
Have you travelled along Bajan roads recently? I mean not just Bridgetown or South Coast, but all over – be it by St Thomas Church or Bawdens or wherever… It seems the answer for Road Repairs these days is to pelt a li’l asphalt ‘pon one of the many Iraq-sized craters known as potholes and hope it will go away! What has happened to fees drawn from the hijacking of Road Tax by 50%? Where does the money go? What repairs? You must mean used vehicular band-aids!
Water was due to go up since last regime, as the Government subsidies could not last forever… Yet BLP’s Anthony Wood was brave enough to attempt it but he didn’t know Owen was about to Ring The Bell, so it get scotched in a hurry! The BLP left that hot potato in the pocket of the Dems, yes, I say you can’t blame DEM for that, it should have been every since – Barbadians waste water!
Light and Power used a similar tactic in the 80’s to seek an increase when they had outages then – but they did not blame monkeys then – yet said New Equipment is required to stop the outages…

So you know what came next? More cash for your Bill! Carole Bishop was their PR at at the time and took offense when accused that BL&P was holding Barbados for ransom! But they went about saying they need to upgrade systems and if they do the cost is passed to the consumer – but if they only make do with what they currently possess then Bajans must accept outages as the norm, is that not blackmail?
Flash forward 20 years and here is Light & Power planning to monkey-proof their electricity but WE must endure a jack-up! It may be $10.00 a person but that’s $120.00 per year added to a jacking of $134.00 in Road Tax. I may not be an economist, but this means one has to look for an extra $254.00 one did not have to spend before!
LIME had an increase too, but since it is for landline only and at $1.77 across the board it is barely worth mentioning… Gas and Diesel have also increased, can you recall when $20 almost gave you half a tank? Now it’s the “ol’-time” equivalent of dropping in ten dollars… Oh wait a minute you don’t have ten dollars now, since that went to the Electric increase, right? Even Esso don’t give Magna points unless you spend $35.00 or more, en’t it time for them to give $0.25 for every dollar you spend as opposed to a dime for every dollar? All my Magna cheques do is stave off my Petrol, I never use them for a Cruise yet like how you see on commercials in TV8!

When these increases on Fuel, Energy and Utilities are felt by Businesses what do you think they will do? Absorb the costs? Hah!
But the icing is when David Estwick, who mangled the in 2008, now wants to propose a wage FREEZE? Is he out of his mind? Does he have one in the first place? What he SHOULD be saying is that Ministers in Public Sector and Managers in Private Sector will be mandated to take a reduction while the rest of us working Cuthberts and Esmes have their wages left alone, the surplus can offset any imbalances in the current deficit! Estwick can only be a Breadfruit Swopper or a Molly-Booby in heat, is all I feel!
Even the Private Sector along with one of the island’s main unions believes such a statement is out of order, imagine how the public is feeling? They are probably totally confused for elections now… BLP and DLP could be viewed as Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber while the NDP failed and the PEP is a straggler hoping for crumbs, Barbados , to paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s version of Batman’s arch-nemesis… Yet who will administer it?
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