Is Bridgetown Still a World Heritage Site?
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89 responses to “Is Bridgetown Still a World Heritage Site?”
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[…] Is Bridgetown Still a World Heritage Site? […]
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Many may not agree but our failure to clean up our communities, enforce our laws is a catastrophic failure just like what has happened at the NIS.
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Our Governments have raised a population expecting people to pick up after them. There is no Pride in our surroundings. Barbados belongs to us the people and we must take care of it. Unfortunately some of us don’t care and still need the whip to fall in line.
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Is this a case where the quarter million spent on the junket to Samoa could have been better spent rehiring a few NCC workers on a temp basis to clean the city? How about a local communication blitz to make those ignorant Bajan aware how a soiled environment will come back to bite us in the rear? You would think with dengue, chikungunya and the like about this is a nobrainer.
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There are a few sites in a couple communities I pass by fairly regularly which are used for garbage collection points for the local residents, and I notice that these collection points usually present an unsightly mess as there are either no garbage bins at all or not enough garbage bins to store the number of garbage bags that are being put out to be collected. The result is that the garbage is put out by the street in plastic shopping or garbage bags which often burst open and then the garbage gets scattered around and about presenting an unsightly and unsanitary appearance akin to the one in the picture above.
On occasion, someone (I assume the SSA) puts out some more blue barrels or 45 gal drums at these locations and the problem is more or less taken care of, so I give a little sigh of relief as I go by that someone has finally taken note of the problem and acted accordingly. However, invariably after a month or so passes I notice the new barrels/drums have started to go walkabout, as our Australian friends say, as they start to disappear one by one. Within a few months they are gone completely, and its back to business as usual for another year or two – i.e. unsightly heaps of garbage bags piling up during the week to await collection (which is at least better than having to view the scattered garbage laying all around on the ground that is simply left in place and which becomes more evident once the garbage bags have been taken away by the SSA crews).
Ebola, chikungunya, dengue fever – you think Bajans frighten fuh you? Clearly not.
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The conditions and stench in the area to the right of the photo are much worst that the trench. There are three chemical toilets that are need dumping and replaced be three new ones. These toilets are so dirty that people urinate behind them. During the night, both men and women openly urinate in any area, with women not afraid to show the promise land. People, including vagrants, shit in the rooms left after some of the old Fairchild Street market was demolished.
The entire area is infested with rats and flies that dine on the shit and urine. But what is worrisome is the fact that there are about 11 or 12 bars located in that area, and some of these proprietors are allowed to sell food. And I will once again mention that Guyanese have been setting up bars there recently, and this has to be done with permission from the authorities, since the original vendors there, have to be located to Probyn Street.
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Barbados has become dirtier over the years. I notice it every time I am on the island. It leaves a sour taste. Even the maintenance of buildings….would it kill the government to budget for painting of public buildings, at the very least? Beautifying the surroundings with flowering plants and just plain normal ground care. People don’t seem to care about their environment.
You would think with tourism being the main economic industry – not to forget the tax paying citizenry – some thought would be put in to maintaining public property and cleanliness. People dump crap all over the place. Empty styrofoam containers everywhere. No consciousness regarding recycling. It’s very sad, actually.
In general, people have become dirtier. Even here in Canada, I find that people don’t care. They just drop garbage where ever…even when there is a garbage bin nearby.
Barbados feels or seems dilapidated….Like it’s being left to rot, in a way. Not all areas, of course but….just lacking a sense of pride.
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Wait….
What exactly do you all expect from brass bowls led by political pimps and owned lock stock and barrel by foreigners?
…pride and industry? -
Government can’t budget for anything,because they don’t even have the money to pay out the workers they sent home. You have to remember the ministers have to travel to where ever even if it is a million, & the unions stand idly by. If this was a BLP government one would see all sorts of work stoppages, & Denis Clarke with Sir Roy saying how they will shut down the country until when ever. What a lot of ———– . But this is Barbados even the people seem to have their tongues cut out. My country Barbados has gone to the dogs.
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A picture is worth a thousand words.
As far as the state of filth in Bridgetown is concerned there are enough pictures to fill the Library of Congress.@ Colonel Buggy:
Any comments on the above post or should we just sit back and watch? -
We expect to increase tourist numbers by turning the island into a festering garbage dump with run down and abandoned buildings.
Good plan!
For less money European and NA tourists can fly to somewhere clean and tidy and still have sunshine and beaches.
Wake up Barbados, the train is leaving the station! -
@ BOOKWORM | October 3, 2014 at 9:26 AM
“Wake up Barbados, the train is leaving the station!”We have been blowing that whistle for sometime now. We are just whistling in the wind. No one is listening. We shall soon be seeing only the empty tracks up ahead.
Let Bajans continue to practice their dirty filthy habits and see what would be the impact on their only viable source of foreign money.
One pandemic outbreak of some communicable disease on the Island and the visitors would disappear faster than a town rat down the alleys in Broad Street.The mindset of the authorities charged with the protection of the country’s environment- both built and natural- can be deciphered by the current state of the Bay Street area and the proud forested edifice known as the Empire Theatre.
Hard ears dirty Bajans would not hear, hard ears they will soon feel.
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When I was in school there was the slogan Reduce Re-use & Recycle and Don’t Be A Litter-Bug. I used to take great pride in placing trash where itshould go: in a bin. Nowadays it seems everyone litters everywhere because ‘somebody will clean it up and it is not in my backyard so i aint care’ We have to do better. Tourist dont come about here and throw grabage everywhere, it is us doing this to ourselves. Another point, i have personally witnessed on three occasions, ‘paros’going through trash bins tearing open the bags and shrewing everything on the ground whilst they were looking for food or plastic bottles. The trash is then blown far and wide by the wind, that is another reason for all the garbage we see on our streets.
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There was a time when we leverage our bureaucracy as a strength, to be orderly. The vagrant in days of old would have been identified and dealt with. We care about money.
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@ David
The vagrant in days of old would have been identified and dealt with.
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…and you want to do the same thing now?
So who will deal with Freundel and Stinkler?
…Or with Mia and Miller?
..or LP and the scores of others like him?Man David be serious nuh. You can’t see who running the asylum?
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@Bush Tea
We have to take back our tiny country.
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My first reaction to the picture was that “government /SSA” should clean the garbage from the stream/watercourse.
However there are 4 things that should happen.
- Government should rehire workers immediately to ” CLEAN UP BARBADOS”.
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Teach children to put garbage in garbage bins and enforce cleanliness all through the school systems.
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Place additional Garbage collection bins in Bridgetown, Oistins and Speightstown.
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Enact anti littering legislation and enforce it.
I agree 100% with millertheanunnaki who wrote ” Hard ears dirty Bajans would not hear, hard ears they will soon feel.”
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@ Islandgirl246
“still need the whip to fall in line.”
Careful now as the Black RADICALS will be all over yeh for RACISM !
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[…] David Filed under: Barbados News Tagged: World Heritage Site …read […]
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The only way the authorities are going to do something seriously about the environmental terrorism that is being perpetrated against Bridgetown is when that much sought after designation for tourism promotion “WORLD HERITAGE SITE” is justifiably withdrawn by UNESCO.
Soon a portfolio of evidence showing how the designated heritage site is being managed and the effects of the environmental terrorism would be compiled and sent to UNESCO for their deliberation.
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@David
“We have to take back our tiny country.”
Why would anyone want to take back a rusted out, rat infested, totally broken old jalopy with no antique value, better to leave it for the other side of de fence and greener pastures.
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We and by we i mean all of us HAVE TO BE MAD!!
I have on a few occasions commented that Bajans are one of the filthiest nationalities in the world, when a cat shi*tes it covers up its faeces, we take pride to spread it all over our highways and byways.
There is much to be grafted from slavery and its oligarchy but I would only cull one component today.
FREE LABOUR
We have several hundred of free labour candidates sitting down at glendairy eating 3 square meals a day and complaining that they are not getting enough meat in their diet yet we have a garbage problem.
Of course, the Human Rightists and Leftists amongst us who march all over the place chanting the UN Charter for Human Right will jump up in a hurray and Senator Orlando Marville and Marion Vernese Williams, Permanent Representative of Barbados to the United Nations Office at Geneva will have fuel for their chant about “teking way de rights of peoples” and probably Pilli and Skin my Pooch Alair Shepherd will come out to protect the undertrodden, but until men with balls (and women with fat pudendas) think of ways where we can bring a regime of shame and blame that nips this anarchy in the bud, we going be writing about the indiscriminate disposal of garbage all ovah Bulbados and this meaningless World Heritage Site designation.
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What is wrong with you miserable people? Just eat, drink and be merry- for tomorrow we die! But at least we’ll die with our bumpers pooched back and a drink in we hand. Hope I die on Kadooment day dressed only in expensive Cropover beads and feathers big belly hanging over the waistband. I’d call that making an exit! ………. Isn’t that the new way of thinking? Nothing can be done so throw your hands in the air and wuk up?
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millertheanunnaki | October 3, 2014 at 9:23 AM |
A picture is worth a thousand words.
As far as the state of filth in Bridgetown is concerned there are enough pictures to fill the Library of Congress.@ Colonel Buggy:
Any comments on the above post or should we just sit back and watch?.
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@ miller My first thoughts. But certainly this photo has been rigged to make the present administration looks bad. You are telling me that this is the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bridgetown, and this location pictured, is only a dead rat throw away from our august Houses of Parliament in Palmetto Street ? This cannot be true when , in 2×2 Barbados and 1/2 inch x 1/2 inch Bridgetown, our Minister of the Environment, Minister of Health, Ministry of Transport and Works, Minister of Town and Country Planning ,Member of Parliament of Bridgetown, and not forgetting Minister of Culture,and Mrs Irene Sandiford-Garner, what ever she is, during the course of any given day have to traverse most ,if not, all of these sites. They would not let this happen. -
sherriff joe arpaio could solve that garbage problem
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@PODRYR
Bajans are too nice to name and shame anybody.
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Lawd, My God!!!
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@ Colonel Buggy:
When you drive by in an airconditioned luxury vehicle with tinted windows you don’t feel the pot holes or see the garbage.
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Jesus. Cry me a river. This is not Armageddon. It’s a relatively small public policy problem. So fix it. Problems can be fixed, and a lot of them can be fixed in short order. It doesn’t have to take a generation. An intensive public education programme lasting six months on radio, TV, the press, social media, can make a huge dent in this problem.
How much can such a programme cost? Not much.
How many times have I been driving behind a TB bus or a ZR and suddenly a Coke bottle comes flying out of the window? Countless times.
Not cool, children. Not cool at all. Even the idiots who use Bridgetown as a massive public urinal can be trained not to drop garbage wherever they please. Everybody understands respect and pride. Just need a little nudging.
It’s always amazed me that Barbados, which has the most polite, civil and respectful car drivers of any country I have ever visited (and that’s a lot of countries), is so full of plastic rubbish and styrofoam garbage. People are, for the most part, so incredibly polite to each other in traffic, and then turn into idiots when it’s a matter of disposing of garbage. They are trainable.
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@ Hants
But these same people always walk about the place with their heads down,making it that easier for them to look down their noses at the the rank and file, surely in this position they are more likely to see and smell the heritage of Bridgetown beneath. -
What has Minister Denis ‘taciturn’Lowe ever done in his life to suggest he is a finisher, a doer? Except to fraternize with Peter Allard.
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@Jack Bowman
Just need a little nudging.
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Yea I agree. With the aid of two animals, a Dog hunter, and a Bull pistle. -
BLP mantra …lets clean up the garbage /clean up the streets,,, good idea but that kinda politicial propaganda still do not answer the real hard questions about the economy that the BLP leadership has been avoiding for years,,good try ,,but however ,,still plenty work to do that goes above and beyond small town politics,,keep picking wunna brain,,just maybe ,one day not too soon wunna Blp operatives would find some thing of relevancy out of the stinking garbage to talk about,
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Miller, David, many others and I have been on BU constantly pushing a case for the clean up of Barbados. But like miller said………no one listens to us….instead we have a senator who would come on BU and attempt to insult us.
When did Barbadians began this nasty habit of dumping everything anywhere? Seems to be lawlessness has overtaken our fair land. We used to keep around our homes pic and span, plant pretty gardens….now some cannot even be bothered to even plant a croton at the front of the house and the wild grass has taken over the place.
We are on the skids and it now looks as though only God can save us! Lawlessness at the top and it has permeated to the core of the land! We are doomed! Under the BLP there was a GIS jingle that went in part………if everyone every day would just put one thing away……what a clean country we would have! Very apt….GIS should find that and play it everyday!
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@ ac | October 3, 2014 at 5:59 PM
But ac, how can you let down the “D” side so (“D” for Dem Dirty Dems)?
Is Barbados no longer more a society than an economy? Why focus now on the economy instead of the society?
But then again, a dirty society and a destroyed economy is what the current crop of classless dirty Dems is all about.
How can you eliminate in a tropical island that depends so heavily on tourism such a vital environmental protection and enhancement work unit called “Beautify Barbados”? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to privatize the function and attract private sponsorship through well-appointed billboard advertising?Poor Dipper Barrow and Sir Frank Walcott (a man who took great pride in his appearance) must be crying in their graves at the sorry state of Bridgetown and Barbados in general.
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It speaks to a lack of discipline in our management of society. Such a conclusion cannot be located to matters of the environment only. After all we are managing a society and not an economy.
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SOS from St Michael residents
Residents of a St Michael community are appealing to authorities for urgent help in cleaning up their neighborhood as several of them complain of falling ill.Households in Bibby’s Gap, Chase Road, Ellis Village and Halls Road have all reported either cases of dengue or…
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@islandgal246 October 3, 2014 at 6:53 AM “Our Governments have raised a population expecting people to pick up after them.”
Dear island: I am surprised at your statement. Goverments don’t raise anybody. People are raised by [or NOT] parents.
But too many parents and their teen and adult children keep houses which are nasty inside and out.
But Bridgetown is still a World Heritage site..
Still health and sanitation workers need to do a better job, especially in the Bridgetown and its closely packed urban villages.
And we seriously need some sustained public education to teach people what is nasty and what is clean and correct.
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If you think the garbage situation in Barbados is bad, then think against. Because until drive through one of the major ghetto streets in America, you’ll develop a knew found respect for the people of Barbados. And their inability to recognize the harm that they’re doing to their own environment by throwing their garbage all around the place.
And, furthermore, when you observe an individual who ought know better disposing of his garbage on a major city street, when next to him lies a garbage disposal container. But if he had only taken the effort to put it in, our environment would not be in the state it is in today.
Unsurprisingly, when you see a child engage in this kind of behavior, there is something inside you that said: even though what this child has done is by all intents and purposes wrong. I can find it in my heart to over look this child’s behavior because he hasn’t been taught to know the difference as of yet. ( one would hope) But, when you see an adult who ought and should know better, engage in this kind of behavior is makes one sick to like Hell.
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Surely ignorance ignores boundaries.
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Yes David every country in the world is cursed with its own [unfair] share of ignorant, stupid people
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Isn’t this filthy canal strewn with litter two stones throw from the Constitution river where taxpayers just spent millions to reconstitute?
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This is truly horrible to see Barbados which was once called THE GEM OF THE CARIBBEAN,turning to a shit hole.
For the most part many has the mind set that others are being paid to pick up after them. Strange as this might seem, it all begins at home. Many are more worried how thy look by buying knock off designer clothing. Or even spending what they are unable to afford for the real ones. But the house is all a different story. So if you’re not keep where you live clean and neat. then it’s IMPOSSIBLE to keep your surroundings clean.I was raised with the understanding that neither of my parents were my maid or butler, and I HAD to clean up behind myself. Even when we were in school, they was an inspection every morning before going to class to check if we took a bath, our clothes clean and pressed, our finger nails clean. Even those who were unable to buy shoes were still neat and clean. IT WAS ALL ABOUT PRIDE,SELF RESPECT AND DIGNITY. I think that these things has died a slow death in Barbados long time ago..
The policy of EACH ONE SHOULD TEACH ONE could work to turn things around. But just to give up when you have no other place to go, and jut keep taking and hoping for a miracle isn’t going to get it. Forget about the Government doing anything to resolve this problem.. YOU have to VOLUNTEER your services for the good of your own health, so that you’ll continue to have people wanting to come to Barbados to generate revenue for the island.
I don’t think of anyone in Barbados as animals as one person mentioned. I could say something to that person that wouldn’t be too pleasant. But I am going to pass on that.
Come on you good people of Barbados STOP allowing Barbados to become an eye sore and do the right things.
I no longer live in Barbados, but it’s still and always remain dear to me as long as breath remains in my body. I will ALWAYS wish, and pray for nothing less than the best for all the people in Barbados.
“I KNOW YOU ARE CAPABLE OF DOING BETTER THAN THIS;”
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@MR.C | October 3, 2014 at 8:00 PM |
Well Said and True.
But, guess what. As long we we got cellular phones and bling, an de fete on, we ent care nuh.
Stupse….we does like it so. Not only the economy in tatters, but horsepittel, and de lands look so.
THAT is the issue.
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With all the crap littered about Bridgetown, wait until there is a function at the Central Bank, and you will scenes out of Mayfair and Haymarket in London, where Mercedes Benzs and BMW’s pull up and out come gentlemen dressed like dogs dinners in black suits and dickey ties, accompanied by their ladies in their tall heeled shoes and gowns,and steeping over the shit that litters Spry Street and surrounding area. And if they arrive late and have to park in Marhill or Palmetto Streets , they will have to play hop scotch with the piss and shit in Dottin’s and Amen Alleys.
But this too will go away, “Its only seasonal”. We like it so. -
bta can do garbage tours for the tourists,
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Every person on this blog except Dumb and Dumber can see that Barbados is a nasty stinking place and needs to be cleaned up.
As bad as the economy is the government should at the very least clean up Bridgetown and keep it clean.It would be a start.
School principals should be mandated to enforce cleanliness in their schools.
It ain’t that f..kin difficult.
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…………….And the nasty botches even take their nastiness into the hospital.
I was visiting someone recently in the QEH and was appalled to see a bin along a corridor was full to overflowing and the nasty brutes still drop the garbage on the floor……….in the hospital, yeah!
There is a vacant lot adjoining my property which the owners refuses to upkeep. I always clear at least two feet away from my guard wall……..imagine my horror when as soon as I cleared the area, some nasty brute could not find anywhere else to stool but right along the path I cleared away. Boy was I angry! Bajans real real nasty!
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Breaking news for David.
“Sebastian Vettel will leave Red Bull at the end of the 2014 season, the team has confirmed.”
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Hants
“School principals should be mandated to enforced cleanliness in their schools”
Here is someone who speaks with little or no knowledge of the dynamics with fuels the school environment in our contemporary times. Schools these days are so constraint for time, that their don’t even have time to teach kids how to wash their hand before lunch. And you’re suggesting that principals should be make to enforced cleanliness in their schools. Man you must be off your rocker! Let’s me put this in its proper perspective: I am speak about most of the schools in America, but more importantly, I am speaking about the schools my kids attended here in the past. But, I wouldn’t be surprise if this same phenomenon hasn’t founded fertile ground in the school system of Barbados as of yet.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.