Aren’t you aware that they have already changed the formula for calculating the NIS pension resulting in a smaller pension because they have projected that there would not be enough money in the fund to pay pensions by 2035? However, they are taking steps to further deplete the fund. That only makes sense to someone with an agenda that is not in the best interest of the Bajan worker.

Bottom line is Barbados needs to create jobs now.

Suggestions anyone?

@Random Thoughts, if the empty hotel rooms are not going to be filled then Barbados will be in deep doo doo.

The project will take at least three years to complete and there is an expectation that the world economy will be recovering.

“I hope that the Tony Marshall led NIS Board with the learned Dr Justin Robinson as Deputy Chairman would do the ethical and honorable thing and resign if they vote with political sword of Damocles hanging over their heads”.

Skipper, this is like asking a yardfowl early in the morning not to pick at scratch grain thrown in front of it.

Have you ever heard the Bajan saying about going to a four cross road at midnight and selling one’s soul to the devil? Pick sense from that!

It is clear that those who govern can wipe their dirty shitty feet on the citizens of this country , kick them, spit on them and get away with it. Why ? We allow it!

As Random thought said …..”If we are going to create jobs to build empty hotel rooms to join other empty hotel rooms why not just mail checks to the (non)workers.”

Mr Stuart once claimed that he is going to make Barbados the envy of the Caribbean…..is he still working on it? Right now we are on comedy hour. Imagine even considering and meeting to discuss taking our NIS funds to fund a project that no private investor will back in these times, while we sit helplessly looking on because there is no one looking out for our future. We now have to try and live past nearly seventy to enjoy our pension while a politician only has to get to the age of fifty to be eligible. Someting ent right here!

@uneducated

Arthur invested in those projects in times of plenty.

The viability of a project has to be evaluated on merit and not on any across the board comparison.

Dear Minister of Finance, here is how you may raise your 4S investment without the NIS or additional GOB debt. Land, despite recent declines, is still overpriced. The GOB has a land inventory, from which it offers land at $5/sf. to the lower income market. There is a group of Barbadians, with significant savings, looking for good investments, but not willing to pay ridiculous rates for land. I suggest that you offer some 20,000 sf. lots at $10/sf. to these individuals and you will have you money in no time. The offer must be limited to one lot per person, unless all lots are not taken-up, where the remainder may be purchased by anyone.

The problem in Barbados is with it’s people, we need to be matured enough to think outside the box of the DLP or BLP, but see nationalism as the main focus. Stop thinking the BLP did it so if the DLP do it, What? Until we start seeing these problems facing this country as national problems and not BLP/DLP problems, both parties will have their yardfowls to crow for them while they satify themselves and the yardfowls get the crumbs that falls from the table. Wake up Barbados and start thinking for yourselves, many of you have more commonsense than many of our representatives, so we should not allow them to dictate our way of thinking or acting.WAKE UP

Without sounding like a BLP supporter, it would be interesting to see how the BLP would handle Barbados NOW in this crisis. Remember, Sandiford handed the government over to the BLP at a time when things were in place for the economy to improve, now that we are in this mess, the BLP will have to prove their worth in taking us out. JUST THINKING

@ The Scout | November 26, 2011 at 9:08 AM |
“it would be interesting to see how the BLP would handle Barbados NOW in this crisis.”

You probably have a financial interest in a funeral home or build or import coffins from China. Are you wishing for a mass kill of pols and their lackeys?
Man this problem is way out of the league of “caretaker type” managers.
Can’t you see that the surgery that is required to save the Barbados economy none of the local quacks want to perform? The required socially invasive surgery from welfare disbursements, crash diet to reduce an obese army of occupation to tertiary hair cuts have been recommended by the overseas-based surgical consultants. But it seems the local house doctors are reluctant to put these life saving measures to the public and place their losing hands on the taxpayers’ table.

Only a sudden heart attack (delays in finding enough forex to pay for petroleum products) would act as a SOS to the overseas consultants who would be here faster than a bullet to apply the requisite heat from the IMF financial laser beam.

Here is a view from Hal Austin circulating on email:

  —– Original Message —–
From: Hal Austin
To: hal.austin@
Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2011 11:39 AM
Subject: Notes From a Native Son – Four Seasons

By Hal Austin

It is now clear that the national insurance scheme’s investment committee is coming under enormous pressure to approve the Bds$50m loan to Four Seasons.
Although there is no objective business or macroeconomic ground on which the money should be given – since it would not be an investment ‘loan’ as the project is clearly a white elephant – the investment committee has been ordered to re-instruct the team of analysts which rightly recommended that the ‘investment’ should not be made and to do so in a short time.
It has long been the case the NIS has been used as a piggy bank by governments – both BLP and DLP – but at a time of great economic pressure this is neither the time nor project for which government should use taxpayers’ money.
The game has now changed and quite clearly it is an opportunity for concerned citizens to challenge government in the courts.
I suggest that a panel of concerned lawyers, business people and ordinary citizens should come together to challenge any decision to invest in Four Seasons is the courts.
Public donations should be offered to meet any legal costs, and in the event of the state losing the case, eash and every individual involved in this decision should be held personally responsible for the loan.
We cannot allow individuals to hide behind their positions to make undemocratic decisions, which this would be if government refuses to take impartial advice.
If necessary, the case should be taken to the Caribbean Court of Justice. At the very least, it would set out the parameters in which government can make policy. This is the price we pay for not having a written constitution.
More than that, with a forthcoming general election, voters should compel the ruling DLP to justify on public platforms why it decided to go ahead with funding for Four Seasons, in the light of reasoned objections.
In any case, there is still a lot of information which must be made public, including the arrangement with the executive chairman, the company’s advisers, its legal structure and the reasons why government should be ‘investing’ or lending money to a private enterprise with out clearer transparency.
With a new chief justice in place, the government must be challenged over this ridiculous approach to Four Seasons. In any case, why the rush? Why not a proper public debate? Why can’t Four Seasons lay bare its books for public inspection?

What has transpired is the total lack of diregard and respect for its people we are witnessing the ruthless by our goverment to be sole controler of our money and it is frigthening.Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This will be one case for the CCJ that everyone in the Caribbean will be watching with great interest!

@miller

have u just awaken from your slumber to know about ruthlessness and righteousness. I pity you.

OSA was one of the most ruthless and vicious prime minister barbados has ever seen and it might be because of his short man syndrone. Go preach somewhere else.

Four years and the apologists still talking about a BLP mess. SMFH

actually the English parent company book are easily accessible on-line. so are any of the other English companies listed in the clear water bay legislation. cinamon88 was suppose to be liquidated. http://barbadosparliament.com/htmlarea/uploaded/File/Bills/2011/Bill%20Clearwater%20Bay%20Limited%20%28Guarantee%20of%20Loan%29%202011.pdf see page 3 http://companycheck.co.uk/company/OC308140 for Paradise Beach LLP parent company of paradise beach limited, paradise beach 88 paradise beach 88 L.P. And eastern resorts limited. http://companycheck.co.uk/company/00907806

@ uneducated | November 26, 2011 at 11:09 AM |
“OSA was one of the most ruthless and vicious prime minister Barbados has ever seen and it might be because of his short man syndrome. Go preach somewhere else.”

Could you please explain the link between OSA and ac’s contribution?
I am at a lost so help me (Mr. Pitiful).

Now you are the same “uneducated” (prematurely rechristened Mr. “Reeducated) who boastfully sang the praises of the UWI in his day of teaching the art of critical thinking and intellectual honesty. I am sure in your compulsory Use of English course you were also exposed to the various techniques of argument and debate. Now why do you have such a bee in your bonnet for OSA as to refer to him in such awful and personally degrading terms? Your use of “ad hominems” is most unrefined and totally unbecoming of UWI scholarship. The quality of teaching and learning in those days was of the highest level easily comparable to any first rate tertiary institution in the UK. Now, by your outburst mired in political prostitution you have allowed yourself to be nakedly exposed only to be striped of any claim to intellectual competence and scholarly achievements from the said Institution you have unwittingly brought into a poor light. The gravamen of your statement about a fellow graduate who, despite his human shortcomings (no pun intended here if you can get the point), has done yeoman service for Barbados to the extent of putting his health in a compromising position. For three continuous terms the Bajan electorate expressed confidence in the so-called ‘ruthless and vicious tyrant Barbados ever experienced’. So, can one conclude that during this period the majority of voting Barbadians were a bunch load of hypocritical, gullible, brutally exploited and oppressed idiots? The title of the “Right Honourable’ might be old hat stilted, and colonial in origin but it still means a lot to many Barbadians of your generation and before who worked their butts off to make the kind of sacrifices so that ungrateful people like you can get a tertiary education instead of picking pond grass and “tending’ animals on Murphy’s pasture.

Question the man’s current political acumen and capacity to lead again Barbados out of this economic quagmire or quicksand. But please, demonstrate that at least you attended some of Dr. Allsops’(?) et al UoE sessions and leave out the vicious personal attacks on The Rt. Hon. OSA.
You can do better! Prove me right by not attacking me “personally” too!

Hal Austin wrote “the ruling DLP to justify on public platforms why it decided to go ahead with funding for Four Seasons, in the light of reasoned objections.”

Hants pov. It is project ready to be restarted, will directly employ at least 500 people and will create indirect jobs in the business sector and government will collect more VAT and income taxes from the workers.

@ Uneducated
Your brilliant party should have given some of the construction work at Coverley, Stuarts Lodge, Valery and Warrens to other firms beside JADA.

The economic storm is going to hit us soon and all intellegent bajans can do is to be parisan with a FULL dose of yardfowlism. I fail to see how educated, intellegent, matured people could allow any political party to so brainwash you that they can erase your own thoughts and replace them with theirs, while the only ones to benefit are the politicians themselves. We need to forget about DLP or BLP and think and act on behalf of justice and fairplay for our country. No one man politician should be able to make decisions for thousands of workers.

“The economic storm has been hitting since 2009. Now a hurricane coming.
Be prepared.”

Oh ye prophets of doom and gloom! Look on the bright side!
A much simpler tropical lifestyle might just make us: healthier and less obese; re-establish a clean and vibrant relationship with the land and mother nature; less stress, talk and play a bit more with our families and neigbours; save forex by importing less food and junk; stop educating fools and asses to tertiary level; put the politicians in their places as representatives of the people and not as their masters.

We don’t want to bring about this paradigm shift in our socio-economic reltionships so we will have to import a solution.
What a difference an IMF day makes!
And now the end is here and we face the final sweet life curtain. Our friends we had it good but too good to last!. As the donkey told the pig on the way to market from a pig’s easy and corpulent (fattening) life on the farm: “Sweet life ain’t long life!” Arri vederci, la dolce vita!

2 ac | November 26, 2011 at 7:26 PM |
You have me in stitches! Rolling on the floor crying my eyes out!
“night does run til day ketch it!”
The piper must be paid before the show ends!

http://www.nationnews.com/articles/view/morris-named-caricom-ambassador/

http://www.nationnews.com/index.php/articles/view/redjet-needs-8m/

@Enuff

you are rebuked in the name of ignorance. amen.