Daily Archive: Sunday, November 4, 2007

The latest municipal drama is a piece of theatre with which Georgetown residents are only too familiar.

Dolphin Secondary School won yesterday’s Schools Under-14 Touch Rugby Tournament at the National Park.

Darren Allen destroyed a strong field and put a stop to the winning streak of Alonzo Greaves when he captured the feature event of the Fern leaf-sponsored 11-race card yesterday at the National Park.

Given all the expectations, supporters are at a loss to comprehend the West Indies Cricket Board’s (WICB) decision to appoint John Dyson as new coach of the team.

The stage is set for an exciting clash today at the National Stadium, Providence when defending champions Albion Sports Club of Berbice takes on Georgetown Cricket Club (GCC) in the final of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) Neal and Massy sponsored 40 over first division competition.

Andy Roberts could not conceal his sense of utter hopelessness for the future of West Indies cricket when he spoke after the completion of the KFC Cup last week.

The inaugural Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) Pepsi/ Carib Beer sponsored Twenty/20 first division competition got started in Berbice on Friday with three matches.

Given all the expectations, supporters are at a loss to comprehend the West Indies Cricket Board’s (WICB) decision to appoint John Dyson as new coach of the team.

At any time, but more especially when so many international sports are making a concerted effort to expunge the still evident curse of racism, the Jamaica Daily Gleaner’s reaction to John Dyson’s appointment as West Indies cricket coach made for alarming reading Here is how one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in the Caribbean railed against the choice in its editorial: “Like Bennett King and David Moore immediately before him, John Dyson, an Australian, is a foreigner, a white foreigner at that, and many former players (and) a vast number of fans are against it and justifiably so.”

With only two week-ends of Premier League football remaining, the top teams continue to trade positions with no one team really cementing a place at the top of the heap.

A blazing unbeaten 44 from just 20 balls, decorated with seven fours and one six, by Robert Burns, helped Demerara Cricket Club (DCC) defeat Transport Sports Club on run-rate in their Georgetown Cricket Association (GCA) Steve’s Jewellery-sponsored Over-40 cricket competition at the DCC ground, Queenstown, yesterday.

Dear Editor, I find it pertinent to open this letter by relating a recent encounter I had with one of my neighbours.

Dear Editor, We shall be most grateful if you will facilitate an enquiry of the Agencies listed below regarding a building which is being constructed in Garnette Street, Lamaha Gardens, immediately west of Aromata Place.

Dear Editor, “Mimic men” (SN 07-11-03) or whatever one might want to call it but the reality is that the increasing popularity of American cultural traditions like Halloween and Thanksgiving in Guyana can be attributed to the fact that the world is indeed “flattening” and is becoming smaller.

Dear Editor, I read with interest Abu Bakr’s letter on VS Naipaul captioned “Naipaul has re-invented himself as an upper class and unpredictably eccentric Englishman” (07.11.02).

Dear Editor, Funny how one assumes, perhaps illogically, that former British colonies still adopt and follow English law.

Dear Editor, I refer to the letter by Mr. Donald Ramotar entitled, “The PPP held Arthur Abraham in high esteem” (07.11.01).

Dear Editor, Having lived through the 1900s as General Secretary of the People’s National Congress, I found the Stabroek News Editorial of October 24, 2007 titled, “Ashes of the Past”, a well written article, obviously done by someone possessing high professional competence and journalistic integrity.

Dear Editor, Presidential appointments of key scientific positions in most countries are an accepted norm.

The D&C (Dilatation and Curettage) is a small surgical procedure and perhaps one of the most misused.

Some of you may have found certain plants difficult to root from hardwood cuttings, such as certain mussaendas.

Some years ago Caribbean writer and cultural commentator Ian McDonald caused a minor stir when he criticised today’s popular music, in particular dancehall and soca, calling it mindless, shallow and mechanical.

The bitch, having given birth to her litter, usually is in fine health.

I went to get new glasses and the optometrist told me I have glaucoma.

But I have promises to keep And miles to go before I sleep And miles to go before I sleep.

Last Sunday this column carried a portion of the text of Mr Cassian Mittleholzer’s broadcast in November 1971 which spoke of Aflatoxin and its dangers.

Toronto is a calm, clean, well-ordered, cosmopolitan, peaceful city. If one long weekend in this city of two-and-a-half million people there are a couple of murders it is an alarming law and order crisis.

Pity poor Thomas Shannon, the US State Department’s Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Methods of rule I have been at pains to point out in the current series of columns, which are assessing my earlier thesis of four years ago about the state in Guyana being transformed into a vehicle for criminal enterprise that the “methods of rule” of a particular state do not exemplify its intrinsic essence.

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The Integrity Commission is not functioning and the programme of reform recommended by the World Bank’s 2002 Country Financial Accountability Assessment (CFAA) and the subsequent recommendation by the Fiduciary Oversight Study is being stymied by a lack of funding and direction.

A Trinidadian woman who arrived in Berbice last evening to establish whether the two bodies which washed up on the Corentyne shore one week ago were those of her missing brothers, left Guyana feeling relieved after the dental records did not match.

Wanted man David Leander called David Zammett and ‘Biscuit’ who was allegedly tortured by police while in custody is now a patient at the Georgetown Hospital under heavy police guard.

More than a month after he had been appointed the Deputy Chief-of-Staff of the Guyana Defence Force, Colonel Andrew Pompey has been off the job and well-placed sources at Camp Ayanganna said that he is in Cambodia completing a contract with the United Nations.

President Bharrat Jagdeo told the business community that the subprime financial crisis in the United States would mean higher international borrowing rates and the re-pricing of risk, which could impact financing for Guyana’s hydropower project next year The President also defended the inflows into the economy, saying these could be traced to economic development and were not from drug money.

The administration of the Critchlow Labour College (CLC) was on Friday still hopeful that subventions covering the past three months from the Ministry of Education to assist the institution in meeting its day-to-day expenses, including the payment of salaries for some staff, would be released this week.

The Freedom of Information (FOI) bill tabled by the minority opposition AFC has not been discussed by the governing party and the indications are that support for the bill might not be forthcoming in the near future.

Some 30 persons were detained early yesterday morning as police carried out several raids around the city and on the East Bank Demerara as far as Grove.

Relief workers in Guyana and the Caribbean can now access geographic data about displaced persons or downed infrastructure during disasters with the recent launch of MapAction Latin American and the Caribbean (MapLAC).

Sculptor and painter Josefa Tamayo and ceramist Anna Correia were the big winners in the fifth National Watercolour Competition hosted by the National Gallery.

A nine-year-old student of the Mocha Arcadia Primary School disappeared on Friday afternoon while on her way home from school and relatives have no idea where the child might be.