GUEST COLUMN: What we can do for our country

By J MacArthur Cox | Wed, September 01, 2010 - 12:00 AM

THE MORE WE talk the less we understand ourselves. We want Government to hold our hands from the cradle to the grave.

Barbados does not owe us anything. We owe our country everything. We are becoming a nation of complainers inspite of the fact that successive Governments have given us every opportunity to be the best we can be.

We talk of high food prices but the consumers are to blame. Why not shop around, plan your diet to provide healthy foods; spend more time at home cooking than in a fast-food outlet.

Visit your doctor at least once a year to make sure your health is on the right track. A healthy lifestyle creates a healthy environment.

Politically, our industries are non-competitive, our welfare system has become a cash-gobbling monster. Our foreign debt has ballooned because Government is trying to solve, subsidise or regulate every aspect of our lives instead of forcing us to live within our means.

Government is right to stop subsidising electricity, water, gas, and so on. We cannot maintain a socialist superstructure when we are providing free education and health for all.

We need a painful but necessary social revolution in downsizing Government and melting our country’s debt away. We must rewrite the social contract between the people and Government.

Making cuts is hard and persuading people to lower their expectation is even harder, but New Zealand and Canada have had to do it, and it works.

We need Opposition parties, BLP or DLP, to offer alternative solutions instead of the useless comments we are forced to accept when they are not in office.

If we look at the United States we would see when a government tries too hard to be everything to everyone, corruption flourishes because the same people government is trying to assist are the same people who are trying to rip the government off.

Some of us talk because we think sound is more manageable than silence and many of us who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

In every community there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds that need healing. In every heart is the power to do it.

Look at those young men on the block saying they cannot find work. They are not trying and they do not want to work. The choice is simple, if you cannot work in the private sector or Government, work for yourself.

No honest work is degrading. This is why women who produce one child after another and then expect Government to raise them need a rude awakening.

We spend a huge amount of money on education, but are we getting what we pay for? I do not think so. Too many of our children lack communication skills and discipline when exiting secondary schools.

Why? Because some parents have no time to spend with their children.

On their behalf, I do not think that ten per cent of parents are members of any parent or teacher unit; many do not visit their children’s schools unless the schools request or demand their presence.

Therefore, can we expect teachers to care when the mothers and father do not? If there is no shepherd, what will happen to the flock?

We expect more of our police and judges, than we do of our politicians, because we expect our politicians to lie; we do not and will not accept such behaviour from our police and judges.

I can live with myself, that is why I prefer to speak as I see life. This upsets others, including members of my family.

I never aspired to be a diplomat, so my honesty can make me seem uncouth, but it is better to tell the truth and let it hurt than tell a lie and watch a friend die.

So, fellow Barbadians, let the present social, political and economic conditions in this country be a wake-up call.

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Posted by Sylvia 1 year, 5 months ago: You have said a mouthful. Bajans are spoiled to the core and I blame the government for allowing some of them to believe that they are born helpless to help themselves. I will bet my last dollar that in this 21st century many of them will wake up one day to a rude awakening.