Lawd put a han, is one bachannal after a nex one in de House and in front of de Chief Magistrate.

All dem ting only dere to mek we forget de real business at hand. It have a referendum dat go decide where we going as a country in de next 10 years.

Not no survey by all dem jokey pollsters who after all dese years still want to call deyself independent. It really doh tek no brains to see where de country going and in who hands we putting it when is ony 2 party and only one ah dem have ah DJ at anyone time.

I talking about de referendum organise by de Keith Noel 136 Committe.
Yes de same fellas who did organise de Death March, and de National Petition. De same ting dat did tek winder-boy Max days to hem and haw before he cold meet dem.

Well now dey tekking tings to de people, it have a vote pon dey website at http://www.yestt.org - dem ent mekking ting to difficult, jes tree simple question. It ent have no PNM or UNC or NAR or ABC or nutten in dis. It ent have no pardner to fixup de ting and it ent have no voter padding.

It jes have one simple question - allyuh want dis place to be nice or not?

And while it have a simple answer, it have some more difficult follow-up questions.

So wid dat I done talk - allyuh go and check de site. De vote over on May 15, 2006

Doh forget - http://www.yestt.org

 

BACKCHAT: Issue 17

Hi Tantie,
While I normally just read and for the most part enjoy your commentary and the resultant "Back Chat", I really felt the urge to respond to this one in particular.

To the chatter that resides oh so close to the Arctic Circle, you exist in what is referred to as a Market of Scale. Thus various enterprises find it easy to charge consumers low prices for goods and services simply because of the sheer size of the market (the population of consumers they cater to) which numbers in the tens and sometimes hundreds of millions and of course they are all competing for your business. In the Caribbean, the populations are minute in comparison on a country by country basis; for instance Trinidad & Tobago are only 1.3 million people and Antigua barely has 50,000 which is the population count required to be considered a small city in Europe!. Of that number only some of those people are cell phone customers. The rest who are not are minors, senior citizens and those of us that choose not to "get connected" for various reasons. I've had the experience of working for several of the Telecoms you've mentioned, including Sprint, Verizon, AT&T Wireless and Cingular and I'm quite familiar with the plans offered and the 'fine print' which you fail to mention such as prorated fees and the full cost of the phone if you break your contract. Most of the phones that are offered for free are the low end phones and by choice, several customers choose more sophisticated phones which they do have to pay for, not withstanding offers such as instant rebates. And just so you know, Cingular Wireless was a telecom operator in the region but pulled out and sold their interests to Digicel, citing that the region was just not profitable enough for them without raising prices to an uncompetitive level. They could not provide the same offers they do in a larger population simply because we're just to small a market for their operations. So yes, I am quite happy with TSTT because I can safely say, we have not been communicating via tin cans and strings or drum signals and now that the market has opened up, I also welcome fair play in the marketplace and hope that the entrants (Laqtel and Digicel) can keep us all connected. I could go on but since you are oh so amused at our backwater problems under the sun, I doubt I'll be able to chip away any of the ice that has obviously encrusted your vision.

- Sunning Problems on Maracas Beach

PS: Please have your excess cell phones recycled; your free junk is adding to our Global Warming problems!

//Trinidad