Committed to Our Goals

Submitted by Douglas

Ministers Donville Inniss and Chris Sinckler

It is never easy to take tough decision which would affect the livelihood of those affected. From the start of the economic recession, the Democratic Labour Party’s administration had always said it would seek to maintain the social safety net and the sending home of persons from the public service would be a last resort so that government could maintain the employment levels in the country as long as possible.

For more than six years, the Democratic Labour Party administration maintained that promise while it introduced policies to restructure the economy of Barbados and position it on a sustainable growth path. This restructuring process which was long overdue is now being undertaken in the midst of the most turbulent, global economic recession which the world has seen in over a hundred years. Naturally, the journey has not been smooth sailing.

From the start of the economic recession our financial experts reminded us of the importance of protecting our international reserves. We were able to do this with reserves consistently above 16 week of imports from 2008 to June 2013. This was a major economic victory in the face of an unsettled global economic climate. This provided the cushion for government to continue its role in maintaining employment levels and the social safety net while putting policies in place to sure up revenue earning and controlling government’s expenditure in areas of goods and services, transfers and subsidies.

To read more:
https://www.facebook.com/DLPBB
http://www.dlpbarbados.org/site/committed-to-our-goals/

The Motley Crew Who Govern

Minister Donville Inniss is at it again!

Minister Donville Inniss has acquired the reputation as the most strident in the Stuart cabinet, although not in the same vain as Minister Kellman. Speaking on behalf of himself he was quick to say, he pontificated that “I was always of the view that the public service is too big and needs to be reduced”. Many agree with the minister, especially those who proffered a similar view in the lead in to the last general elections less than a year ago. To be fair to the minister he magnanimously ascribed blame to successive governments for swelling the ranks of the familiarly known ‘army of occupation’ through the years.

It is evident that Donville, the Cabinet Crier, is privy to to the best kept secret in Barbados, which is, public servants will have to go home. Of course no sane Barbadian wants to see anyone put on the breadline but there is the inevitability as a result of government’s piss poor financial state.

What is sad about the state of affairs in Barbados is that we are to be blamed. We have allowed political patrimony and mendicancy to become paramount. All for the sake of the Barbados Labour Party and the Democratic Labour Party propping up populist ideals. Here we are at this dark place AGAIN because party interest trumped national interest. We are here because ‘educated’ Barbadians decided to toe the party lie or disengage from the system.

Notes From a Native Son: The Time has Come for all True Barbadians to Put Country Before Party

Hal Austin

Introduction:
After a few days in Barbados, mostly resting, but spending time with friends and acquaintances alike, I have returned with a feeling of deep sadness for a nation for which I have a very deep affection. But, we have a situation in which the national political discourse has been reduced to a leading minister inviting the leader of the official Opposition to strip naked and run down Broad Street, our main thoroughfare, to grab attention. While, at the same time, the governor of the central bank could announce that the economy is in recession and the minister of finance, the captain of the nation’s economy, did not see fit to respond to, the Opposition did not speak out on, our academic economists kept their opinions to themselves nor did our feeble media see it fit to inform their readers.

As I have said before, the nation is in serious crisis, only this time it is much worse than it previously was. Yet, there is an epidemic of denial: a police force that is imploding and cannot properly guard against organised criminality, medieval religious practices and family abuse. We are a nation that has lost faith in itself, when we could appoint a Canadian – repeat the word, Canadian – as head of our football association and every spare bit of land bought by dubious foreigners because our policymakers are addicted to foreign reserves. The New Barbados has also lost its moral purpose, its sense of decency, as is reflected in the obscenities that desecrate the airwaves as a matter of course; of the total national silence when a toddler can make sexual gestures over an apparently drunken woman at Crop Over, our leading cultural event; when our leading news paper thinks that pornographic pictures of juveniles having sex in a class room is newsworthy. Even more, not a single senior executive or director of the publishing firm has made a public statement about the obscenity. If ever there was a case for ordinary Barbadians to show their power as consumers and ban that publication, it is now. This is a long way from the nation I know as a young man, when, in the 1960s it was exporting people to work on London buses, trains and in the national health service, routinely gave them a printed booklet on how to behave in Britain. Those were days when the nation was concerned about its global reputation as reflected in the behaviour of its citizens.

Notes From a Native Son: A Nation with a Hollow Where Public Morality Ought to be

Hal Austin

Introduction:
The political and economic failure of Barbados is like a slow motion car crash which onlookers are powerless to do anything about. As we look on, we can see the economy heading for a reinforced wall like a speeding, driverless car; we observe our leading institutions collapsing like a pack of over-used cards, while the high priests and priestesses of society preach about the solidity of these very flawed institutions. It is like Armageddon, we run screaming to the captains of industry, but there is nothing they can do; we plead with our politicians, but they are not listening; we ask our professionals for help, but they are pre-occupied with feathering their own nests. Repeating the growing lists of failings may hurt, but that is not like the pain felt by the marginalised, the disadvantaged, the outcasts. Like the man left on the floor of the hospital for four hours without any attention, then only to have a kind soul throw a sheet over him; like the man who collapsed at the wheel of his vehicle, only to find that calls for an ambulance could not be met – while the so-called Defence Force has an abundance of ambulances. Like a government refusing to pay Mr Barrack, while still pretending that it can engage in big capital projects.

Death of a Dream:
I seem to pinpoint the historical juncture when this rot set in when we started Barbadianising all our top management and public sector positions, regardless of the quality of the talent to fill those positions. This runs from the quality of programming at CBC, the leadership of our secondary schools and the nature of decision-making in the public sector. The only explanation is the rise of a petit-bourgeois nationalism in the years since constitutional independence which, in many ways, is driving the nation back in to the dark days of neo-colonial rule. The dominant belief now is that, no matter which political party one belongs to or support, this Barbadianisation of public sector jobs is a social priority over and above the quality of the service we deliver to the long-suffering public. In many ways, the irony is that this retreat in to a self-protective nationalism is taking place while the island itself is giving way to new forms of Barbadian-ness. This weakness is in most part an outcome of a weak public intellectual movement, as a reflection of the wider ruling elite. It is a small elite which has found it intellectually and politically cosy not challenging each other and accepting a consensus which is not ideologically tested in any way.

The Slide of the Barbados Economy Part II: Astonishing Revelation in Central Bank Report

Submitted by Inkwell

In my recent submission The Slide of the Barbados Economy: Pictures Are Worth a Thousand Numbers  highlighting the excessive spending of the government over the last five years, one of the questions I asked was “Where was the money spent and was it spent wisely? Further research produced the following chart which can be found at page 12 of the Central Bank June 2012 Press Release.

CLICK IMAGE

 

Execute Prime Minister!

Prime Minister Fruendel Stuart

Execution in it’s simplest sense is to: get things done. Period. But it’s more complex than those 3 words might suggest. It’s about getting the right people in place, building a strategy around the resources available, and finally implementing the strategy, linking the strategy with people.

– David Lau

It is generally accepted that highly successful organizations achieve stated objectives because they execute with military like precision. And as Lau opines, it is about defining a strategy, accumulate and efficiently deploy resources and assemble people with the correct skillsets.   The theory is easy until we allow indiscipline to intervene.

Barbados like many countries in our region finds itself mired in an economic morass. While there is agreement from all quarters that the environment in which we have to manage is a challenging one, we remain divided as a people the path we should follow. It is a situation which cries out for leadership.

Computer Glitched Layoffs?

Submitted by Napolean Bonaparte

Dr. Esther Byer-Suckoo, Minister of Labour and Social Security blames a computer glitch for the chaos surrounding payroll of temporary workers.

What the Houdini, did I hear correct? Now they are blaming the removal of peoples’ names on binary malfunctions ****0101001011 glitch***? The computer does not ask anybody questions anymore nowadays. Was the reason given for why the 1,000 or so temporary workers were this week taken off the payroll list? So wait, just so Apple wid a bite decided to axe them off and for no apparent reason. Goat rolls I say, but sounds oh too familiar.  Recall the CLICO\ Deloitte report? Just so again, documents and all friendly copies (I still got mine) vanished into thin air with no logical explanation whatsoever.

Shifting mirror states we encouraging when we choose to play with peoples’ livelihood’s by offering scapegoat-isms and computer hoodlum- hoods. Why was it not Sir Roy who said he supported the call for austerity measures but asked for transparency? So what is so big about owning up to the truth anyway? Could it be to do with a now tired electioneered sound byte that continues to be repeated by some who would rather remain as ambiguous?

Notes From A Native Son: The Budget Speech Sinckler Should Make on Tuesday

Hal Austin

Mr Speaker, fellow members of parliament, I rise today with great humility; knowing the state of our nation’s economy and being aware of the weight of expectations by ordinary people, looking to me to provide the answers regarding their jobs, their welfare and their children’s futures.

Mr Speaker, I will do my best by delivering the package of reforms, monetary and fiscal, which I hope will lead us forward both in the short and medium terms.

The past five years have been tough, not only for us, but for the rest of the world; but it is to our little island home that I am given the great responsibility to pilot the ship of economic stability, growth and, with it prosperity for our people. It is a great responsibility and one that I am not treating lightly.

A Minister Must Never Be Caught Lying

Submitted by Gilberto Howell

Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler with veteran VOB journalist David Ellis (28/07/13) – Photo:Nation

Yes Minister, but please tell the truth about the Pierhead Marina Project.

Can you believe anything  the Minister of Finance said yesterday on Brass Tacks?

No you cannot because the Minister of Finance is a stranger to the truth. A bullshit artist from beginning to end, a man determined to lie his way through politics in Barbados. A man who is all show and little or no substance, a man who has, by himself,  destroyed the confidence the people of Barbados place in the office of the Minster of Finance and Economic Affairs.

Take the Pierhead Marina as an example. The Minister said categorically yesterday that the Pierhead Marina project is proceeding but he conveniently forget to tell the people of Barbados that he, as Minister of Finance, brought a Cabinet Paper to Cabinet a few weeks ago making a number of recommendations, including:

1. The contract with SMI be terminated immediately
2. The Pierhead Marina project be suspended until the Barbados economy was not in a recession.

See document received by BU which is purported to be part of a Cabinet Paper dated 21 June 2013. BU has published because we deem it in the public’s interest – Click LINK to read document.

Meet Our Permanent Secretaries [Agency Heads]

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We also found that a significant minority of permanent secretaries are still appointed through ‘managed moves’ where the civil service leadership – often at the request of ministers – move officials horizontally without any formal process or competition. Since 2010, managed moves account for around a third of permanent secretary appointments – including the appointment of the Cabinet Secretary himself

– Akash Paun and Josh Harris, with Sir Ian Magee

Barbados Growth and Development Strategy Draft Document 2013 – 2020

Thanks to Prodigal Son for keeping the BU family informed

Click link to view – Barbados Growth and Development Strategy 2013 – 2020

Notes From a Native Son: Time for the Government to Get Moving

Hal Austin

Introduction:
The intellectual argument that Barbados is in deep economic (and social) crisis has now been conceded by the deniers – those who talk nonsense about the nation punching above its weight and exaggerating the soft influence we have in the region and, the world. Of course, it is all self-praise, the unfortunate outcome of economic ignorance and wishful-thinking.

I have said before, and will repeat again, that: first, the narrative that we have had a period of prosperity in the first decade of the 21st century was a myth built on over-borrowing on both a household and government level, ignoring our inefficient productivity to such an extent that we even believed that life owed us a living.

The second point that needs stressing is one that is in danger of seeping in to the gilded story of our economic prosperity: again, let us concentrate it to the post-independence years, and that truth is that the official myth-making of our economic growth, generally given as three per cent annualised, is, to be polite, crap. Had Barbados had a three per cent growth rate over the last decade, compounded, our post-global recession story would have been totally different. As things stand, we are up to our necks in debt, tourism, the main driver of the economy, is in intensive care and the priest is standing by to perform the last rites, while, in the meantime, relatives are fighting over how to divide up the spoils even before the last breath leaves the body.

Snakes and Ladders in Public Administration: Putting Barbados in a State of Economic Viability

George C. Brathwaite, founder and interim president of BAJE

There can be much to be derived out of the sober utterances that are spilled by a man not seemingly daunted by drowsiness or other lethargic effects of prolonged sleep. This article takes as its starting point the simplicity of the game – snakes and ladders – an Indian inspired, all-time favourite of many pre-adolescent children. The minimalism of snakes and ladders stems from its lack of any meaningful skill component in the execution of the game or in the attainment of the victor’s crown.

Notwithstanding, snakes and ladders was conceptualised with a deeper, moral, and sensitising agenda. Inherently, the choices of good and bad are included to signify the dialectical transformations emerging out of the contexts of values versus vices. There is the dynamism that links with performances to produce upward mobility in contrast to downward or backward falling. The aggregate difficulties (i.e. snakes) to be encountered are significantly more than the available opportunities (i.e. ladders) for climbing. It is by a mixture of self-determination and fortune in relation to similar circumstances facing at least one other participant/competitor that the outcome is manifested but never assured.

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