NUTING EH RUNNING II

THE OPERATING TABLE

You can't run around and be happy and rich and gay while you're on the operating table. You have to be still. It's going to be uncomfortable. You are going to lose blood. You are going to lose weight. You are going to feel weak. You are going to feel pain. You're not going to be yourself for a long time. And if you don't follow the doctor's advice, you could screw yourself up again and all that pain would have been for nothing.

"But Kenny, ga..."

Dammit! Dammit all to hell!

It's true. Kenny dug the hole, too. But the truth of the debt problem, the misleadership of St Lucia, the dys-preparation and un-direction does not fall only on his shoulders. The records show that hundreds of millions in current debt was borrowed by the former government.

Many of the current symptoms of St Lucia's current condition were made because SLP and UWP, in successive governments, did the same as the other. One, maybe, worse than the other. Yeah. One definitely worse than the other.

And even then, the problems go further back than them.

Oh no...Sugar Daddy dead? What is  we gone do?

The islands of the Eastern Caribbean have been sick for a long time.
The Leeward Islands lost their 'Sugar Daddies' a long time ago. For every one of them who was not Antigua, the end of sugar was a mortal blow that only did not kill them instantly.

(You can't kill niggers instantly anyway. Ask white people.)

Green Gold, The Great Windward Pretense

The Windwards maintained the pretense a little longer. Then Europe unified, some idiot in the St Lucia government signed us up for free trade and the World Trade Organization and after that it was end of days for the protections of the banana industry.

We pretended everything was alright for about two decades. Imported foods, ever-more expensive cars, increasing consumption, personal debt and all of that while agriculture was dying and tourism was declaring itself to be unstable and not at all under our control.

Turns out that both Sir Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott are right about development. You have to make do with what you have and do it so well that foreign investors can't help but notice you. Everything else is fraudulence. It's unhealthy. And so, we end up on the operating table.

You can't have a good time in the operating room. It's not a party. The good doctor might make mistakes, but you have to admit that he's making a far more earnest effort than any one who  has been Prime Minister since John Compton. He's definitely not getting rich on this stuff.







And right,  now that's way more than I can say for any of his rivals.

Why,  thank you, Jason. But I still don't trust you.

Having said that,  the political  reality is  that Labour is hemorrhaging support right now and the UWP base is consolidating. The middlers,  independents and self-seekers have lost all patience with the situation and who  do you think they're going to blame? Emergency measures are needed. They have to lighten the burden on the people and grow the economy  at the same time. She's losing blood, Doc.

Tough times shorten memories. And times are so tough that they will have to do something far more spectacular than remind us of how it was under Flambeau.  And they're  going to have to do it soon.