Submitted by Beresford
IMF reports 1,800 public workers sent home so far.
The Democratic Labour Party, (DLP), Government is determined to play out a scorched earth policy and an end game for Barbados that is strictly political and self-serving. The wanton deception of the DLP, uncaring nature of its actions and fatalistic belief in its own inadequacies make it inarguable that the Government intends to fall in the furnace headfirst and take the rest of Barbadians with it. The DLP is now so steeped in speaking with forked tongues that they apparently are unable to decipher what is truth from lie.
A Government that continues down such a path is stamped with a peculiar brand of perverseness that no one can be faulted for concluding that some sort of psychosis unknown to Barbados in its history is now afflicting the DLP leadership and Cabinet that prevents it from levelling with Barbadians. The tall tales are just too easy to prosecute and convict as figments of someone’s imagination. The Government is so caught in constructing a pyramid that even as it crumbles, it spins another yarn. Barbadians have now discovered, thanks to the IMF Article 1V Report, that the DLP chopped off 1800 workers by 31 January, 2013. This is simply not true. Not according to what the Government has been telling those it is supposed to be honest with when the Government said layoffs only began on the same 31 January.
This latest episode of Chopped by the DLP is characterised with the sort of harshness, insensitivity, disregard for due process and confusion that is now brand DLP. Imagine delivering termination letters by messenger on a Saturday! Imagine having a messenger deliver the dreaded termination papers, and then giving him his! How can the most senior person in a section, with no complaints against him, be sent home while others who came after be left?
The DLP’s twists and turns with the 3000 job executions, its contemptuous disdain for the unions and approach in serving the unemployment sentence is stained with political spite, thoughtlessness and callousness that the people of Barbados have never experienced and do not deserve.
Senator Jerome Walcott has pointed out, the Government is likely in contravention of ILO rules. At the same time, Maxine McClean proclaims that the 10% salary cut to Ministers is merely symbolic – in other words, of no consequence, mere window dressing. She has said it’s not the money, there are other things. Like first class travel around the world with nothing to show for it.
Harry Husbands will do all in his power to see the DLP plan succeed – never mind it is wrong, never mind the suffering people, never mind the destruction of the country.
And in the debate in the Senate on Wednesday, not a word from the Minister of Labour, Esther Byer Suckoo. She is still reeling from the slap down by Chris Sinckler that she does not even know how many will be sent home.
For once, she is in good company – neither does the rest of Barbados. It would have to be at least 3 400, because Suckoo unwittingly exposed that the 400 from Drainage were not in the 3000.
The latest IMF Report condemned the manner in which people were terminated. It has said that there were other options open to the Government. It says that the Government is still a ways from meeting its own targets and implementing its own programme. No growth is projected this year and into the next.
Despite the Credit Suisse loan in December, to shore up reserves, reserves are down by $110 million. That loan will soon evaporate. From its own bosom, they have been bitten by a pit-bull in the outcry by David Estwick that the DLP policies are totally wrong. His prognosis and plan is a mirror image of what Mia Mottley, Owen Arthur, Clyde Mascoll, the whole BLP has telling the country for years.
The DLP simply is not putting Barbados first.
Rather, it appears to be resolutely adverse to doing that – giving Barbadians the true picture, listening to us rather businessman or employee, technocrat or expert, and constructing a path out of the mire in which it has placed the country that has a modicum of sensitivity about it, and one which will deliver the less harm to citizens and country as possible.
This is not nearly the case, even now as we lurch from one chasm to the next.
An inch from destruction, Freundel Stuart refuses to admit not a sin, but stretch the blame game and seek to demean everyone else to prove his innocence, the worth of his raping the nation with economic destruction.
Nailed to the cross, long convicted by institutions, independent experts, every Barbadian not clouded by the political narcissism and the daily pain of life in Barbados, the Prime Minister does not seek forgiveness and try to turn from failure after failure, but lashes out in defence of his foolishness.
He does not listen to any critics – they are nuisances. Point out the lack of logic of DLP statements, the absence of common sense of its approach, lack of leadership in the country…never mind the facts, we are all nuisances.
Stuart himself has established that the office of Prime Minister is too big for the simple existence of a man who delights in washing his underwear. And so he indulges in theoretical excursions in wonderland to excuse his incompetence; akin to a simpleton explaining space flight.
It is that other Prime Ministers faced recessions. Sure Stuart, but the difference was they took action. It is grappling with debt left by the BLP. The fact is, Stuart, that the DLP in six years have tallied more debt – almost $4 billion – that all the other Governments together in the 47 years of Independent Barbados.
If we could cut salaries, no one would have to go home. Let the General Secretary of CTUSAB, Dennis Depeiza reply. That is nonsense and politiking. Stuart and Sinckler, you surely know that it would take every public servant having a 40% cut – that is $40 taken away from every $100 – to even attempt to solve the DLP’s problem.
Attempt. Because it would only make dire matters worse. Workers have effective had salary cuts through no wage increases for four years, increased VAT and new taxes plus out of control cost of living. Every Barbadian can apply a 40% cut to their salary and circumstances – mortgages, utility payments, car, children, food, _ and see the horror and idiocy of this DLP yardfowlism and then see the impact of it on the economy.
The DLP just is not working.
Stuart, please stop the foolishness and deviousness. Admit you are not the man for the job. The best way now is to save yourself from the country. Or as Estwick has said, the country will have to save itself from you.
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND
For Immediate Release
Press Statement by the Honourable Mia Amor Mottley Q.C., M.P., Leader of the Opposition, Political Leader, Barbados Labour Party
Focus on the message – not the messenger.
The reality is Barbados is in serious crisis.
Even though we understand why certain special interest groups would have trivialized what persons like Clyde Mascoll, Owen Arthur and myself have been saying for the last 5 years, we would hope now that with the same message coming from a senior Minister of Government, persons with influence would wake up to the reality of the grave economic crisis that confronts us.
I have read what Dr Estwick is purported to have told his Cabinet colleagues and it would be almost treasonous for anyone armed with these facts to remain silent and non-responsive.
The issue now is not so much about David Estwick but about the sobering reality of the 2014 Barbados that he has revealed.
The BLP remains deeply worried about where we are and the need for urgent action to take us out of this economic and social quagmire.
Too many People in this country are suffering.
What is needed now is for concerned Barbadians to enjoin the conversation that has started.
We need good men and women with a love for Barbados to stand now in its defense.
February 14, 2014
Why is there so much empty rhetoric coming from both sides?
Why is Barbados in the economic quagmire?
Why did the likes of Robert Ross vote for the Democratic Labour Party?
Head and body not in sinc with Sinc,Stuart or Worrell.
@Gabriel
At this stage we can’t be bothered about political leaning. What is the plan!
@ Gabriel
Why did the likes of Robert Ross vote for the Democratic Labour Party?
Perhaps because they did not like the years of bribe-taking, stealing, cost over-runs, ineptitude, and morons (like Noel Lynch, Wuk for Wuk), drunken vindictiveness, and waste…..
…and they did not imagine that the alternative was about the same….
Why do you think the seats were almost split 50:50 in 2013?
..six is half dozen.
Stop asking foolish questions.
Did Estwick REALLY tell the Cabinet of Barbados that not only is the Government pursuing the wrong economic and fiscal policies but it was the policies of the Government SINCE 2008 that got the country in it’s present crisis?!!!! That is incredible.
I will have to choose that the Nation newspaper made this up. Otherwise I would have to believe that the DLP (including Estwick and regardless of what Bush Tea writes) is a threat to the security and well being of most Barbadians and is very, very much worse than the BLP (which admittedly is bad).
So regardless of what has been written on BU and said by many for the last six years, I would have to support the Government as it increases the level of taxation to crippling levels, greatly reduce the quantity and quality of public services, layoff many more Government employees and possibly officially devalue the dollar. I will have to believe that these measures will somehow result in the well being of myself and my family along with the majority of Barbadians. To do otherwise would be to risk depression and mental instability which may lead to having my head cracked or being shot.
I think we have seen the last of the DLP government for a while, that’s not to say things will get better overnight, but the BLP seems to have a better policy right now.
@Gabriel
Do you think given our reputed level of education both sides have the capacity to see the need to soak down in order to preempt the possibility of the spark doing untold damage to ALL?
David
The plan (if it can be called a plan)is with the people of Barbados.It has not yet hit home to the electorate that we are in dire straits.It seems it has to get to that stage.IMHO it is going to be like a thief in the night,simply spontaneous.All the ingredients are there except the spark.
@ Ping Pong
But Looka Bushie crosses nuh…!
How you mean “… No matter what Bushie writes…” Ping Pong? The bushman holds no brief for Estwick or the DLP…..
Bushie only bias is towards BBE….
Bushie will call a spade a spade…and the BLP spent 15 years spading …and Bushie said so.
Who could have contemplated that the DLP would come along and be worse than spades….. Damn backhoes then…
…BUT. HERE IS BUSHIE’S point…..
Clearly neither of the two sets of spades have the answers we need…
So simply picking back up the old spade because this current one is full of shiite is NO solution….it will be déjà vu all over again….
Why can’t we spend some time getting to the ROOT of our problem – and seek a lasting and REALISTIC solution?
…..wunna frighten of the possibility that the solution may be that the bushman is right after all about the BBE plan…..and the inevitability of the bush whacking that is due to take place…?
@Bush Tea
Where your last comment is flawed is that if both are the same as far as solving the problem then we the people reserve the right to change the two political parties like dirty underwear until enough tension is created on the problem and we get forward movement.
Bush Tea
Like a slow moving accident happening before our eyes you may be right but can our Government be more irrational and perverse in its behavior than at present? I acknowledge that expecting Barbadians to act in their own interest and clean this mess up is probably naive in the extreme and the epitome of illogical thinking.
Gabriel
Not for the first time you are reading what you want to read. But see, eg, the ‘Mia’ post. Oh yes…for the avoidance of doubt…I am NOT John Rogers either.
@ David
In response to your solution re changing dirty underwear, Bushie refers you to Ping Pong assertion below…
I acknowledge that expecting Barbadians to act in their own interest and clean this mess up is probably naive in the extreme and the epitome of illogical thinking
Bushie rest….
@Bush Tea
Nobody knows what tension will result. The idea that a party can be changed in a five year cycle (this government almost started the cycle) may yet start the change movement.
David @12.54p
A reasonable position to take but I don’t see that calibre of politician among the current DLP government. If Erskine Sandiford was arrogant and strong headed and refused counsel when many among his cabinet sought to bring reason to the then existing situation,Freundel Stuart is doubly arrogant,insulting,lying and worst of all inexperienced in matters of Public Finance.The Elders of the DLP like Sleepy,Maurice,Philip,should have been reining in Stuart since 2009/10,but I suspect that he has all of a sudden,like most of them in politics,think they are omnipotent. I suggest that this Westminster System we practise is another term for the word Dictatorship.It is seen in the style of Stuart.He will not accomodate his critcis nor compromise with them because he sees himself to be a weak individual if he ‘condescends’ to seek a negotiated settlement with his perceived tormentors.The man goes home to an empty house,empty of love,kindness,graciousness,reason,respect and those other qualities which makes for a more rounded and perceptive person.
Thus far Stuart can count his lucky stars that Eric Sealy is not alive and well.
Despite all those seriously serious character warts that Gabriel mentions, it must be agreed that Fumble is a seriously serious intellectual. Err….well, that was how he was seriously packaged wasn’t it? I understand he is writing his autobiography. Having read Gabriel, he has decided to call it ‘The Empty House’ with the sub-title ‘Legally Blinde and Beyond’.
Never before in the modern history of Barbados have so many persons in this country been heard by so many Barybadians too to be calling for a”third” party to help manage the political affairs of this country.
So, in spite of the fact that these persons making such calls may not know that there are already more than six parties in Barbados – and the fact that they are calling for such for very divergent reasons, we in the PDC have still been made to discern from these calls that these persons have at least come to the realization that this very gross, vulgar, stupid DLP/BLP cycle must go.
PDC
Well PDC it means the other four ‘registered’ political parties are not seen as credible alternatives.
So wunna can’t take a hint PDC?
David,
We are sure that they understand that there are processes – political and otherwise – that are involved in the emergence and building of strong national political alternatives in this country, and that it takes some time for the proper construction of those types of alternatives.
Moreso, we must tell you, tell the person going by the handle – Bush Tea, and tell all those others who blog and post on here, and too those persons who only read these blogs and posts, that the political conditions – at this juncture – in Barbados are such that they are extremely favourable for the emergence and development of serious people centered nationalist developmentalist party political alternatives in this country; and that this is so with or without respect to the massive failings of DLP and BLP governments over the years.
PDC
PDC
Everyone agrees on the need for a REAL party. There is no need for a third, seventh or ninth.
The challenge is for someone who is interested, and intelligent enough, to conceptualize a political construct that meets the current and future needs of the country.
Anything to offer along that line?
…and your current rambling “no income tax / no interest” gibberish does NOT cut it ….OK?
This post is dedicated to all those persons who come on this blog network from time to time and do the reading but who at the same time do not post ( at least that is what they tell us).
The fact is that many of these persons we do know or are acquainted with – and the reverse is the same, and they include Dr. Rodney Worrell and our mutual friend – Oliver, Dario Alleyne, Dr Terrance Marshall, Dr Don Marshall, Inspector Barry Hunte, David – BU – Douglas Trotman, Peta, Veronica, Paul, Fabian, Dennis Johnson – who tells us keep up the good “work”, our friend – the tall bespectacled financial economist, our friend the teacher at Harrison College, who says we do these epistles, Mohammed who does business with S Y Adam and Son, the gentleman who used to go by the handle – Roger Rabbit, the guy who works as an EMT at the QEH, our friend who works in the government service and who says to us she reads our posts with much diligence, our friend who owns the interior cleaning firm, our brother who lived in the United States and who we had a very good discussion with on the state of politics in Barbados today and on the Abolition of Taxation, in the first half of last year – can you contact us shortly? – and many more.
As for Dave Cumberbatch – the Chief – we do not know if he has been coming on here, since the middle of last year – when we suggested to him that he explores and debates with us and the wider BU some of his ideas for the betterment of this country on this BU network, and in spite of his promises to do so.
Anyhow, let us begin this piece by stating that since the end of last year, the political economy and services industry sectors of Barbados have entered their seventh successive year of political economic depression. And there are many fundamental reasons why this is so. One of them is that there has been over the last twenty years or so in Barbados increasing and tremendous use of debit/credit cards, cheques, etc, etc by the relevant persons, businesses, and other categories of entities that have been involved in the processes of the transacting of goods and services at the domestic level in this country.
Indeed, such (described) operations are in constrast to what used to obtain more than twenty years ago in the entire transactional processes of such goods and services in this land – in that – there was greater use of money by the relevant persons, businesses and other categories of entities as a percentage of the total transactions that were taking place.
Let us say before we go any further that use of the term” money” in the remainder of this post only refers to Barbadian currency.
Well, it is widely known that use of money by the relevant persons has long been the most significant indicator of the various levels of material production that have been are or will be taking place in this island, sufficient that the greater the amount of production and use of goods, the greater the use of money by the particular people than before – and sufficient that the lesser the amount of production and use of goods, the lesser the use of money by the particular people than before. Hence, the greater the production and use of goods the greater the amount of material activity in the political economy and the greater the amount of income generated nationally, and the lesser the production and use of goods the lesser the amount of material activity in the political economy and the lesser the amount of income generated nationally, notwithstanding that at whatever end of the so-called business cycle the country would be in there would be the fact of the government’s inhuman evil impositions of taxation on the same incomes of the same persons and other categories of entities.
Also, the fact is that whatever the levels of material money activity in Barbados that took place before or after them, and whether such levels could have been described as buoyant or stagnant, booming or busting, the country did reach a peak and the beginning of this current down slide in the material production and distribution process in the 80s, when there were extensive and still burgeoning disconnections BETWEEN the PASSING ON by and to one another of the relevant commodities – including money – AND the use of these commodities – wherever possible – to help provide the requisite commercial or financial services.
So, with money – as a special commodity – having been from the 90s and still today being increasingly used by thousands upon thousands of persons as a means of “servicing” personal, corporate or instiutional “debt” – a foolish myth – it has meant that currently in Barbados the REAL ACTUAL COST OF USE OF MONEY (local) would have had to reach very, very staggeringly high levels – thus leaving less and less money to be used by the relevant users of it in the process of the transacting of INCOME in the production and use of goods in the country.
Now, the increasing use by many people, businesses and other categories of entities of false and fictitious numbers a la debit/credit cards, cheques, etc, over the same last 20 years or so ( to this point ) has NOT ONLY restricted business transactions to those persons, businesses and other entities that have the facilities to deal with those cards and cheques, and has NOT ONLY made sure – by the financial actions of the relevant people – that ACTUAL money has “to follow” those false fictitious cards chequing numbers in almost each and every instance of the use of those false fictitious numbers (especially as it relates to the situation where money has been deposited as remunerations, or later additions to their costs, in the core financial system of this country, as a means of giving opportunities for the cards and cheques to be used in the particular ways concerned.), BUT it ALSO shown that in each and every instance of the use of debit or credit card numbers or chequing numbers having been used, or wherever they have been or are used, that the persons who are the first users of them in the respective goods and services transactions, are PASSING ON – at the same time, or reasonably before or after the time of getting the benefits of the goods or services – NO COMMODITIES from themselves to the owners of the goods and services that they are receiving or using; and in the case of money institutions that are giving cheques to others to help them get social commercial assets, they are getting – at the same time, or before or after giving the cheques, NO COMMODITIES from the persons and other entities that are getting these false fictitious loans as well, and NOR are they giving ANY COMMODITIES EITHER to the relevant people – and in the case of persons who are getting remunerations out of core financial institutions, they are – at the same time, or before or after the time of getting the remunerations, giving NO COMMODITIES to the core financial system.
Finally, what can be seen from those and many other scenarios like those is that cards/cheques are NOT commodities and are therefore not passable among multitudes of people as products items within the goods and services market. The fact of the inter passability features being so inherent in the commodities transaction processes means that such features are significantly responsible for the growing and building of the political economy of this country. Thus, such constant building of the political economy of this country is seriously undermined when (as found out in the 80s in this country again) there is the increasingly foregoing of greater and greater production and use by the general populace of especially local goods in the country and in a context too where there is the exponential extensive but relentless destructive use by whomsoever of such cards and cheques, and especially where such false numbers can more easily be made available by the relevant financial institutions to the relevant so-called debtors than the latter can get access to sufficiently large amounts of saved remunerations to be used to get ready done houses, cars, computers, on cash terms; and where such local money is NOT ONLY increasingly being used by many people to service these so-called public debt levels, BUT where ALSO it is unnecessarily lesser and lesser used by the said users of it, as a market commodity, as a direct, big and growing result of the relevant persons increasing their uses of such worthless cards/cheques in goods and services transactions in the country, and by itself being increasingly used by many many persons to service this so-called public debt, and to redeem this very astronomically high REAL ACTUAL cost of use of money (local) in Barbados.
Indeed, it is these kinds of trends that a certain future coalitional government of Barbados, and of which the PDC will be part, shall lead the way in helping to put measures in place to reverse and overcome these same odious ignoble trends that have been some of the major causes of this political economic depression, and its persistence, in the country.
PDC
looks good PDC.
PDC
Why do write those long blogs of Shiite?
It appears P.M Stuart has once again diss David Estwick, at his branch meeting on Sunday, he once more proclaimed his confidence in the MOF, this means Estwick’s presentation was wasteful. Next move Estwick, this checkers game can’t end in a draw, somebody has to win, or put it another way, somebody has to lose.
Gutterperc
I must agree with you;a whole lotta balderdash.No way would I vote for this lunatic fringe.
I want to posit however that Barbados should call fresh elections and hopefully rid us of this lot.Secondly,support vigorously a mandate which would ensure the review and overhaul of the Constitution to better provide for a framework of responsible and accountable governance and the joining of the OECS to better provide for trade and commerce,including the
free movement of capital,human and financial.
I agree with you Gabriel. I thought as I watched them tonight the liar and the lied PM have now become great chums…..see one, you see the other. It was like later for you Estwick, I have confidence in the liar, you could go to hell. So for all the big hype about a power point presentation to present another way, the PM doubles down a brass bowl.
Was it my eyes fooling me or I am seeing quite right……..is the liar getting bigger and bigger? He had better watch his health!
K.G.B,
Thanks from us here at PDC.
Very committed to making sure that the Coalition of Unified Parties of Barbados functions in the fundamental interest of this country.
PDC
Gabriel/Guttaperc,
Who so ever you are, you both are the most stupid, the most moronic, and the most lunatic of the intellectual scums on this blog network.
And ook how low, degrading and regressive you are, mentally!!
You are the epitome of the very failure of many human beings to think, reason, and analyze around and to properly infer from many of those ideas and myths that have been put out there by some others to intentionally deceive devalue so many others.
Anyhow, the egregious dolts you are, we will never ever allow you to indefinitely suffer any of the broad masses and middle classes of this country with your colossal intellectual backwardness and wickedness – without responding in the manner we are now. It is clear from your very infantile responses to what we so substantially put in the relevant post above , that it is part of your DNA to absorb hook line and sinker – and moreover to willingly practice – many of these same concepts and myths that are there to help further destroy a lot of us from the so-called Third World.
Furthermore, you have no contribution to make to the social political material and financial progress and development of this country.
So therefore allow others who have a contribution to make to Barbados own growth and development, and who are very competent and skilled in regard of the handling of the kinds of subjects we were originally dealing in the relevant PDC post above – to do so free of your very idiotic imbecilic interventions.
Finally, as that it is our general policy not to deal with persons who cowardly use these little pseudonyms, we think it very daring that you should have sought to respond to us without first seriously considering coming out from hiding behind the child like nonsensical pseudonyms you use on this blog network.
PDC