Last Wednes­day, I lis­tened to plans by the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism for growth to US$2 bil­lion in ex­ports from T&T by 2027, and $5 bil­lion by 2030. Very am­bi­tious! They al­so had tar­gets to dou­ble the cur­rent tourism growth from 6% and a tar­get for in­vest­ment that was sec­tor-spe­cif­ic for US$3b by 2027, with a hefty tar­get of $9b by 2030. It was a plan to get the non-en­er­gy sec­tor to fill the breach caused by low en­er­gy pro­duc­tion and forex short­ages due to re­duced en­er­gy rev­enue.

For decades, suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions have treat­ed pub­lic trans­porta­tion with a de­gree of lais­sez-faire ne­glect.

The first day of the planned three-day na­tion­wide maxi taxi protest has ex­posed the ex­tent to which this coun­try’s pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem is op­er­at­ing on a frag­ile foun­da­tion.

I grew up in Wood­brook, sur­round­ed by pots of Old Maid. They were my moth­er’s favourite flower and the dozen steps lead­ing up to our house had a pot of Old Maid at each end. They served not on­ly as dec­o­ra­tion but as a sort of bar­ri­er pre­vent­ing small chil­dren from falling. De­spite this, I tum­bled over and land­ed on my glu­teus max­imus. Not hav­ing much of that, I dam­aged my coc­cyx and hob­bled around for days, push­ing my pos­te­ri­or out to lim­it the pain.

As the Joshua Sama­roo-Ka­ia Sealy po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion per­sists, the ma­jor fo­cus over the past week has been on pro­test­ers who per­ceive there to be un­fair treat­ment in the mat­ter, with a manslaugh­ter charge cur­rent­ly be­ing lev­elled against Sealy.

Po­lit­i­cal par­ties make many promis­es on the cam­paign trail to con­vince the pub­lic that they are best suit­ed to gov­ern, as hon­ey at­tracts more vot­ers than the vine­gar of re­al­i­ty.

Smoke had bare­ly cleared on last Fri­day’s fiery con­clu­sion of the First Ses­sion of Par­lia­ment, when the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) jump-start­ed Sec­ond Ses­sion en­er­gy with Thurs­day’s pub­lic meet­ing.

As this na­tion com­mem­o­rates In­di­an Ar­rival Day to­day, we do far more than cel­e­brate the ar­rival of the Fa­tel Raza­ck on May 30, 1845. We ho­n­our the courage, sac­ri­fice and re­silience of more than 147,000 In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers who jour­neyed across the Kala Pani to an un­fa­mil­iar land and, through hard­ship and per­se­ver­ance, helped to shape the na­tion we know to­day.

So­cial me­dia lit up on May 22, as peo­ple re­port­ed ob­serv­ing un­usu­al lights or “UFOs” mov­ing across the evening sky.

For a pop­u­la­tion that is renowned for hav­ing a nine-day mem­o­ry, it is note­wor­thy that four months af­ter the trag­ic death of Joshua Sama­roo and the se­ri­ous in­jury of his girl­friend Ka­ia Sealy in a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing, the mat­ter con­tin­ues to grab na­tion­al head­lines.

A back­yard pump­kin planter from Princes Town needs sci­en­tif­ic and prac­ticed at­ten­tion to be paid to his ex­per­i­ment in food crop farm­ing. It is not every day that any­one, kitchen gar­den­er, sci­en­tif­ic agri­cul­tur­al­ist and/or reg­u­lar grow­er of food, pro­duces a 600-pound pump­kin.

It is no se­cret that tra­di­tion­al mass me­dia face nu­mer­ous, po­ten­tial­ly ter­mi­nal per­ils to­day.