NUTING EH RUNNING (How Kenny Have De Country and How Tings Wuz Running Under Flambeau)

'Noting eh running boy. You eh see how Kenny have de country. Nuting eh running....'

They actually sound like what Rick Wayne sounds like when he makes funny of their ignorance, their accents and 'de kotcha'. (Who actually says that, apart from Rick?)

Legal Ghetto Youth: "Ga,  Jason, nuting eh runnin'...."

"But nuting eh running, for true, ga..."

Yeah,  whatever.  Kenny and them promised Better Days and delivered Bitter Days instead. The economy's contracting, the VAT is killing us and now the subsidies on basic food stuffs are under attack. The only thing preventing a revolution is that most of the people still think that Flambeau stinks  to high heaven worse than Labour ever could. I get it.

BUT...

We were supposed to prefer to go over the edge of national sanity and become a corrupt narco-state with no respect? No thanks. Rather starve. I'd rather commit praedial larceny for breadfruit and shoplift cans of tuna than be a fucking narco-state.

Minister in Charge of Running Vibes

You're right about one thing, brother. Tings was running under Flambeau. Vibes was flowing. And it wasn't just because of the audacity of dope. It was because somewhere between $11-17 million a year of Taiwanese money bypassed government administration and went straight to contractors and other likely  suspects.

Flambeau caused this money to bypass the Consolidated Fund, saying it would result in more efficient distribution and less administrative costs. No doubt,  it would also have caused less temptation in a cash strapped Treasury.

Labour warned that bypassing the Consolidated Fund would only lead to one thing: corruption.

And so, here we are today.

Chou, reading his daily WTF file on Flambeau

We can see now this was more wasteful than using the Consolidated Fund.  With up to $29m of the Taiwanese money totally unaccounted for and the other $28m badly spent, there's no doubt that even Treasury could have done a better job than the constituency development councils or foundations of whatever.

We can see now why it's necessary for procedure to be followed. It costs less to pay the administrative cost of proper procedure.

"But tings wuz  runnin. And right now,  nuting ah run."

All told,  Flambeau got about half a percentage point of GDP for free and with relatively few questions asked. With that kind of liquid, you would think they would hatch a plot that would benefit the people in such a way that they would permanently retire Kenny Anthony back to  the university circuit,  without even maligning his name.....

But temptation was too great.  Lesser men did what they did best.  And so,  you get what we have here....

We should have gotten much better out  of Flambeau given the resources and liberties they had at their disposal. The truth about Caribbean people is that they're not concerned so much about the law and the procedure when they're getting the results.

Flambeau, obviously,  did not deliver the kind of results that Taiwanese money, properly spent, would have bought.