STANLEY FELIX SHOULD GO TO JAIL

HOUSING MINISTER SMOKES CIGARS WHILE

CONWAY’S POOR PAY FOR FREDERICK’S MISTAKES

Stanley Felix should go to jail for playing jazz pop after two at the obscene volume level of 4 out of 10. Lol.

Come on, now.

Some club owner, whose profits depend on good conversation, is playing bubble gum jazz on a transistor radio and you think he should go to jail for that?

If anyone but a government minister had been taken down to jail for playing music that softly in an open air at 3 in the morning, we would be scouring the police.

But because it’s a politician…for once, I agree.

A POMPOUS, PRETENTIOUS PRICK (Just Like VS Naipaul)

Stanley Felix may be a pompous prick with pretentious airs and very bourgeois taste. He may have embarrassed St Lucia in Richard Branson’s company, losing us millions in Branson latest regional project. He may, in all probability, be the same kind of self-hating Caribbean man that Derek Walcott lovingly describes V.S. Naipaul as.

But, like Naipaul, the man is not entirely foolish.

First of all, he set up a club where little black bourgeois like him can swill white wine, talk about consumer products and overhear more interesting conversation that they are personally capable of. Before you know it, white folks, Arabs, Indians and Latins wanted to be there too. History has repeatedly proven that while foolish black people want to be white, all smart white and kinda-white people want to be black, at least on a Friday and Saturday night. (Sometimes, on Sunday, depending on the event – see St Lucia Jazz Festival and Showtime Boxing for empirical evidence.)

Stanley Felix, with all his latent post-colonial self-loathing, had the wherewithal to exploit that.

As far as I can tell, that’s Black Power. Twenty-first century style.

Second, I’ve been to the Q Club. Nice. But not my cup of tea. There’s no possibility of a band playing there or a poetry slam or anything I’m genuinely interested in. But it’s a helluva lot better than the noise factories that pass for houses of entertainment. You can hear another person talk at the Q Club.

There is no danger of the music ever being too loud at the Q Club. Ever.

Third, the Q Club is nowhere near residential Rodney Bay. So it’s not like anyone was losing sleep over the non-stop debauchery when you mix good wine, good music, men with money and short skirted girls with masters degrees.

Stanley Felix should go to jail.

But not for playing music after Big Brother’s curfew had passed.

STANLEY FELIX’S EPIC FUCKING FAIL

Stanley Felix should go to jail for having the second most ridiculous accent in St Lucia (with all respects to Gail Rigobert).

He should go to jail for flaunting his expensive taste as though sophistication wasn't complete until it was well publicized.

Most damningly:

He should go to jail for letting the Housing Corporation try to foist toy houses on Conway residents and make them pay through their teeth for the mistakes and mismanagement of Richard Frederick and Michael Flood.

Here’s how the Conway residents who are now marching the Trail of Tears to Monchy are taking this whole thing:

As far as any of them know, low cost housing has never really targeted low income people in St Lucia, which is why ghettos not only exist but continue to grow.

Conway residents who spoke to the FLOGG say that when Richard Frederick, then Housing Minister, and his minions (i.e. Flood, as head honcho at Housing) first pitched the Monchy package, the houses were supposed to be finished little houses that one could build on.

The financial deal was attractive, nay, miraculous: “Pay whatever you want as you go along.”

It sounded like a government was finally trying to help people according to their means rather than according to the dictates of some banker.

It sounded too good to be true.

It was.

During the last administration, the Housing Corporation spent lots and lots of money without building lots and lots of houses. They kept making promises, upping the ante every time the political pressure got hot, but never actually delivering the dozens, nay, scores of houses that should have been built, even by a corrupt Housing Corporation.

Nearer the end of Richard Frederick's term in office, Conway residents were already being told that they would not have an indefinite period, but would have a leisurely period of 30 years to pay off their new properties.

“How much will we have to pay per month?” said Porky Pig, a persistent sub-literate who can both write his name  and figure out that if you know how long it takes to pay, you ought to know how much the monthly installment is.

The answer was vague.

As the years rolled on, a government came and a government went. During that time, the deal changed again, from 30 years to 25 years. Then from 25 years to twenty years.

“That means the installment is going up,” observed Carlos the Carpenter, an extremely literate man who would figure out the installment himself if Housing would only tell him what the principle was.

Still, Housing had no clear answers on what the houses in Monchy would cost per month.

In the meantime, some of the residents went to see the houses. What they reported back has been confirmed.

“Basically, what you’re getting is a dancehall with a bathroom and windows,” Carlos the Carpenter said. “You have to do your own partitioning. The houses are unfinished and if you buy you have to do a lot of work on them.”

“Plus, the walls thin, thin, thin,” Porky Pig added. “Is like them fellas cutting corners on the houses and then they want us to sign contract without us knowing what the focking price of the house is.”

“Is like they want us to end up paying the full cost for their mistake,” Carlos summed up.

“Basically, I used to feel like I was getting a deal,” Porky Pig concluded. “Now, I don’t feel like it’s worth it. I feel like it’s  a bad deal and I better off in Conway than taking anything dem fellas try and give me.”

Dem fellas…in their modderflogg!

HE NEVER WAS A JEDI, ANYWAY…THEY’RE ALL SITHS!

Which fellas? the FLOGG asked, still taking in the perspective of the Conway residents. Frederick or Felix? Flambeau or Labour?

“What’s the difference? Both of them not doing what they’re supposed to do and we end up paying. So dem fellas is all of dem fellas that didn’t do the low cost housing so that poor people could feel like they have a place in the world that they paid for with their sweat.”

Which fellas are trying to sell the Conway people toy houses for way more than the market value?

The same fellas who put the country in debt.

The same fellas who alienated the country’s friends in Taiwan and the US.

The same fellas who overburden the foreign service with Sarah Floods and Elizabeth Clarkes.

The same fellas who let the banana industry die, when they know damned well that Tesco and Marks & Spencer will buy every certified premium banana we can grow and they will pay top dollar for it.

And that is why Stanley Felix should go to jail. Because he was not part of the incestuous political and financial aristocracy like Lorne Theophilus or Allen Chastanet.

He was supposed like Spider in 2001. He was supposed to be different.

But he is more like Spider in 2009, which means he's no different than the rest. Talk about giving people the representation they deserve.

Now it seems that he has effective, if not intentionally become complicit in a scheme in which a government is seeking to make poor people pay more for some substandard houses than they are worth in order to recover monies that were wasted by their most hated political rivals.

One can’t help but notice that, in the big picture, Stanley Felix is Richard Frederick’s child’s pawen and Kenny Anthony is Allen Chastanet’s wife’s partner’s father. And so, it seems that he is one of the St Lucia’s great incestuous family after all. He’s not a Neg Marron on the rise, like Philip J Pierre.

Maybe he was a Neg Marron, once upon a time. But no one can remember that. Now, he’s just another convert to the bourgeois way…like Richard Frederick…like Guy Joseph…like Alva Baptiste…like the Darth Sidian of them all, Leo Clarke.

Stanley Felix has become yet another reason why St Lucians need to stop depending on leaders like him and Frederick and Kenny and Chastanet.

WHAT’S NIGGA GONE DO?

In the case of Conway residents, perhaps what they need to is get an honest valuation of the Monchy houses done and offer the Housing Corporation a deal based on that value, not based on what Housing spent.

Perhaps, this will not only teach Housing to play by fair rules.

Perhaps, it will empower people to set the agenda for the leaders and let the leaders know that they never were the boss. They always were the servants.

Which means they need to do a whole lot less talking and a whole more listening to the Voice of God in Democracy:

We, the People…

You dirty bastards! Why can't you just do something right, for once?