Perhaps to the 13 it is only a game.  A game of semantics and propaganda.  But it takes us back to Animal Farm the day that Squealer fell off the ladder.  “At the foot of the end wall of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments were written, there lay a ladder broken in two pieces. Squealer, temporarily stunned, was sprawling beside it, and near at hand there lay a lantern, a paintbrush, and an overturned pot of white paint."The code by which the animals had lived sin...

“All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances;And one (wo)man in (her) his time plays many parts,” (Shakespeare: As you like it.)On Wednesday 28th August, the curtains came down on the final act from Mrs Rita Frett-Georges MBE.  She was one of the old guards; A Virgin Islander who did her part in the building of the Territory; Another giant upon whose shoulders we stand.She left with the recognition that a lot o...

The tourist island is thirsty and her personal hygiene is questionable.  The only Virgin Island with ‘Virgin’ in her name has been begging for, and denied, a commodity that is a basic human right.Water.(But she, in the Virgin Islands, is not alone in this experience.)In 2000, the UN crafted some goals to extend to 2015 which it called the Millennium Development Goals.  Water and sanitation were embedded in those goals.At expiry in 2015, the UN then enacted 17 Sustainable De...

The cars, parked on both sides of the King’s Road and in all available vacant lots in the vicinity, made their own prior announcement.A sitting Premier and a former Premier were in attendance.  So were the 3rd and 8th District Representatives and the Junior Minister for Tourism.Dr Pickering and Ms Parsons, former Deputy Premiers, were also there.The church was filled to capacity and the significant overflow into the large space of the Sea Cows Bay Methodist Church yard made movement i...

According to Isabell Allende (A Long Petal of the Sea) “…without science, industry and technology, no progress is possible…”Former Premier Fahie always repeated that ‘when you fail to plan, you plan to fail’ and it is beginning to be crystalline that we plan to fail at independence.To be clear, independence sits on the road of the natural trajectory in human development.  Parents expect it of their children and a people, at some point, desire to be mast...

“The water, mostly, goes everywhere but in the pipes.  Sometimes, for weeks on end, one must be content with seeing it cascading downhill or flowing through the bushes while it is needed in homes, in guest rooms, in businesses. Often, an observant Good Samaritan who knows one of the maintenance workers may send a photo with the hope that the identified leaks/breaks would be urgently addressed.   But it seems the maintenance workers often return to the same spo...

“On Tuesday, the sea resembled a giant looking glass.  It sat there tranquil, beautiful, inviting.  The full moon lent tracks of light to enhance the sea’s allure and a clear, blue sky ensured that cloudy patches did not contribute intermittent darkness on the glistening water.But the sea is never to be trifled with.  It is moody in its temperament, capricious by nature, extremely dangerous, deadly.The sea has been eyewitness to heinous crimes and it has claimed its fa...

The COI has been the Territory’s Achilles heel ever since a departing governor reluctantly granted the wish of a former Premier who called for it day and night when he was Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.  His rationale was that the NDP Party that formed the government of the day was the most corrupt in the history of BVI politics.But words are spirit and life.  Long after they are spoken, they still retain their capacity to haunt and to hurt.The children of the si...

“Bit by bit our freedom is being taken away, under our gaze but beneath our notice while we run around to the UN, CARICOM and to whomever has two ears to make the BVIs case for independence.The only place we seem uninterested in making that case is in BVI.  We have not studied the costs, obligations and responsibilities of independence.  We want the people to make the decision in anger and in ignorance perhaps without even the benefit of a referendum.Surely the people do not want...