We are told that in an­cient Rome, Cae­sar Mar­cus Au­re­lius An­ton­i­nus Au­gus­tus hired an as­sis­tant to fol­low him as he walked through the Ro­man town’s square. The as­sis­tant’s on­ly role was to, when­ev­er Mar­cus Au­re­lius was praised, whis­per in his ear, “You’re just a man. You’re just a man.”

Au­re­lius was well known for his phi­los­o­phy and many con­sid­er his reign as the gold­en age of the Ro­man Em­pire.

If there is any­thing we learnt over the last week and a half of Bud­get de­bate, it is how ar­ro­gance and hubris can dam­age any gov­ern­ment’s mes­sag­ing and the ex­tent to which the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has lost touch with the or­di­nary cit­i­zens and is now in need for some­one to fol­low them around and whis­per in their ears, “You’re just a man. You’re just a man.”

I have cho­sen just a few of the of­fend­ing quotes from mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment bench­es which have caused un­ease among many mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion.

It be­gan with the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for To­ba­go West Sham­fa Cud­joe, when she said: “You hear the cries of every­body want every­thing right now...What are we pre­pared to do? What kind of sac­ri­fices are we pre­pared to make?

Cud­joe added: “Every­body wants every­thing for noth­ing. Every­body wants every­thing but will­ing to give up noth­ing...We sit here healthy and strong, look­ing good, well-fed be­cause some­body else had to sac­ri­fice then so that we can have now.”

For the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain South, Kei­th Scot­land, cit­i­zens should re­turn to the use of coal pots and ride a bike to work.

Scot­land said: “I have a sug­ges­tion. For me, in or­der to lose weight, I will ride to court. I will take a bike in or­der to save fu­el, that’s my so­lu­tion.”

The Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les sug­gest­ed that we spend less mon­ey on mac­a­roni pie and ham.

Of course, the PM and his Gary Sobers, Stu­art Young, could not al­low the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pass them by with­out telling us that they know what is best for the coun­try and every­one else must trust them and they have all but saved us from the end of time.

The self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry state­ments nev­er end, in­clud­ing that the Gov­ern­ment placed the coun­try in a po­si­tion to get max­i­mum ben­e­fit from the high­er en­er­gy prices.

Mr Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter Young, there is noth­ing, no agree­ment, no make-be­lieve state­ment that could let any­one with any knowl­edge of the en­er­gy sec­tor come to a con­clu­sion that a fall of 1.3 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day of nat­ur­al gas, the clo­sure of Train 1 as a re­sult of low out­put, and the re­duc­tion of oil pro­duc­tion by 18,000 bar­rels per day, can be com­pen­sat­ed by any deal that re­mains known on­ly to you and your Cab­i­net.

There is noth­ing, Mr Young, no amount of chest thump­ing that can con­vince any­one who knows about the en­er­gy sec­tor that the bid rounds, in­clud­ing your lat­est deep-wa­ter bid round, have not failed.

Per­haps in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy, you could tell us what is the rea­son for the de­lay in award­ing the deep-wa­ter blocks? You are al­ready a month be­hind your own sched­ule and I can tell the coun­try to­day that the qual­i­ty of those bids left a lot to be de­sired.

I am on record as say­ing I sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s at­tempt to cap the fu­el sub­sidy at $1 bil­lion. This is a step in the right di­rec­tion, but in ask­ing the coun­try, most of whom are on fixed in­comes, to make ad­di­tion­al sac­ri­fices, you must show that you un­der­stand the mag­ni­tude of what is be­ing asked and not seek to at­tack cit­i­zens for “lik­ing free­ness.”

Mr Prime Min­is­ter, you have col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and you were part of the then-Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion that was par­ty to this sub­sidy and oth­ers in­creas­ing over time. Re­vi­sion­ist his­to­ry on­ly fools those who are un­able to re­call events.

So yes, some of the poli­cies are right, but the coun­try al­so suf­fers from a lack of a clear vi­sion, of goals that we can achieve if we work to­geth­er and stay the course you want us on.

If we pay more for fu­el, can we ex­pect an in­vest­ment in­to a bus ser­vice that will, over time, of­fer us an al­ter­na­tive? What is that plan? How long will it take? What is the cost? Is CNG, as the cheap­er al­ter­na­tive, no longer an op­tion?

You must give us cred­i­ble plans, Prime Min­is­ter. Shout­ing down to us will not help us go for­ward as a coun­try.

On a dai­ly ba­sis, one of the first things I get in my email is a newslet­ter from the New York Times, in which the ma­jor is­sues fac­ing Amer­i­cans are draw to my at­ten­tion.

Yes­ter­day, the Times’ morn­ing newslet­ter paid at­ten­tion to the chal­lenge of the US Fed­er­al Re­serves, or Cen­tral Bank, as it tries to rein in the in­fla­tion­ary pres­sure faced by or­di­nary Amer­i­cans, while at the same time try­ing to avoid the crash­ing of the econ­o­my be­cause of the im­pact of high in­ter­est rates.

The cen­tral prob­lem that the Fed is fac­ing is how do you keep busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty grow­ing but at the same time re­duce the pace at which prices are ris­ing and hurt­ing or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

Ac­cord­ing to the Times, this is no easy feat be­cause the Fed is try­ing to “keep un­em­ploy­ment low and prices rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble. Yet those two goals are some­times in con­flict: A strong econ­o­my can lead to more jobs but quick­ly ris­ing prices, while a slug­gish econ­o­my can lead to few­er jobs but slow­er price in­creas­es. The Fed aims to bal­ance those ex­tremes.”

What the Fed does is im­por­tant to T&T in so many prac­ti­cal ways. Its de­ter­mi­na­tion to slow down the US econ­o­my and rein in prices has led to high­er in­ter­est rates.

It means that it is now more ex­pen­sive to bor­row in the US and in USD, but it al­so means that rates on de­posits are slight­ly bet­ter.

When you add to this sit­u­a­tion the mon­e­tary pol­i­cy an­nounce­ment made last Fri­day by our own Cen­tral Bank, that it needs to keep an ex­pan­sion­ary mon­e­tary pol­i­cy to en­cour­age growth in the econ­o­my, it means that it would make more sense to keep your US dol­lars in Amer­i­can ac­counts than here in T&T, with the risk of some lev­el of cap­i­tal flight.

There are, of course, those who would ar­gue that the CBTT needs to keep the pol­i­cy in place be­cause un­like Eu­rope and the US, where in­fla­tion has run as high at 10 per cent, in T&T it is more man­age­able and be­yond that, the green shoots of eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery have to be en­cour­aged.

It is the ris­ing in­ter­est rates en­vi­ron­ment which al­so prompt­ed an an­nounce­ment by First Cit­i­zens to the T&T Stock Ex­change yes­ter­day, say­ing it had pulled out of ne­go­ti­a­tions with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank for a US$175 mil­lion loan to fund is En­vi­ron­men­tal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Gov­er­nance ini­tia­tives be­cause of the in­creased cost of bor­row­ing and hav­ing enough forex to fund its ac­tiv­i­ties in the short to medi­um term.

The de­ci­sion of First Cit­i­zens to pull out of the loan process is di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the ac­tions of the US Fed and the in­creased forex en­ter­ing the sys­tem from glob­al high prices for en­er­gy com­modi­ties.

We are liv­ing in chal­leng­ing times and un­less we are able to have a clear way for­ward in bring­ing the coun­try to­geth­er, then we will be in more trou­ble.

I end with this quote from Mar­cus Au­re­lius and just maybe those in Gov­ern­ment led by the Prime Min­is­ter, would con­sid­er it.

“Time is a sort of riv­er of pass­ing events, and strong is its cur­rent; no soon­er is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and an­oth­er takes its place, and this, too, will be swept away.”

Cur­tis Williams was last seen buy­ing a tank of LPG be­cause he has no in­ten­tion of go­ing back to any coal pot.