Laziness is a curse...

and it is also a human condition. So....to catch up again. I've been terribly tardy in putting anything on this blog that invites reading. This will change however....yes, I know, one has heard it all before.

So much has happened around me in this place that I can't even blame a shortage of material as an excuse.

Let's see...Bob Woolmer murdered/not murdered. Hmm.....everyone wants to jump down Mark Shields' throat, for what reason I don't know. People seem to feel he was "hogging the spotlight". How, exactly, does the senior officer on the case, the lead investigator on a case and one extremely experienced with dealing with the feral media, "hog" the spotlight? I guess his being the person who more often than not delivered the media briefings bothers people not used to seeing regular police briefings or a policeman being adept at dealing with the media. But so be it. Let Mark Shields be. And let's ignore Renato Adams, a personality who knows all about hogging the spotlight with his out of turn comments. He is the first police officer I know who spoke to the media that much. Anyhow....we can hopefully close the book on that now.

Elections? Rumour has it we will be looking at a new administration (whether a new PNP or the JLP) by Emancipation Day. Or we could have a 30-30 split, which, given this country's propensity for drama, would be entirely more consistent. The bacchanal we saw in T&T when that happened would pale in comparison to what would occur here. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with a quasi-civil war. My PNP problems are many and varied. Complicity in corruption....dodgy decision making.....an almost compulsive devotion to spend money on grand projects, instead of doing the small things right (the Trelawny stadium, anyone?)...an atrophied sense of creativity in developing solutions for our problems....the list goes on and on. Portia does not inspire loyalty. I wished her all the best as she came to power; hoping she would harness the cross-party popularity she appeared to have and put it to good use in starting to fix things that needed fixing. Instead we got more of the same, and worse. We got ungracious behaviour, screaming and un-statesmanlike public stances. Someone forgot to tell her she was now PM and not MP. She now led a nation, not merely a constituency. But I blame her advisors, perhaps more than I blame her.

Now...onto the JLP. Is Bruce the Messiah? He certainly behaves like a statesman, not being given to staged public hysteria on cue. So much so that he has been going around the country stirring up apathy. We like a showman. Charismatic leaders were our mother's milk, from Busta to Michael (no last name necessary). Even the somewhat dull PJ Patterson, whose personal flavour, if represented as an ice-cream, would have been "wet cardboard", could give a good quip or two. Remember "shoot that horse"? But Bruce...none of that for him. Is that a problem? Not in a perfect world, so the answer is yes. Would I mind him as PM? Not really. I think if after almost 18 years in power more things are wrong than are right, someone else deserves a fair try. Plus, why does a party need to be in power for 18 years, given the absence of blinding prosperity and a sense that the Government is making all the right moves?