Editorial

Yesterday the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to an empty chair in Oslo.

Fifty years ago, the first ever tied Test was played between West Indies and Australia at Brisbane on December 9-14.

Last Friday afternoon four teenagers were taken into custody by the police for allegedly stealing two cases of Guinness from a drinking spot in Plaisance the previousTuesday. 

The recent United States congressional elections have given the impression of dissatisfaction on the part of the American people with the Democratic Party leadership in both Houses, and particularly in the House of Representatives.

When three security guards can be beaten, tortured then paid off for their pains on the understanding that they will not proceed with an official complaint against the people responsible for their ordeal, and when, moreover, the police can remain indifferent to such a travesty, we really need no further evidence of the quality of the society in which we live.

For many years it has been argued that Guyana needs a positive immigration policy that takes account of the stagnation in its population growth – a combination of heavy migration and a low birth rate.

Minister of Education Shaik Baksh has finally spoken. He now says his ministry has no such thing as a ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy.’

A recent biography of the legendary left-wing journalist IF Stone was memorably entitled All Governments Lie.’

The term ‘blood money’ usually brings to mind the thirty pieces of silver Judas Iscariot received for betraying Jesus Christ to the Romans or similar cases in history.

On Monday, the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security and its partners – the newly established Men’s Affairs Bureau (MAB), the Men Empowerment Network and UNICEF, which will provide the funding – piloted part of a plan to reduce the incidence of violence against women and girls at Skeldon, Corentyne, Berbice.

The January 2008 general elections having come and gone, the people of Barbados found themselves with a new government, having experienced a fifteen-year stretch under then Prime Minister Owen Arthur.

These are difficult times for the health sector, more particularly, for state-run hospitals.

Two Saturdays ago, there was a major theft from Mohamed’s Enterprise on Lombard Street.

Guyana is a land of slogans. We can all parrot them from the earlier decades: Feed, Clothe and House – by 1976, no less − and Grow More Food.

Sharp personal criticism of politicians, especially those portrayed by their opponents as glib, arrogant or incurious, has become a regular feature of our age.

Most of the continent’s leaders meet today, in Georgetown, at the 4th Regular Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).

On Monday, three Berbice men appeared in the New Amsterdam Magistrate’s Court before Magistrate Adela Nagamootoo charged with three very similar offences; all three had given their wives “lashes”; all three were at first remanded to prison then placed on bonds of a year each to keep the peace failing which they would be imprisoned for one year.

Since the General Elections of May 24th in Trinidad & Tobago, the country’s citizens seem hardly to have had a dull moment.

Early in 2008, the Ministry of Education announced that all schools should have Parent-Teacher Associations.

If nothing else, the thoughtless seven-day strike of sugar workers called on Friday by the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union will focus the nation’s attention on what is fast proving an intractable matter – the myriad problems being experienced with the flagship Skeldon factory.