Climate mischief and our media

It is alarming that in 2026, questions are still being raised in the Caribbean about whether we need to pay critical attention to the scientifically confirmed climate crisis.

There is an important requirement not to lose sight of the urgency with which the matter is to be addressed, especially since some narratives are being skewed by compliant political agendas, brittle science, and the conscientious work of propagandists.

The role of disinformation is a central theme of today’s dispatch because the climate crisis remains among the more significant challenges of our time, especially when it comes to the framing of informed public policy responses.

The glee with which some observers highlight recent failures in regional media is telling. It reveals awareness of an opportunistic vacuum - a space where professional journalism, which offers the sternest challenge to mis and disinformation, is being undermined.

What ought to be reasoned analysis of a serious, already-evident challenge to countries such as ours, now resides alongside an easily identifiable buffet of anti-science and disinformation coincidental with belief systems of malignant convenience.

If we needed to, we could perfectly describe the menu. Name the issue, and you will find the same concoction of common ingredients, a recipe slavishly mimicked by our local sous chefs of disinformation

There is unfortunate evidence, though, that such a cocktail has found accommodating official palates. Since when have national commitments to a “just transition” toward a low-carbon environment been of needlessly onerous, questionable value? Yet, we have been detecting both passive and active political resistance in our region.

Countries like ours have, for years, found common cause in pressing for greater recognition of our unique circumstances. Right here, in the Caribbean in 1994 the epochal Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in Barbados determined a framework for advancing our peculiar requirements.

And, yes, the process has not always benefited from a perfect ride. We have been jostled and bullied and fallen prey to empty promises and commitments. But this does not prescribe abstinence or absence.

Back to media. There have been quite independent efforts over the years to ensure the news agenda finds space for changing climate conditions – whether or not people believe in its anthropogenic triggers on which the vast majority of real scientists agree.

For, beyond increasingly marginal contentions, changed objective circumstances require informed journalistic attention when it comes to associated economic, socio-cultural, and political impacts.

Count on the fisherfolk to tell you of changing ocean trends, the farmers reliant on irrigation, the young people short on economic opportunity as they move from one population centre to the next.

This is not about panicking and shouting “Climate change!” at every unusual shower or futile fishing trip. Such hysteria is as unhelpful as shouting “We go dead!” over the microphone in a crowded Carnival fete.

This is a matter for rational observation and better capturing of and reporting on credible science and accompanying policy responses, some of which we are entitled to critically interrogate.

For instance, I perfectly understand the energy producers, such as Guyana and soon Suriname, with newfound abundant wealth being interested in advancing prior sluggish development through fortuitously abundant financial resources and saying: “Let’s slow down. Wait a moment here.”

The imperative of a “just transition” is certainly not only a matter for people, communities, and sectors, but is also a concern inherent in relations between states – small and large, weak and powerful.

We may also say that our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) in all this – once they are known and understood by all -  should not overly overwhelm the socio-economic demands of new national circumstances and an increasingly more challenging global interface.

Today, Wednesday, Caribbean journalists assemble in a hybrid setting through Climate Analytics and the Media Institute of the Caribbean to explore some of these issues.

Addressing ignorance, disinformation, and mischief will hopefully form part of the discussions.

The challenge goes beyond disappearing scientific doubt and dissent and has a direct bearing on broader agendas related to power, control, and toxic recipes. Enlightened self-interest by media also constitutes part of the simmering brew.

 

 

Unclaimed creative wealth

Every year, since I can recall, there have been these Carnival post-mortems designed to consider, among other things, the socio-economic value of this annual event. Some of it has been well-informed examinations guided by measurable outcomes, others simply to exhibit limitless capacity to engage in self-serving chatter and fantasy.

By the time you read this – amid all the dangerous political folly everywhere including here – and as one example of the former, and hopefully not the latter, the Caribbean InTransit Consortium would have reached day-three of its fifth edition of an international collaboration to explore the vast possibilities of our festivals emergent from our historical antecedents.

The organisers – and there are some serious, informed participants - are of the firm view that, through its “Festival Dashboard,” there is scope for lucrative, structured collaboration involving “the Caribbean and its diaspora, Africa, and beyond.”

Then, tomorrow, the “Orange Committee” of the T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce will attempt to venture beyond the “cultural significance” of our annual festival and focus more on the generation and capture of direct and indirect economic activity, especially in the small business sector.

This is part of its “Catalyst SME Conference” which opened today and is an effort by the Chamber to promote the possibilities inherent in this country’s vast creative potential in evidence both outside and inside the Carnival production mill.

It is interesting to note that the term “orange economy” (aka the “creative economy”) was the brainchild of two former politicians from our wider region in a 2013 publication of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The Orange Economy: An Infinite Opportunity by Iván Duque Márquez (former President of Colombia) and Felipe Buitrago Restrepo (former Colombian Culture Minister) is actually quite an easy read and is downloadable online.

In it - and as is suggested by the T&T Chamber and implicit in the messaging of the InTransit Consortium - creative trade is proposed as being, provably, far less volatile than other sectors (energy is specifically cited) at times of crisis.

A Chamber paper on the sector indicates that while global creative and cultural industries “generate approximately US$2.3 trillion annually and account for about 3.1% of global GDP”, T&T’s creative industries “currently contribute less than 0.1% to national GDP.”

The Consortium mandate meanwhile proposes a collective harvesting of such potential through alliances based on common cultural experiences – notably the nature and character of festivals such as our Carnival.

Yes, some of language used by advocates does not at all impress me. Márquez and Restrepo have also not aged well – given the ongoing hemispheric and international fragmentation wrought by fast unfolding geo-politics and neo-colonialism. “Inter-connectedness,” as envisaged by the inaugural text, is now in some important quarters, deemed to be an obstacle and challenge to new alignments.

But all things being equal, this is not particularly fanciful and esoteric as it may appear … or sometimes sound. Even in small spaces such as ours, there is growing (though marginal) attention being paid to unrealised wealth and value in an industry not otherwise recognised for its vast potential outside of episodic, seasonal spurts.

Tomorrow’s Chamber panel will examine “Carnival 365 - Making It a Reality.” One can only hope that, even as Carnival serves as the principal springboard because of its many distinct elements, attention will also be given to the ways we create things and produce other activities that do not always find an easy place within the festival.

Desperadoes Steel Orchestra of Trinidad and Tobago

There is also the interface between all of this and unfolding digital realities which impose new dimensions to questions of ownership and control over creative outputs and their resultant financial and other gains.

I have also noticed the interest of the Ministry of Culture in entertaining the views of a wider span of Carnival stakeholders through its current Business of Carnival survey. Hopefully, this is with a view to determining clear metrics for success and direction on further monetising the creative industry and move away from the guesstimates.

These are some interventions – and I am aware of efforts in the steelpan sector – that are not entirely new. But we are in different, far more difficult times with little space for dilly-dallying around the possibilities offered by people and spaces otherwise dismissed as not possessing the assets for required rescue.

Caricom’s elusive bipartisan dialogue

Last week, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar chose a rather curious way to raise the issue of broader stakeholder participation in Caricom processes. Since the St Kitts Inter-Sessional, the focus has consequently remained on what she considered to be an example of regional, political marginalisation – the Brent Thomas affair.

However, judicial proceedings involving individuals and agencies of two member states cannot routinely be considered to be the active concern of the Caricom Secretariat beyond keeping tabs from an institutionally detached distance.

This could probably have been among the templates for a Secretariat response. Unresponsiveness should not have been considered an option.

Perhaps the leaders’ retreat in Nevis addressed this matter. I do not know. Closed doors are the preferred path. But this apparently purposeful slur on the institution and its professionals should have been addressed.

I had hoped that this awkward opportunity would have also been used to segue into the critical question of bipartisan and multi-stakeholder involvement in the work of the regional movement.

This would have been one way of stimulating action on something that had actually been addressed years ago.

Perhaps people forgot that despite the collapse of the federation experiment in 1962 and the disappearance of a federal parliament, there continued to be concern about the “democratic legitimacy” of regional decisions.

As a journalist covering such matters since the 1980s and being a part of the Caricom Secretariat team in the mid-90s, I became aware of efforts by the late Barbados Prime Minister Erskine Sandiford and others to promote wider political engagement in regional decision-making.

It might be that people have forgotten that an Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians (ACCP) emerged in 1996 from such efforts, as a way of ensuring bipartisan/multistakeholder engagement.

The ACCP was developed as a “consultative and deliberative body” and sat in 1996 (Barbados), 1999 (Grenada), and in 2000 (Belize). In fact, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) proposal was debated at the ACCP in Grenada as were unfolding issues associated with the Caricom Single Market.

I have contended in the past that such a mechanism could have benefited much from the deliberations of the Regional Constituent Assembly (RCA) of the Windward Islands in 1991/92.

But politicians and other decision-makers in T&T at that time had their minds on numerous other things judging from the muted responses to my reportage from Saint Lucia. The wounds of July 27, 1990 remained fresh.

The work of the RCA was instructive since it predated the entry into government of several opposition and other participants such as Dr Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Edison James of Dominica, and Dr Vaughan Lewis - who was not a political delegate but went on to serve as Prime Minister of Saint Lucia.

The ACCP records are also instructive as the sittings spanned the period during which the UNC was in power in T&T. Back then, Caricom blessings were mellifluously extended by late Prime Minister Basdeo Panday.

I know for certain our Caricom ambassador Ralph Maraj, who was in St Kitts with the PM, is intimately aware of the role and functions of the ACCP. But his knowledge of this was clearly not tapped for last week’s remarkable admonition.

It is however true that the ACCP project was left to languish in the absence of political enthusiasm, an eagerness to expand its authority, and the funds to ensure its survival. Suffice it to say enthusiasm for the broadening of the discourse also dissipated when political statuses transitioned from opposition to government.

There has also not been any pronounced effort to encourage expanded discussion and debate on some of the issues that currently persist as contentious.

Many civil society organisations – and I can speak with authority about the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) – have been largely marginalised. And even the participation of parliamentary opposition members at summits has not been symbolically contrived.

In the February 12, 2005 report of a special committee on the ACCP and other issues, chairman Dr Gonsalves, then prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, argued that “proposed changes in the functioning of the Assembly will ensure greater popular participation in its deliberations and thus further strengthen the democratic process at the regional level.”

Sounds like an initiative in which his own interest should be renewed in his current role as Opposition Leader. Our own prime minister now claims to share such a view – having crossed the aisle more than once.

The opportunity for broader, bipartisan engagement is not hypothetical. It is historical, documented, and waiting for renewed political commitment.

 

That fete vs work slogan

Almost to the day, 44 years ago, late prime minister George Chambers proclaimed as a post-Carnival instruction to the nation: “Fete over, back to work!”

Since captured as recurring slogan, we have heard it from public officials numerous times over the years - the latest occasion being Ash Wednesday from minister of public utilities, Barry Padarath.

We would recall that back in 1982 dramatically changing economic fortunes at the eclipsing of oil windfalls helped produce biting calypso commentaries from people such as Sugar Aloes, Chalkdust, and others.

It may well have been that, smitten by this, the prime minister was insistent on establishing a clearer dichotomy – fete vs work.

As it is in 2026, public policy in 1982 had been heavily focused on the theme of economic sustainability. So, Chambers was in fact urging a retreat from the revelry (and biting picong) of Carnival that year and a prompt focus on steadying a faltering economic vessel.

Suffice it to say, this op-ed space pounced on the same Ash Wednesday opportunity 10 years ago when I surmised that the idiom ought never to be ignored - especially since it was “sadly destined for assured relapse at the onset of Easter.”

It is, I now confess, an all too easy temptation to which one may fall unwitting prey - that the “fete” being summarily convicted has, as a counter-active feature, a return to “work” and the creation of worth.

We have witnessed attempts over the years by people such as Alfred Aguiton, Keith Nurse, and more recently Gregory McGuire (and numerous others) to quantify net economic gains from the Carnival season in an effort to signal value in excess of annual catharsis, predictable bacchanal, and plain, old-fashioned fun.

In effect, what some have been arguing is that to negatively juxtapose “fete” and “work” is to ignore substantial socio-economic “value.”

I now believe there is a significant basis for clinically revisiting the dynamic. I pay closer attention to Panorama than to any other feature of the Carnival season. (Not that pan is only about Panorama).

I have seen nothing to convince me that there is anything we do better than pan. Any close observer would recognise substantial socio-economic value - not the least being untapped intellectual property returns.

We will tend not to dismiss much of this if we find the time to understand what scholars such as Savitri Rampersad and Justin Koo are proposing as unrecognised economic potential associated with the instrument itself and the music played on it. Look out for more on this.

In effect, there is no “getting back to work” when it comes to pan. It never really stops and starts that way.

We may also, as with the other associated disciplines, disaggregate the main features of Carnival by taking a closer look at the singular component of “labour” and our changing world of work.

This is not as esoteric an association as it may appear. Yes, there is net economic value in Carnival, but there are also implications for productive activity and, consequently, how we evaluate its contribution to work and employment.

It should be that our labour unions and academics pay more detailed attention to this. But is does not appear they are doing so.

For example, Carnival as an exhibition of the contribution of a recognisably growing informal work sector has serious implications for organised labour. It also needs to more consistently be recorded as a major factor when considering national, economic well-being.

Our Central Statistical Office should be more adequately resourced to capture and interpret the hard seasonal micro-statistics. For example, our labour participation rate for the third quarter of 2025 came in at 54.6% (the ILO predicts the global statistic will “decline” to 60.5% in 2027). More needs to be done to give these estimates greater meaning. What is everybody else (45.4%) doing in the meantime?

I know there is much, much more to this. Don’t pounce on me with more informed advice. Just get to work on helping us understand what really happens at this time of year.

Though I fell for the trap of the slogan in 2016, I also did observe then that “in countries such as ours that rely heavily on intuition, guesswork, and tribal favouritism in the framing of public policy and action there is always the tendency to eschew science in favour of popular wisdom.”

Looked at more closely, the fete could actually be providing more work and “value” than we think.

Caribbean media reckoning

Recent media collapses in the English-speaking Caribbean have drawn attention to the vulnerabilities of an industry that has actually been quite problematic in our neck of the woods for many years - in the colonial era and beyond.

There is even a view that the tardy introduction of newspapering in T&T in the late 18^th century - linked as it was to introduction of the printing press – fell prey to a deliberate attempt at slowing the displacement of human labour through contrived delays in the introduction of mechanised processes.

There is a controversial study I cited in a 2017 article to commemorate 100 years of the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian which contends there had indeed been a connection between changing sugar technology and the trade in enslaved Africans.

If you get a chance have a read at https://wesleygibbings.blogspot.com for my take on this or download a copy of  ‘Changing Sugar Technology and the Labour Nexus: the Caribbean’ by Peter Boomgaard and Gert J. Oostindie.

In T&T, we entered the newspaper business later than most of our regional neighbours in 1799. For purposes of current concerns, I think we should consider that mechanisation had been as important to the introduction of newspapers as were the opportunities and trials of automation, followed by digitalisation and artificial intelligence.

The survival of formal media has thus always been problematic in the face of technological changes. Today, however, the virtual space and universal digital capacity present unprecedented challenges.

Mention of this dynamic has been a common feature of recent closures in both print and broadcast media under the cover of “industry pressures.” It was invoked when Newsday explained its dissolution – “this is an industry under severe pressure.”

The directors of Guyana’s Stabroek News expressed their own rendezvous with closure more provocatively: “The model of reportage that this paper has cultivated in its lifetime is out of step with the algorithmic formulae that now control the circulation of news online. Balanced coverage is not good click-bait.”

Cayman Island’s iEye News, which also shuttered this month, was not a hard copy newspaper with the print overheads of Newsday or Stabroek News but was an attempt at independent, professional journalism online. Publisher Colin Wilson referred to “sustainability challenges.”

Digicel meanwhile explained that by closing down Loop News last year, it was “reorienting” its business “from consumer media toward enterprise-level digital services.” In other words, the financial yields from its digital news service were insufficient to address the company’s broader commercial concerns.

An identical explanation was forthcoming in August when Sportsmax – also operated by Digicel with all its telecoms credentials - ceased broadcasting. So, this is not only about the availability of “technology.”

This lengthy preamble is intended to suggest that old-fashioned legacy media are not the only casualties of recent digital advances, and accompanying implications for creation and delivery of competitive content.

This era also marks disruptions in online media through the entry of new players in the news and information market – many (not all) of them amateur participants devoid of commitments to professional standards, including high production values and journalistic integrity, but big on entertainment value, propaganda, the salacious, and controversy.

These alternatives on offer are typically short on traditional characteristics. Instead, they include fake “news” sites that appear and disappear in tandem with political conditions (including elections), paid and unpaid propagandists, online trolls, bots, and the use of AI manipulated content - the most difficult of all to detect.

Add to these, regimes of prior censorship imposed via broadcast licences and cyber legislation, strategic litigation by the powerful (labelled by the press freedom community as strategic litigation against public participation - SLAPP), “media capture” by partisan commercial and political interests, international “big-tech” malpractice, and plain old fashioned censorship … or muting of the microphone.

People such as prolific T&T technology correspondent, Mark Lyndersay, have written thousands of words on the digital challenges, as there are dimensions to the operations of the legacy media industry that remain relatively unexplored and unaddressed by the affected themselves.

The 2021 UNESCO-supported Media Viability study of Jamaica conducted by the Media Institute of the Caribbean also offers wholesome starting points: “There are many areas outside the control of media houses that impact viability and sustainability, including the economic, legal and regulatory environments, global big tech organisations and changing media consumption patterns.”

However, the MIC study also identifies a key function of legacy media as “protector(s) of the public interest.” There is no shortage of the exogenous, but internal adjustments require far more attention. There is a lot at stake here, people. We should note who mock and cheer the failures and ask from whom they would prefer receive life-changing news and information.

 

When fear rules

Just sounding an arguably badly timed alert here. Smack in the middle of difficult fete choices, disputed competition results, blue and green roses, costume preparation, and mayhem on the road.

Acknowledging therefore that it’s likely to be just as lost as purposefulness in addressing some urgent issues of the day.

But still trying this because when the dust clears, our minds need to be directed sooner rather than later toward the manner in which we have slipped up badly on the subject of addressing criminal violence.

This, of course, is not to contribute to hysteria over this in the public domain. So, yes, party, celebrate, and have fun. But consider how we operate at this time of year and the positive attributes (an absence of mutual suspicion?) that point in the general direction of solutions and, perhaps, a route out of the malaise and sense of hopelessness.

I was taught a long time ago that while authoritarianism certainly points to the behaviours of the rulers, the compliant participation of the ruled is equally important to consider.

Position this thought alongside the fear, anxiety, grief, anger, and rage that accompany outrageous, murderous violence and what follows is more likely than not a pervasive response conducive to reinforcing authoritarian instincts and actions.

It’s amazing that the real experts at this have not been clinically examining our collective condition in this manner. This is not dry, esoteric theory.

What we have been witnessing – and this is not peculiar to any political administration – is a tendency to avoid nuanced, deliberate, and careful attention to emotion-inducing realities and instead “solve” problems in the same manner in which they greet us. Violence, therefore, tends to stimulate more violence. Impunity greets impunity. And dissent, poetic or not, will not be tolerated.

They say this is perfectly understandable when people feel besieged by a challenge. If it involves threats, injury or death there is going to be fear and anger and a reliance by the affected on those in charge to end it.

There is more attention to “what” is needed than to the “how.” A few weeks ago, for instance, this space was employed to have people consider why a penalty of death is so easily integrated into a notion of punishment.

Survey the population today – even in the middle of a wine or jump – and capital punishment for acts of criminal violence will win overwhelmingly. Then ask whether people believe that the shortcomings within policing and the criminal justice system can mean the execution of someone who might well be innocent.

Well, that’s okay, it’s unlikely to happen to “people like me” -  “I do not look like the usual suspects. I do not live where they live.”

Include in the survey questionnaire the method of punishment and list the options: public lynching, dismemberment, burning at the stake. “Wait till somebody you know is raped, maimed, or killed!”

Responsible official action needs to dampen the bloodlust rather than fuel it, as in saying out loud that “stand your ground” does not mean a right to murder a housebreaker or mango thief. That the more guns there are, the more shooting there will be. That genuine ameliorative measures aimed at underlying causes are essential in any proposed solution.

We have not considered, as well, that continued use of emergency powers actually signals a sad failure (incompetence?) to administer ordinary law and the systems that uphold it. Global examples establish an addictive nature. Forget, for now, suspicious, perennial, “specific threats” to national security.

There are also countries that have reached such a persistent and longstanding pass largely on account of perceived political threats. It’s an easy segue from “threat to national security.”

In the Philippines, for example, disgraced ex-president Rodrigo Duterte (and I am aware of people here who were once proud of him) employed emergency powers to address “lawless violence” more than once.

Human rights groups estimate that as many as 30,000 people were killed over six years of his rule by the police, vigilante groups, and other civilian “supporters” of the move to bring order to crime linked to the trade in illicit drugs. Narco-terrorism?

Perish the thought that civil liberties should be asserted under such conditions. That new measures should be so framed as to protect the innocent and to minimise rather than increase violence in all its manifestations.

Such a posture requires credible, trustworthy, honest leadership that does not exploit understandable public panic. What is unfolding before our eyes are long-term consequences that will lead to community alienation, unaccountable police behaviour, and a loss of confidence in the administration of justice.

In other words, it’s possible to take one step forward and two backward on this issue.

Pan’s so-so results

(Kinda sad that I had to explain to so many people that this is satire. Which I suppose means it did not work)

All of three years ago, I proposed the development of a framework for identifying Panorama character typologies in order to better understand responses to the judging of steelpan competitions.

This includes an ability to attend a pan event, not listen to full presentations and yet brand the panel of judges shameless “bootlickers” and “mafia.”

There is even talk of judges meeting bands for free t-shirts and other “personal favours” in exchange for points at secret meetings late at night at the Peschier Cemetery in the Savannah.

A fella from San Juan said he once witnessed the entire thing and recorded it but concedes nobody will believe him as these days it is possible to see something with your own two eyes … and it never happen.

Meanwhile, nobody is calling names, but talk has it one of the judges is related to an obeah woman in Les Coteaux and has a family tree traceable to Gang Gang Sara and her West African village that spread generations of genetically predisposed criminals globally.

“Hecky”, the Tobagonian journalist, swears that under the silk cotton tree at Golden Lane lies evidence of this. He once advocated for white washing of the trunk of the tree to ward off malignant spirits. Some people swear they have recently begun seeing the white wash late at night when the moon stands at a particular angle but by early morning, it’s gone.

One member of the infamous “Hotspot Tourists” clan even claims to have recordings and witnesses with sworn testimonies. “Hotspot Tourists” include pan crawlers who hire maxi taxis to take them to panyards in areas they’d usually avoid. Sometimes they don’t recall where they’d been but become supreme authorities on “syncopation” and “polyharmonies”.

They only comprise one percent of all pan competition attendees. But they pull all the strings. They are the ones who make the beer and the booze pass.

Meanwhile, “How? How? How?” goes the refrain when the results land after a lengthy North Stand experience covering six cases of beer, at least a dozen bottles of rum, curry mango, pineapple chow, peanut fudge, tooloom, pigfoot souse, barbeque chicken, and two pots of pelau.

 “What’s that bothersome noise coming from that stage over there?”

So, yes, the “Hotspot Tourists” – the “eat-a-food elite” - were at it again at the Medium and Large band semi-finals this year. Bellies full, and so they - noses browned or reddened by the booze - freely and openly bad-talk the judges.

Not to be denied, the “Grand Standists”, known for an ability to sit quietly and listen to every band, are full of their own, informed views. They are described by people such as Paul as the “first noters” – meaning that they are there to stand for the playing of the national anthem, stay there to the bitter end, have their fair share of educated opinion, and can tell the key in which any song is being played.

They generally stun the “Hotspot” bunch – ridiculing their preference for the backsides of performing bands on the other side of the stage.

Vanda, who possesses “Grand Standists” qualities walks with a notebook and keeps score. And, yes, she too will be up bright and early the following morning with extensive comments on the performances of both the bands and the judges.

She would typically conclude that the winning band (once not her own), was only “so-so” in quality but that “the judges know best.”

“But so-so gets you very far in today’s world,” she opines.

She is actually a member of the “Panyardists United” bunch – that group that has a strong connection with a single band but makes an attempt to visit panyards and gather intelligence on the techniques being explored by others.

They are not the type to switch bands that easily, even if they cuss the one they support and call on them to adjust their arrangements. “Just fix it,” is typical advice.

And, if their band does not acquire the points they expected they’re more likely than the others to simply say: “oh well, wah we go do?”

There are also members of “Pan Music Nostalgia” – the group of old-time pan supporters who yearn for the good old days of “badjohns” and fractured skulls, stick fighters with crooked, broken fingers, drunk men capable of consuming large volumes of canal water without falling ill, and single-octave tenor pans.

They all declare that the old days were much better and while today is good it’s no more than “so-so” and there should be an attempt to make Panorama great again.

Disclaimer: All characters and events in this column - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional. Santimanitay.