Congratulations to Roy and Sylvia Achat. They are the couple from Coral Drive, Gulf View whose objection against a fete being held near their home was upheld by the court.
Double congratulations to them for holding on to their convictions despite receiving death threats and reporting to the police that a "hit" had been put on them.
As Radio 95.5 talk show hosts, Tony and Dale said on Friday, perhaps it is a bit of a "joke" but "in these days and times," that is no joke and must be taken seriously.
In addition their daughter was physically threatened in the public road when she was peacefully engaged in a petition drive.
The police are taking the report seriously enough to have launched a full-scale investigation.
At last, citizens are getting organised and beginning to take back their neighbourhoods from the boors and loudmouths who have intimidated us for so long, often in front of the police.
This is the third time that a group of people have been able to stop a fete from taking place in a neighbourhood.
First it was STACH, the St Ann's Cascade and Hololo Mountain Road group. Then the Lower Maraval Residents Association people. Now Gulf View. Others should take heart and put a stop to fetes taking place in residential neighbourhoods.
It is specious to argue, like Mr Lee did, that, "allyuh had allyuh time and now want to stop others from having their time!" That's comparing pelau with KFC.
The noise volume from house fetes of the sort that took place fifty or sixty years ago cannot compare with the noise levels of fetes nowadays.
Is like the difference between a chip and a wine. Or bussing bamboo and exploding fireworks. It is not the same level or quality of noise.
I challenge anyone to try to go to sleep within a mile of the base response or the frenzied screaming of the DJs, that comes through walls, A/C and ear plugs. A former US Surgeon General has said, "Calling noise a nuisance is like calling smog an inconvenience.
Noise must be considered a hazard to the health of people everywhere." Is people health you dealing with now.
Years ago house fetes used to be family affairs and everyone in the neighbourhood participated to some degree.
You went to the fete and you knew half the people. Today's public, money-making events are totally different.
Drunks you do not know, park on your sidewalk, pee on your wall, curse, break bottle and basically terrorise quiet neighbourhoods. And you expect people to lie down and take that?
Unfortunately that attitude is so symptomatic of the past fifty years, the "anything goes," "is we island," "we want we money" syndrome which some thought was on the way to be changed by the results of the last election only to be confronted by the "is we turn" and the "ah want ah food" synergy.
Does anything, other than the forced removal of Desperados from their traditional panyard on the hill, illustrate what a lawless society we have become than the death threat to an elderly couple who only want to live out their lives in peace?
Soon the ordinary citizen will have to walk around with a bodyguard? Things so bad in T&T that people issuing death threats over a fete and running steelbandmen out of place where pan was founded? Yes, it so bad!
The mention of drunks brings up the Minister of Works statement in parliament on Friday.
The Minister stated that 706 people were charged for driving under the influence of alcohol in 2012, the same number in 2013 (!) and 731 in 2014.
I must be living in another country? I could stand outside any public fete, in one night, inclusive or not, with an alcohol measuring device in my hand and find 700 people driving drunk.
The police are not doing their job. Another example of the false permissiveness that has permutated through the country since Independence. "Give the man a chance, nuh, he only trying to make ah living!"
And what about that incredible annual stat that, since 2013, over 35,000 motorists have been caught on camera breaking the traffic lights near the Hyatt on Wrightson Road. 16,055 in 2013. 21,310 in 2014! That averages out to 1556 a month or over 50 a day.
That sounds just right. Maybe even conservative. So? What happened? How many were charged? When the trend was noticed was anything done? A policeman placed nearby? What's the use of having cameras at traffic lights? Will the new law change that? Why were the cameras put up without the law being in place? A telling story of all-round incompetence.
Yet, nothing, not the traffic, not the crime, not even the cricket being played by the West Indies, epitomises the fall from grace that civil life in T&T has undergone in the last 30 years as the amount of noise that we are daily subjected to, and that does not seem to bother anyone in authority. Not that they are bothered by much.
It might be the noise affecting them. David Staudacher of Vancouver's Right to Quiet Society says, "By any standard of health, all else being equal, from infant mortality to life expectancy, statistics will show that people are healthier in quiet areas than in noisy ones.
The reason is that noise destroys the sense of public peace and tranquility that nourishes healthy social interaction."
Now there's an interesting thought. Could noise be part of the reason why those in authority are blithely running around the place doing their own thing without finding out in what direction the public wants life to move? It too noisy for them to take us on.