What was expected to be a grand occasion turned out to be mere doldrums and trotting out more propaganda rhetoric to appease a withering old guard, the Democratic Labour Party’s MP for St Michael West Central paraded a list of plans for his constituency and barely listed any accomplishments – hardly what can be truly construed as a report, since this implies deeds accomplished.

In this clip, James Paul of the Democratic Labour Party makes it abundantly clear he is NOT seeking to be Agriculture Minister and he tries to lay blame at any confusion on the Opposition BLP;-

Later on in the evening, I asked Mr Paul, who’s also President of the Barbados Agricultural Society, on what happened to the Manifesto Promise made of establishing an Agricultural Protection Act in the DLP’s first 100 days in Office? Originally, they were only allowing CONSTITUENTS to ask questions and they wanted none from the Media, citizen journalist or otherwise! But as nobody was forthcoming so they acquiesced… My contention is this – If he will investigate why no progress was made on this key proposal then how can Mr Paul say he’s not looking at administration of the Agriculture Ministry?? Listen to his answer and decide for yourself;-

Deputy Prime Minister Freundel Stuart also spoke that evening, but his contribution was more of a nostalgic meandering rather than offering significant contribution to the evening’s purpose. Health Minister Donville Inniss also talked, and his topic was what appeared to be a glowing report card on how healthy the Queen Elizabeth Hospital is, now after a DLP regime… The real diagnosis will be delivered in a subsequent update right here on this website, as this detailed examination will have analysis from direct experiences soon!

Let’s resume at the start now that we have gotten the ridiculous out of the way… The evening got off to a bad start when a teenager tried to deliver Barbados’ National Anthem A Capella and flubbed the last phrase tragically, what a disrespect to our Gem of the Caribbean Sea! He should have had the words on a sheet in case he forgot any verses, as a former Anchor at CBC I can tell you that that is an automatic expectation of any presenter, to have a script handy even if you are familiar with the subject!

The evening was made unnecessarily longer by four performances and too many speakers, one rendition from Kid Site would’ve been sufficient… Instead there were two songs from David Piggott and a tune from Jalisa and a dance sequence from a new group called NWA (more on the dance very shortly). I have no idea if this was to give the technical team time to try and stream the evening’s proceedings, but this never happened as there was insufficient bandwidth (They used LIME instead of TeleBarbados)! There they were, a number of speakers telling the audience the ceremony was being sent via Internet overseas and nothing was happening! LOL, OMG, what a farce!

Now back to NWA – While in no way am I dismissing an all-boys’ dance group, nevertheless there are some serious concerns if one is to break them away from the cycle of ‘boys on the block‘…. Let’s look at their name, in the USA this same name was for a rap group called NIGGAZ WIT’ ATTITUDE, their biggest hit was known as F**K THA POLICE, what a message for Barbadian youth?

As you see, the youngsters are dressed in Jamaican colours and use the loading of a gun barrel chamber to indicate the change of a scene in each dance sequence… I missed recording the beginning where the phrase OUTSTANDING was lifted from MORTAL KOMBAT – one of the most violent videogames in the history of gaming computers! Competitors send enemies to fall on spikes or pull out their spines in dripping blood… What mirror image is sent to the communities when Barbados is seeking to avoid BLOCK mentality?

Finally, Mr Paul wanted people to stop littering so as to reduce the strain on Drainage in his constituency. Yet I observed how Cabinet and Senate members received prodigious amounts of bottled water or soft drinks while the humid evening wore on and the rest of the audience was left to fend for themselves, but what I particularly noticed was once the conference was over, not an MP nor Upper Chamber member picked up their cups or bottles and left them scattered on the Ellerslie School’s Auditorium’s floor – what an example to send for any young people present, eh? Bare rubbish indeed!