Restau­rants fill with dodgy ser­vice and in­flat­ed prices. Florists thrive. So­cial me­dia be­comes an ex­hi­bi­tion of cu­rat­ed de­vo­tion. Even the chron­i­cal­ly in­dif­fer­ent de­vel­op an opin­ion about love.

Car­ni­val may look like “biki­nis and beads” to­day, but as T&T heads in­to Car­ni­val week­end, we should nev­er for­get the rich his­to­ry be­hind our cel­e­bra­tion. Car­ni­val is root­ed in mem­o­ry and sur­vival. Mar­cus Gar­vey warned, “A peo­ple with­out the knowl­edge of their past his­to­ry, ori­gin and cul­ture is like a tree with­out roots.” And he was right, for when we for­get the mean­ing be­hind our tra­di­tions, they may con­tin­ue, but they slow­ly stop be­long­ing to the peo­ple who cre­at­ed them.

The Jan­u­ary 28 col­umn, “Ill-in­formed ‘help’ may cause more harm and hurt,” ad­dressed is­sues that prompt­ed a com­menter, whose con­tin­ued sup­port I en­joy, to share some in­sights with the pas­sion of one who tru­ly ap­pre­ci­ates the prob­lem of our “pre­scrip­tive, judge­men­tal and se­vere­ly crit­i­cal” at­ti­tude to­wards those who de­serve our com­pas­sion.

The ri­val­ry be­tween the Unit­ed States and the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na must be close­ly ob­served by all na­tions and re­gions, big and small, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go and Cari­com. The two glob­al be­he­moths now lead an en­er­gy race be­tween “pet­rostates” pri­ori­tis­ing fos­sil fu­els, like the US, Sau­di Ara­bia and Rus­sia, and “elec­trostates” pur­su­ing elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and clean en­er­gy, like Chi­na and Eu­rope.

In­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an law seeks to lim­it the ef­fects of armed con­flict and pro­tect peo­ple who are not par­tic­i­pat­ing in hos­til­i­ties by re­strict­ing the means and meth­ods of war­fare. The first Gene­va Con­ven­tion, en­ti­tled Con­ven­tion for the Ame­lio­ra­tion of the Con­di­tion of the Wound­ed in Armies in the Field, was signed in 1864 af­ter the ad­vo­ca­cy of the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross high­light­ed the need for hu­man­i­tar­i­an rules for war.

It ap­pears that the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) will soon be im­ple­ment­ing a high­er fee for trans­fer­ring prop­er­ty, which has been re­ferred to as an “in­her­i­tance tax”.

Each year, the sun blazes hot­ter and the air feels in­creas­ing­ly heavy with hu­mid­i­ty, un­mis­tak­able signs of a warm­ing Caribbean telling us cli­mate change is here, shap­ing our fes­ti­vals, sports, health, and com­mu­ni­ties. Nowhere is this more ap­par­ent than in our beloved T&T Car­ni­val.

There seems to be a re­sis­tance to change, even though re­forms are need­ed ur­gent­ly. Why, when this Gov­ern­ment holds a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty in the Par­lia­ment to do so?

The head­line of the Busi­ness Guardian on Feb­ru­ary 5 re­flect­ed a call to ac­tion: “Fix (the) Lo­cal Stock Mar­ket.” The ar­ti­cle sup­port­ing the head­line in­di­cat­ed that the T&T’s stock mar­ket was in struc­tur­al trou­ble as cu­mu­la­tive­ly the mar­ket had lost close to “40 per cent of val­ue” since 2022. It not­ed that whilst some com­pa­nies had per­formed well, the com­pos­ite in­dex (the uni­fied met­ric for mea­sur­ing the over­all per­for­mance of the TTSE) had de­clined in every year since 2021.

It is as clear as day that the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP), which emerged form the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP), has been gift­ed an­oth­er rich de­posit in their po­lit­i­cal ac­count. They were gift­ed a mod­er­ate but in­dica­tive first de­posit in Jan­u­ary 2021 when the elec­torate tied the PDP up with the PNM 6-6. Then that de­posit in­creased phe­nom­e­nal­ly to 14-1 a year lat­er in De­cem­ber 2021 af­ter the num­ber of elec­toral dis­tricts moved tie-break­ing­ly to 15. It was in­du­bitably a rich de­posit; the elec­torate had added eight more seats to the pre­vi­ous six, mov­ing de­posits from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment in the process. And now, in Jan­u­ary 2026, the TPP was gift­ed with the last re­main­ing de­posit.

Low vi­sion is one of those terms peo­ple think they un­der­stand un­til they meet some­one who ac­tu­al­ly lives with it.

Al­bert Ca­mus’ state­ment is note­wor­thy. He said: “A man with­out ethics is a wild beast loosed up­on this world.”