” who preferred Garry’s upturned collar and baggy pants and Wesley’s (Hall, of course) unbuttoned shirt and rolled up sleeves.

We have lived to hear Gavaskar and others declare the physical superiority of “the shorter game” that has brought greater athleticism, an expanded variety of shots, and an enhanced range between “slow” and “fast” bowling.

Today we also know that the statelessness of cricket teams in most instances defines at least the short-term financial viability of the game. It is here that national flags, and the people waving them, serve merely as props and extras - colourful backdrops for exciting, lucrative eyeballs and ears.

Quick, you patriotic types. Tell me which team won CPL 2024. Simple. Now, give me the date for the first game to be played by T&T in the 50 Over Super Cup. If you know the answer to the second question, do you have a national flag ready for flying?

Okay, so we are talking about 20 overs and not 50. T-Twenny as in the first financially viable, Caribbean country-based encounters in 2006. By June 11, 2008, and inspired by its success, convicted Antigua-based, US swindler Allen Stanford was landing a helicopter packed with what was supposed to be a handsome stash of cash at Lord’s cricket ground. That “cash” turned out to be fake $1 bills. Somebody quipped that the game of cricket had been purchased.

I recently retweeted a post in which someone was wondering whether, in a Texas prison, a cellmate has long grown tired of hearing about the time his now half-blind companion “owned” West Indies Cricket.

Such have been the undulating fortunes of a sport that will now appear in its truncated version in the 2028 Olympics – most likely minus a “West Indies” M or w team. Or could it be there will be a West Indies Olympic team?

Comrade Fazeer meanwhile appears doubtful that the CPL version can ride out its current term of dominance, not in a prison cell but against the limits of challenged bank accounts. In my case, I think “West Indies (M)” cricket’s final innings closed long ago, at the failing of CWI lights. Money will be made otherwise.

Maybe the lights will eventually come back on. Look around now and tell me what you see.

Climate’s safety net challenge

A recent neighbourhood interaction led me back to a September 18 submission on this page related to the impact of climate change on the world of work, including some observations being made right here in the Caribbean.

I had shared a story involving a neighbourhood postal worker who was witnessed taking a rare breather in considerably intolerable heat one morning.

I was in the company of friend and colleague, climate change expert Steve Maximay, who suggested that whatever the precise meteorological outcomes – like the heat that day and torrential rainfall last Monday – countries all over the world must eventually address the issue of climate change and labour conditions.

Of course, this was no novel observation. It is a story some have been tracking for decades now – negotiating uninformed scepticism, outright denial, and slow recognition of key areas of vulnerability in our neck of the woods.

The International Labour Organization (ILO), for example, has been paying close attention to this question from the standpoint of the rights and entitlements of workers within the context of dramatically changing workplace environments.

In fact, less than a week before Steve’s astute observation along the hilly streets of St Joseph, the UN agency had published its World Social Protection Report 2024–26. It is the kind of report that lands in your inbox and, under the best of circumstances, you put it aside for another day. It appears to me that the bureaucrats in our government sector and activists within our labour movement have been similarly inclined.

To be fair though, the authors of the 2025 Budget statement offered several scenarios regarding climate change and energy policy, the challenges to food production and public infrastructure, and threats to biological diversity. Some of this was particularly insightful and thought-provoking though not necessarily attracting the kind of public attention the state experts in the field had intended.

This country also manages a robust social safety net unlike anything our Caribbean community or even some big neighbours extend. So, it is not that we are averse to extending “social protections” in the form of direct and indirect financial support, but that changes in the world of work may lead to a serious review.

What appears to be urgent and passing relatively unnoticed by most major stakeholders is the contention that the unfolding impacts of climate change can and will irreversibly change the nature of work in many sectors. Measures reflected in work contracts, occupational safety and health standards (OSH), and labour legislation are required to mitigate the outcomes.

Business and employers’ organisations and our labour unions need to pay greater attention.

The thing with the ILO report is its preoccupation with a notion of “universal social protection” being a key part of climate action. Now, the international public servants have a way with fancy terminologies to describe everyday phenomena. But what is really meant by this is the prioritising of specific social services to cushion the effects of identifiable challenges to workers across the class divides.

This approach has the distinct flavour of the international dialogue regarding “a just transition” to low-carbon economies. For T&T and some of our neighbours, including Guyana and Suriname, it has immediate implications for our working populations both inside and outside of our critical energy sectors.

Yes, what happens to the Petrotrin refinery is important, but within the accompanying dialogue needs to be found greater advocacy on “social protections” for workers in the face of an emerging national and planetary crisis.

This goes beyond wages and salaries, as important as they are, and gets to the bottom of a phenomenon currently being witnessed even in bigger wealthier environments.

The recalibration of economies to reflect both the impacts of global climate change and the actions taken to address them are now high on the agendas of numerous nations – even in the face of the urgency of growing military and other conflict which, in some instances, is not unrelated to diminishing natural resources.

Countries such as ours that are small, vulnerable to global economic shocks, and with limited options for adapting to different developmental paradigms should be urgently engaging this challenge. That our own T&T economy appears to be contracting and will continue to contract requires much more than political manoeuvring to maintain public goodwill or to combat contesting claims.

This calls for a unified national approach that’s deliberately blind to real (or rather illusory) differences in developmental philosophy. Our social safety net, which is becoming increasingly strained and costly, will need to evolve in both scale and scope.

Money, culture, and budgets

Coming as it does mere days after delivery of the 2024/2025 national budget statement on Monday, and its rigorous dissection even minutes following its introduction, today’s contribution to this space runs the risk of relative redundancy.

Yet, it should go without saying that until the point is accepted that the future of our country resides more durably in deployment of the creative imagination than in expendable subterranean resources, there is no risk of over-emphasis.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not designed to fuel any new or renewed frenzy around state funding of “culture” inspired by any money-inspired formulation of “cultural policy” and what I consider to be associated threats to unfettered artistic expression.

We have had examples over the years of state investment in selected activities and the negative and positive impacts that have flowed, including effective state capture of tangible and intangible organisational assets.

I am, for example, more than a little uncomfortable with the proposed pathway being designed to elevate the work of Pan Trinbago – a process no doubt paved with good and noble intentions.

This sort of thing has been interrogated in other contexts elsewhere, sufficient to inspire, at minimum, a level of wholesome scepticism and informed discussion by creatives and their supporters. We need to be much more clinical about the ways we harness this abundance of cultural wealth in T&T.

Points such as these are explored in an important 2007 study by Arjo Klamer & Lyudmila Petrova entitled Financing the Arts: The Consequences of Interaction among Artists, Financial Support, and Creativity Motivation.

Sure, this research considers a largely developed country context, but in it, the authors critically analyse “the nature and rationales of various modes of financing the arts” dividing these modes into the various sources of funding including the state and “the market” – the latter I consider to be of considerable if not supreme, unfolding importance in our case.

Much of this coincides with my view that for starters, the state - as important are its assets held in trust on our part - should not stand at the centre of framing a way forward when it comes to the discrete elements of the cultural sector. It should await its turn in the queue of influence and power, intervening only when strategically required.

In any event, numerous free individual agents carve their own way forward with minimum fuss. Coercive “local content” broadcast policy, (an anachronism in today’s virtual space) plays no role in the achievements of most of our leading musicians. In any event, what “airplay” are people talking about?

Think also of our visual artists creating and creating – generating artistic value and scanning our realities in ways in which the mathematicians and economists are typically incompetent.

This is not to say that dollars and cents are irrelevant. I started all this by referencing Monday’s budget presentation which has to do with sowing and reaping the benefits of indigenous resources. But there is little to suggest that the creative sector is, in the official discourses, moving more to the centre of assessment of our collective wealth.

For example, the point has already been made about the multi-faceted contribution of the steelpan – as a model of social organisation, expression of musical excellence, and as under-valued economic resource.

This should not mean action to get everyone to play the pan. I know young players whose appreciation for the musical value of the instrument came via everything between the guitar and piano. But that’s an aside. Another question.

There are also poets, authors, dancers, and filmmakers converting their creative imaginations to immeasurable “value” with implications for where our country stands in the global scheme of things. Consider, for example, that Shakespeare was assessed some years ago to be among the UK’s most successful cultural exports.

Okay, so we can’t expect the bean counters at the Ministry of Finance to consider these things, but I think our numerous groupings should become more vocal on questions not only of financial flows through state expenditure, but ways our cultural products, and the environment in which they are created, can add to collective wealth and value.

Their positions on such things must go beyond what Klamer & Petrova describe as “the immaterial consequences of economic processes” and consider the actual impact of the interplay involving the “financing of cultural activity, the creative process, and cultural values.”

Things to think about when next the balance sheets are prepared, and important accounting columns and calculations are again absent.

Lessons from Kangaroo Jack

Let me confess that during the pandemic lockdown regular Facebook posts from a Zoological Officer of the Emperor Valley Zoo helped me (and I am sure thousands more) maintain a relatively high level of emotional stability.

I am not going to call the young officer’s name (which you may already know) since it would be unfair to drag her further into a discussion on the latest, absurd instance in which our well-documented “culture of secrecy” has been on stark public display.

The fact is that during the pandemic lockdown the Emperor Valley Zoo decided to open its gates virtually to us through a series of delightful social media dispatches exhibiting a high level of attention, compassion, and rapport between a competent zookeeper and the animals in her care.

Then, sometime later, came Jack the kangaroo, public speculation surrounding his health through media reporting and, latterly, the diligent work of Newsday reporter, Narissa Fraser.

Here, unlike so many other news stories with grand revelations, we aren’t dealing with developments that emerged from the dark, sinister shadows of secret underworld transactions. Concern was already in the public domain, and without visible objection from anyone, that something was wrong with Kangaroo Jack.

Back in March, the agriculture minister even launched an investigation into the condition of the animal.

If anything, the ongoing public saga of Kangaroo Jack offered us an insight into our humane instincts as people – whatever the justifiable ambivalence over zoos.

This was no ordinary zoo story. For example, I cannot say that too many visitors can name any of the four other kangaroos at the zoo that reached there about three years before Jack.

Maybe, maybe not. But I remember visiting with young Reign from Guyana in 2022 and we experimented with makeup names for all the animals.

I also don’t think it should be incumbent on any zoo to issue death announcements upon the passing of any snake, monkey, manicou, or turtle (though it has happened in the past!). But then there was Jack – the subject of curious social and mainstream media attention.

Sure, there are perhaps more important things to gripe about, but I think this case points us in the direction of an overall malaise that plagues our country, and for certain, the rest of our region. This isn’t just about a kangaroo.

So persistent has been the ready resort to secrecy in official circles, that some of us in the field of journalism have fixed activist eyes on the requirements of freer access to information held in trust by public agencies.

To locate the role of the Zoological Society in all this we may choose to look at the 2018 judgment of Justice Frank Seepersad in which it is concluded that “the ZSTT (Zoological Society) is a public body within the meaning of the (Freedom of Information) Act ...”

The Zoo is owned, operated, and managed by the Zoological Society of T&T (ZSTT) –incorporated by statute in 1952 and reportable to the Statutory Authorities Service Commission. A little over $5 million was allocated to ZSTT for 2024 by the state via the Ministry of Agriculture, Land, and Fisheries.

The ZSTT is also under the purview of the Office of Procurement Regulation and its annual administrative reports are required to be tabled in parliament.

It thus appears that in many respects, the Society has transparency obligations under the law. At the very least there is general public accountability even when, let’s say, the condition of an animal has captured our imaginations.

There are, of course, procedural issues associated with the FOI Act that can extend beyond mere questioning by an enterprising reporter on the health status of an animal.

But should we really have to go this far? A reporter asked a simple question: Whatever happened to Kangaroo Jack? Phone calls remained unanswered. People could not be located.

It is appalling that the Society should have disclosed what appear to be straightforward, apparently non-controversial medical facts about the demise of Kangaroo Jack only after being pressed to do so by an enterprising reporter and in the face of accompanying public concern.

It is sad that so many of us are shrugging this off as another mere example of our “culture of secrecy” - noted by researchers on a Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) study as being pervasive throughout our region.

Until we aggressively address this through all available means, including employment of enlightened political will, Kangaroo Jack can easily become Citizen Jill.