Grumbling getting louder

Life is tough in Barbados and getting more difficult by the day.

Things are so rough that wherever you go, somebody is selling something or somebody else is begging for something.

But what got Cou Cou anxious about this sad state of affairs is that it seems things will get worse before there is any improvement.

No wonder political operatives are busy sowing seeds of discord about the Government making things worse by what they’re doing.

The word being spread is that if the Bees didn’t go begging for International Monetary Fund (IMF) money, then 1 500 or so public workers would not have been sent home – with more to go. There would be no talk about raising bus fares, neither would drivers have to be spending so much for fuel, as the road tax would have remained. And for sure there would be no garbage and water tax (Garbage and Sewage Contribution) that is giving poor people gripe to pay every month.

From what Cou Cou is hearing in the watering holes, at the limes and in the hairstylist parlours, Bajans made a big boo-boo and should have stuck with the Dems. And if they didn’t go for the Dems, they should have given more support to Lynette and her UPPstarts. But they should have never supported the Bees, who are only about family, friends and big business.

This talk is getting so loud these days that Cou Cou is satisfied that it is not only coming from a few loud disaffected Dems and UPP (United Progressive Party) people. Though they have been the ones trying to stir up strife by taking advantage of the real pain some people are going through to survive in Barbados today, we’re seeing growing Cou Cou is sure the Bees have their operatives on the ground and soon from now something will be said or done to show the average Bajan they have not been forgotten. After all, that is what politicians do. IMF programme or not, we suspect monies will be found or borrowed to do some programmes to ease the burden at the bottom.

But what Cou Cou is really concerned with is the folly of the message being put out there that things would have been better if Bajans had voted differently.

Well, unless you’re a diehard supporter or someone who can’t recognise a bad situation even though it’s as clear as a Transport Board bus lying across a road blocking traffic going and coming, you would have realised how horribly wrong things were going in Barbados for the last few years.

Think about it. The deterioration of our infrastructure – roads, buses, health services, public buildings, sewage systems and garbage disposal – didn’t just suddenly get desperate. They happened due to prolonged insufficient attention or simple neglect.

But even worse than that, there was no real plan to change this downward trajectory. It is one thing to talk people’s names and accuse them of the worst intentions, but managing a country is more than that. A road map to get Barbados out of this grief was needed. So the pain being suffered now is as a result of the measures being put in place to fix the disastrous situation.

anger among average people on the load they’re being asked to carry. And all the talk of a brighter tomorrow doesn’t change their reality.