Joining the 15%

So, it was my birthday 11 days ago and I became eligible for a “Senior Citizens Pension” - provided I met set poverty criteria expressed as monthly incomes of between $2,500 and $5,500.

I however know that even if I didn’t receive a pension, there are colleagues on these pages who would describe me as a “pensioner” anyway. “Such and such ‘pensioner’ was found wandering aimlessly on Frederick Street …”

It nevertheless helps that in a socialist society there is no real shortage of options to provide most of the basics. Mt Hope is not far away, CDAP can take you pretty far in some, not all, instances, and there are numerous social support grants and other services.

The “elderly” now account for around 13 -15 percent of the national population, shrinking perhaps on account of migration and other factors. There were commentators at the height of the pandemic who were suggesting we were entirely dispensable.

Anyway, it was my birthday, and everybody was suddenly offering advice on diet, exercise, and stress minimisation. Even the UK Guardian chimed in last Saturday with recommendations on staying active and cutting down on protein intake via a “mostly vegan” diet!!! Hmm.

That I was unable to pass the “back scratch” test, proposed by the article, was also devastating. “One arm is placed as if giving yourself a pat on the back, while the other elbow is bent low behind you, the aim being to clasp at least the middle fingers of the opposite hands.”

Who the hell can do that??!!! I almost got my son, Mikhail, to try it, but he already thinks there is a measure of mental diminution, and I might have been given “the look”.

Of course, he has now forgotten my knock between innings two weeks ago. I hit them everywhere and they couldn’t get me out. “Uncle can bat!” I heard from the bleachers. “CPL!!!” I shouted back.

Then I had to explain that I could not play in the match because running on what was a hard tennis court would hurt troublesome ankles and knees. The cardio isn’t bad though. I do the treadmill from time to time.

Outside my house is a hill that takes you up Mt Everest. These days the temperature averages 40 degrees in the shade. Night walk? No. I might be forced to run from dogs or muggers on the hard asphalt road that will hurt those joints.

Speaking of which, ganja tea is now acceptable as evening fare to level off feelings from a day spent scanning news from everywhere it is being told or having to deal with bungling service providers of all varieties.

Yet, there have been several comforts. I no longer get calls from agents offering life and medical insurance. “Caring”, in such an industry, ends at fixed markers.

Nobody from the company checks up on you, and phone calls are rarely returned. The lady at the pharmacy can testify to frantic calls about contractual deductions from the bill.

On the other hand, while insurance agents have lost all interest, religious zealots now turn the manuals to the part on the inevitability of death. “I have a tattoo” is my stock response to any such strategy. That makes absolutely no sense, you say. But so is much of what they have to offer anyway.

The other day, while feeding the chickens (there are now two chickens in our yard, and, yes, yes, I called around to find out whether their owners were missing them), I thought about lifespans.

These cute, but increasingly meaty creatures are more likely than not to expire before I go – maybe even at my hands. Ditto the squirrels that gnaw at my coconuts, the cats that come to steal Oreo’s food, and the magnificent macaws that liven up our evenings on their way home.

Perhaps, I have been told, these stories are ideally suited for my “memoir(s).” Some of my favourite writers never quite put it that way, because the stories they tell and the poems they compose provide adequate testimonies and evidence of the time slots they have occupied.

More than 24 years ago, I wrote about growing “dependency ratios” in the Caribbean as a function of rising life expectancy – people living longer, but increasingly adding to costly support systems to keep them alive and healthy.

In an interview with me many years ago, the late diplomat/man of wisdom James O’Neil “Scottie” Lewis described the elderly as the socially “forgotten.” Now, let’s see. Was he right or was he wrong?

Transparency and SDG business

By now, the few of us with an interest in the development game and all its associated intrigues, would have closely monitored the contributions of world leaders (those who cared to turn up) at the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Summit on Monday and Tuesday and come to a variety of conclusions.

Official lobbying of media to integrate SDG aspirations into our news agendas has been extensive. Almost everywhere, governments and inter-governmental institutions have kept asking: “What are you doing to report on the SDGs?” I hope they know what they are asking for.

The global bodies with which I am associated – the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) and International Freedom of Expression Exchange (now known simply as IFEX) – have long included the subject as part of our programmes of work, and media everywhere have, to varying degrees, kept the subject alive.

To the human rights community, this has been the case since early lobbying by members of these organisations on provisions of the SDGs focused heavily on some important dynamics associated with rights – freedom of expression and access to information among them.

The SDG Summit was thus keenly followed by many of us, not only as part of our monitoring of the 17 goals, but as people with a special interest in  progress with SDG 16.

This goal speaks about the need to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”

This is fancy language on which some organisations lobbied for specific “indicators” to empirically assess progress. Governments habitually bypass extensive reporting on this goal, if only because accompanying indicators tend to be unimpressive.

There were protracted tensions related to the indicators that measure SDG 16. Current measurements, for example, had to be negotiated and we were left with three specific “targets” that, on reflection, could have been more adequately elaborated.  

SDG Target 16.10, for instance, sets as a discrete aspiration, national conditions to “ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.”

In the Caribbean, this is a specific shortcoming. This is so despite the adoption of the long-forgotten 1997 Caricom Charter of Civil Society – Article VIII of which speaks about Freedom of Expression and Access to Information.

Twenty-six years later, under half of the countries of Caricom have access to information laws (in the case of T&T, the Freedom of Information Act). And even where such laws exist there are identifiable shortcomings. For such a reason, the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) operates an Access to Information (ATI) Help Desk and has developed an accompanying Advocacy Toolkit for journalists and civil society activists.

Under SDG 16.10.1, there is also a requirement to monitor and report on the “number of verified cases of killing, kidnapping, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture of journalists, associated media personnel, trade unionists and human rights advocates in the previous 12 months.”

Article 19, a leading global free expression organisation, has registered concern that while 16.10.1 is important it does not capture the full range of attacks on journalists and activists including strategic litigation, online harassment, and other forms of abuse. Neither does it seek to record impunity when such violations occur.

So, while within Caricom (with the exception of Haiti), murder, kidnapping and torture involving journalists are uncommon, there has been a growing tendency by states and other players to resort to other forms of attacks on journalists and journalism.

This is just one sidebar to the SDG story within Caricom. It is now eight years since its adoption at the United Nations “to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.”

On Monday, UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, solemnly declared that “only 15 per cent of the targets are on track and many are going in reverse.” But while he reported positively on a US$500 billion “SDG Stimulus” to have some programmes executed, there is much that has been left undone my almost all of us.

The question of accountability and openness in the conduct of state business requires no considerable financial stimulus. Sadly, it’s not an area of achievement Caribbean countries were able to impressively report on in New York earlier this week. 

True, there are other urgent priorities that will be fully elaborated at the UN General Assembly this week, but transparency in the conduct of state business remains a persistent challenge. World leaders, including ours, promised much more.

 

A flag at the CPL

Many of us have been paying close attention to the progress of cricket franchises over the past few weeks in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL). The contest moves to Guyana today.

Friends who know my obstinate views on this have been quick to point out that what is important is who “hosts” the respective cricketing business enterprises and not who comprises the various teams. Good point.

This, they say, is the important factor to bear in mind. Fine, because it supports my point. This is not like other major sporting franchises where cities (and not countries) act as hosts – IPL, Big Bash, NFL, La Liga, EPL etc.

So, how did “national pride” and “patriotism” come into this?

The trouble is, since I raised this in the early years, such irrational passions have intensified. For example, when I switched allegiance from the “T&T Amazon Warriors” (my joke) to TKR this season (btw, there’s no country anywhere in the world named “Trinbago”), my friends and colleagues in the oil-rich South American republic were quick to brand the transition as treasonous.

It’s just that when Pakistani-American Ali Khan bowled Barbadian batsman Shai Hope during last week’s encounter at Queen’s Park Oval, I found it hard to visualise a vigorously waved T&T flag as a naturally occurring, sensible part of the picture.

Correspondingly, I cannot recall anything of the sort during the West Indies Rising Stars Under 15s Championship earlier this year. This event featured national teams. Neither were there wildly waved national flags at the Brian Lara Stadium in March when the real T&T cricket team was beaten to a frazzle by an authentic Guyanese outfit.

So, this CPL thing really has nothing to do with “patriotism” or faux jingoistic pride. But, as I advised right here six years ago “if you use a national flag in the branding of any product, you can convert support into passion, affection into love, and a simple contest into a war.”

This came into pathetic view in 2018 when our T&T national flag was trampled on the ground at Providence Stadium by “patriotic” Guyanese fans on whose CPL team then resided the likes of Rayad Emrit and Jason Mohammed.

This year, local content ambitions conspired to omit even a solitary T&T presence on the GAW team and there has been accompanying social media dialogue. Yet can anyone say where Odean Smith gets his pepperpot? Or identify Azam Khan’s favourite fruit stand at Bourda Market?

Likewise, the lady with the JA flag on Saturday should have asked Amir Jangoo which pan jerk vendor around Kingston was his favourite or whether Chris Green preferred Papine Market over Coronation.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think the CPL has done more to excite interest among West Indians in the game of cricket than any other current platform. It is also a very well organised series.

Even so, this is about the game of cricket and not “West Indies Cricket” which is a virtual irrelevance in at least the four Caricom countries whose populations have zero interest in the game. The regional movement’s contribution of time and resources toward the sport – in its manifestation as “West Indies Cricket” - has probably (and quite justifiably) led to questions about the allocation of membership dues.

But anywhere national flags are being waved, it is difficult to apply rigour and reason. The fact is, (and I revisit my 2018 call to reason) “West Indies Cricket” (not the game of cricket) - as an expression of a coherent Caribbean ethos - has not existed in a very long time. There is no educational force-feeding or social engineering capable of reversing the process among the millennials.” It’s long over.

Indeed, imprisoned swindler, Allen Stanford, was on to something long before anybody else when he launched his 20/20 tournament in 2006 – in that instance with real flags representing actual countries.

I have a good friend who is one of the greatest post-facto (seconds after the game has ended) supporters of sports teams. So, today it’s St Lucia Kings, but he can easily pivot to whoever beats them on any given day.

But even he is often quick to point out that a win for SLK is not necessarily a win for Saint Lucia since the CPL is not a contest to identify “the best national cricket team in the Caribbean.”

To claim otherwise would be almost as foolish as concluding that a country is the best in the world at something when the rest of the world is not considered part of the equation. The CPL does not determine the best country at cricket in the Caribbean. It is great fun and excellent skills are on display. Why can’t it just be that?

 

Suck teeth lite

Back in 2015, French schools banned what they called “le tchip”, or “teeth-sucking” in class, considering it to be highly rude, offensive, and disrespectful. At that time, the move drew attention to a practice described as being derived from African and Afro-Caribbean culture.

Though, together with “cut-eye”, “steupsing” (my preferred spelling and I am sticking with it) is common throughout our region and we shared the rap for it in France, we actually have West Africa to blame/credit for its genesis.

“Steupsing” is eloquently described in a 2002 academic paper by Esther Figueroa and Peter L. Patrick as the expressive output of a “velaric ingressive airstream involving closure at two points in the mouth: against the velum (using the back of the tongue), and farther forward.”

John and Angela Rickford (1999) described both “cut-eye” and “suck teeth” as “Africanisms” now common in the “New World.”

My mother, like so many other Caribbean parents, was capable of simultaneously delivering the two admonitions to great effect. Her version seemed to rely on gratuitously moist inner cheeks, pursed lips, and impressive lung capacity. She also had a particularly dangerous “cut-eye.”

During my recent assignment in Sierra Leone, I witnessed my mother’s deep version of the “steups” a few times, though it appeared more common to encounter the “suck teeth lite” version, given the hustle and bustle of life in Freetown.

I told my friend there, acclaimed businesswoman Hannah Rolanda Max-Macarthy, that in the Caribbean we call it everything from “suck teeth”, “kiss teeth” (Jamaica), to “steupsing”, “stupesing", and “choopsing” – an act intended to express disgust, disapproval, or mere annoyance, depending on intensity in delivery.

What do you call it there, Hannah? “Suck tit.” If you’ve heard Krio being spoken, you can see how “tit” (and not “teeth”) flows smoothly. But I am NOT going to use that expression in this town.

I also consulted with Nigerian colleague/social activist, Cynthia Mbamalu (find her on Instagram, you won’t regret it), and she was surprised that “steupsing”, intended to achieve the identical impacts as in her country, was so prevalent in the Caribbean.

“Sometimes, when my mom wants to let you know you just messed things up, she drags the steups...sometimes it feels like 10 seconds long, mixed with different rhythms,” she said.

I boasted that my own mother had been capable of changing keys and probably held the record for the longest “steups” since it was five of us and she was an equal opportunity steupser.

Cynthia’s Igbo people rather elaborately call it “ima osu” – clearly not as onomatopoeic as the Trini “steups”, and even “streups” (which captures the moist sound that strengthens the impact of a proper “steups”).

My theory is that to be effective, “steupsing” should result from air sucked through extravagantly pursed lips (baby kiss style) between tightly clenched front teeth and resonate from the flapping of relaxed inner cheeks and jaw teeth generated by that air.

Habitual experts can test the limits of natural teeth, implants, and dental fillings – such is the vacuum created by intense delivery.

There are recent examples of public steupsing by important people. The French would probably be impressed at the injection of a measure of gentility in the course of an obnoxious act. “What is the question?” “Gun” … quick front teeth steups and walk away. This is “suck teeth lite” if ever there were to be such a category.

I have actually heard “suck teeth lite” more than once in polite company. Cocktails at such and such business function: “This is how they want people to vote for them? Steups!”

Ordinary folk, unlikely to be recorded or publicly quoted, draw deeply from today’s warm atmosphere, do the duck lips, and ensure the fresh air is diverted to the corners of our mouths likely to yield the loudest, most moist sound. Hence “streups”.

But, oh no, “suck teeth lite” seems to intentionally convey unfamiliarity with the passion of a true “steups.”

We all do it, don’t we? Last week, after clearing out my bank account to pay the mechanic, the left front wheel of my car encountered a new pothole along Abercromby Street in St Joseph - now normalised as apparently permanent pothole territory.

True, I should not have been having a doubles while driving but I was hungry. When the metal twisting ‘bang’ came, the quick substitute to cussing (few people have ever heard me cuss) was a deep “streups” that helped lodge a semi-consumed channa near where oxygen is supposed to enter my lungs.

“It good for you,” you say. Cue the elusive Facebook “steups” emoji.

 

Death Announcements

Uncle Vin would lay the Trinidad Guardian down on the dining table, open the then broadsheet wide, and turn the pages slowly having read what seemed like every single word. There would be room for little else on that table. Eventually, he’d reach the Death Announcements and there would often be a polite scrum – Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Kello - to witness possibly familiar names or faces.

It was a process that demanded silence, broken only by “Did you see So and So died?” or “Isn’t that So and So’s father/mother/brother/sister?” I often kept a safe but listening distance.

Years later, at Radio 610, the newsroom compiled the Obituaries, so I ran but could not hide. I protested timidly at the imposition and met death there much more regularly than in our newscasts.

Then one day, in the Guardian, I saw a picture of someone I was sure I knew. It was him. Short guy who attended holiday camp and played some decent cricket. I wrote a poem about it. I kept looking, rather morbidly, for familiar names as the years passed.

It was possible at that time, I think, to measure growth and maturity through the attention paid to news of inevitable death. Today, so many of us scroll or turn to ‘that’ page as soon as we clear the news and op-eds.

With social media now appearing to hover over almost everywhere death can now find us, newspaper pages serve mainly to verify and to validate and to inscribe permanently what we have already found out.

It was this way I received four quick jabs to the head, neck, chest, and stomach over the past week, just days before the 28^th anniversary of my mother’s sudden and still unbelievable death on August 31, 1995. Back then, Elizabeth Solomon and I were working on a project when everything happened, and I remember her kindness and comfort.

Last Sunday I read three simple words from Elizabeth. Three words, as if to elude stern grammarian eyes. “Fair winds Daddy.” A sailor child to a sailor dad.

“Fair winds and following seas”, would probably have been how Denis would have preferred the sentence more completely flowed. For those kinds of reasons, whenever we spoke, I kept my sentences short and allowed him to do most of the talking - including the cussing. He never suffered fools lightly, and you did not want to cross combative paths with him.

He once wrote that while he was opposed to the death penalty, should anyone harm any of the children or grandchildren, he would hasten the perpetrator’s passing with bare hands.

I scrolled again on Sunday and saw that Denyse Plummer had also delivered her final note. No personal stories there, except the embedded memory of her remarkable journey as one of the most important musical voices of our time. Then too, the toilet paper she took and spun as artful yarn around our hearts.

And Grenfell Kissoon, focused and committed. When he smiled there appeared childlike mischief, but for the most part there was a stony steadfastness the world of media typically demands. In his case, post 1990, there was a persistent memory of survival. Current testimonies confirm an important role in local media in all its corporate, professional, and inter-personal manifestations.

Roydon Salick’s ‘Mayaro Gold: The Fiction of Michael Anthony’ was also only recently launched by Ian Randle Publishers.

Our other giant, Prof. Kenneth Ramchand, wrote of the publication: “(it) understands well enough the combined force of the fictions and the social, cultural, and historical works in which Anthony builds a unique history of Trinidadian cultures and historic moments. It invites new readers to take a serious look at Michael Anthony as an educator who makes it exciting to find out who we are.”

To some of the rest of us who met him and benefitted from Michael Anthony’s wisdom, generosity and charm, Ramchand’s reflections on the book (and since then), are difficult to match in eloquence and emotional impact.

Back in the 70s at QRC, Derrick Poon Young once practised his martial arts on me by delivering four quickfire punches to head, neck, chest, and stomach. The blows hurt rather badly. Over the last few days, both the QRC experience and Uncle Vin have come to mind.  

 

The Artificial Intelligence question

It may well be there are teams of expert public servants quietly locked away at ministry engine rooms, and activists associated with political organisations contemplating issues of technological change and its impacts on national development.

For, it is evident that none of it is currently being captured in the public dialogue of our politicians of all persuasions, even when scrupulously guided on public policy by senior civil servants, paid advisors, and otherwise smart people.

Neither is there proof, through action, that basic entry into the digital realities of the modern world is being embraced as an unavoidable step in the development process.

And, why not the platforms accorded local government contestants, to cite one example? What else do political organisations do to display relevance to increasingly challenging global circumstances?

Yes, this is me; yet again lamenting the painful lack of progress on basic digitalisation of public transactions, and even more than that, tracking the most recent developments associated with the emergence of Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) as a feature of current realities.

So, this is much more than digital ED cards for international travel, or online payment portals, or digitised official documentation and processes for procuring them. There are smaller regional neighbours who have detected positive implications regarding the cost of such transactions.

For expert instruction, there are journalists such as Mark Lyndersay who scan the minutiae of technological possibilities for evidence of public understanding on such matters. He is likely to agree with me that our shortcomings extend as much to private entrepreneurial limitations as they do with respect to undeniable official, public sector resistance to change.

On Monday, I received a report released by the International Labour Organization (ILO) analysing the “potential exposure of occupations and tasks to Generative AI.” I wondered then, what was the likely contribution of the social partners in the sphere of labour rights in T&T to this discussion. What are their views, if any?

Could it be that the PSA or OWTU or TTALPA had provided informed comment arising out of their understanding of the impact of this emerging platform on jobs and employment possibilities? Perhaps they have deployed member financial contributions to closely examine what becomes of occupations and tasks in the public service, the energy sector, and in aviation?

Are there folks at the Ministry of Labour currently engaged in reconciling ILO observations regarding the “exposure” of clerical workers in all sectors to adjustments in job quality and quantity?

How is the Ministry of Digital Transformation interpreting the anticipated calibrations throughout all sectors of the public sector?

Don’t get me wrong, operating in the Caribbean regional space entitles me to record similar observations on a wider scale – among them being the fact that public service resistance and private sector lethargy are strong features of the move to embrace digitalisation in almost all its aspects, and there is virtually nothing happening when it comes to anticipating Generative AI impacts.

It is not that we are all ignoring the signs. The more developed sectors of the regional media industry, for instance, are already (slowly) stepping into the frame.

At the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC), whenever AI enters the discourse, there have been found to be quite enlightened reflections on opportunities and challenges. Not enough, yet though. Legacy media are already among the most affected, if only due to the pervasive impacts of social media.

Back to the ILO study, there is acknowledgment of wide areas of variability, but great value in the way it explores general principles required to head-off net negative effects.

For one, governments and their social partners such as unions, business chambers, and employers’ organisations need to jointly and proactively design “policies that support orderly, fair, and consultative transitions, rather than dealing with change in a reactive manner.”

“Moreover,” the report says, “the likely ramifications on job quality might be of greater consequence than the quantitative impacts, both with respect to the new jobs created because of the technology, but also the potential effects on work intensity and autonomy when the technology is integrated into the workplace.”

Last Monday, the international NGO, Digital Communication Network (DCN) Global, also hosted an online session on Information as a Public Good, and questions about governance and the maintenance of democratic conditions kept coming up as potential subjects and objects of technological change.

How can our policymakers (and people with an expressed interest in our future as a country) not be concerned about these things, even as a function of the way our social institutions, including political parties and sectional representatives, operate? There is sad evidence they are not.

National issue – local solution

While conducting a quick scan of proceedings in my area last Monday, I noted the ease with which tardy electors were on public walkways negotiating what appears to be a growing population of seemingly homeless people in my general space incorporating St Joseph, Curepe, and Tunapuna.

True, on election day, these people appeared as scarce as midday voters and open bars. Maybe it is, as some suspect, that “they living somewhere” and roam as mendicants solely in the dark seeking unsecured bins and familiar philanthropists who won’t throw things at them or chase them away.

But, Monday evening, after they had survived weeks of loudspeakers, canvassing teams, and frenetic politicking, did any of them find time or opportunity to look on quietly in the opportunistic hope that the solemn task would eventually yield rewards?

You couldn’t bet on any animated huddle around a television set or radio – except perhaps those who “live somewhere” and leave with clean shirts at night. I don’t know.

It however would not have been irrational for them to have been absent. For, if they listened to the loudspeakers, they would not have heard much about themselves, if at all; not even as a national challenge requiring localised, community solutions.

Though official focus appears preoccupied with the poor condition of Port of Spain, it’s not absolutely different in numerous other communities throughout the country. Maybe in numbers, but not in essential nature.

In our neck of the woods, in the east, there are now familiar faces (and a growing number of new ones) with numerous heart-breaking real and fictitious stories for which food, drinks, and/or money provide solutions.

The more fortunate meanwhile have the option of crossing the street, walking around, pretending not to hear, or digging deep and hoping they forget you the next time you pass. “Things not easy these days, boy.”

There was one guy I remember from my teenage years. He went to secondary school, played some decent softball cricket, a little football, and smoked weed with the rest of us.

He disappeared for years, then re-emerged about five years ago as a Curepe Junction regular. Conversations often turned quickly to money or food.

Last week, I asked the oysterman and learned that this old friend had died less than a year ago.

I remember back in 1987 with the advent of a new political administration, there was the bold pronouncement by the humanitarian-minded that “vagrancy” would end sooner rather than later. Like the “cleanup” that occurred that January. That it was simply a matter of “political will” to get it done.

At that time, and perhaps not for the very first time, there was a well-publicised effort to address situations such as my late friend’s, as outcomes of underlying social, economic, and medical conditions. I must have written thousands of words of news copy explaining what had been considered 36 years ago. It all seemed to make sense.

However, it appeared to me then, as it does now, that national politicians should concede greater space to community wisdom on such matters, and kindly step aside. Otherwise, what we are left with are resolute soundbites, headlines, and convenient shibboleths.

There is evidence that people who have been employing science and not politics to dissect the growing incidence of homelessness/mendicancy here have a grip not only on the underlying conditions, but some of what is necessary to humanely address the challenge.

Young psychologist, Sule Joseph, broke things down rather competently in a recent newspaper interview. He cited the multifaceted nature of homelessness and the psychological underpinnings of some elements of the phenomenon.

As has been explained before, and impressively restated by Joseph, there are issues that have much to do with the rest of us at stake. This is no mere outcome of “laziness” or wilful protest against the status quo – though there are those, according to Joseph, who decide to opt out of the rat race. Indeed, some have been pushed out.

Back in 1987, it had been explained that while homelessness was sometimes the outcome of financial collapse and/or familial discord, there were more often than not instances where mental illness and (not unrelated) substance abuse had been causative factors.

Amateurs such as the politicians who have proposed solutions including coercive exile to outlying islands, prison, and high-power hoses, typically remain silent on such matters during election campaigns.

Last Monday was no exception. An opportunity was lost to explain how local organisation and action can, indeed, resolve an important matter of national concern. What were the issues that sidelined it?