I haven’t yet listened to every single budget presentation about three times but I’ll get around to it soon enough. Also, because I’m rushing off to numb my mind with a trashy action movie, I’ll just alter the same article I wrote this time last year (nothing really changes does it?) It’s up to you to guess what hasn’t changed. But in the mean time, shall we dance?

• Though some may have problems with all the emphasis on physical developments like the harbour, tunnels other such goodies, I actually like them a lot. But I like eating even more, which may not necessarily be such a good thing considering the shape I’m in. One good result of this runaway inflation is that I have had to severely cutback on my consumption of cheese. Sigh . . .

• Despite all the money claimed to be spent on human services, I haven’t seen any real detailed plans, other than the commissioning of more commissions. Okay, they also decided to restore study leave with pay; but considering how bad the schools are maybe we should start looking into merit pay as well . . .

• Guess they really weren’t going to repeal the environmental levy. Not that I fault them for retaining it, albeit in an adjusted form. But these guys would say anything on platform to get elected. But I guess they know their people.

• It was amazing how few of the parliamentarians actually debated the budget or anything policy related. Most of the parliamentarians made this yet another partisans diatribe and kept on talking about the past administration. Some say the SLP hasn’t gotten over the fact that it lost the election; apparently UWP has just as much trouble getting over the fact that they won.

• Harold Dalson loves the people of Soufriere so much that he would cross the floor to help them; after which he’ll commit suicide. Unfortunately he said that on national television foiling my plans to take out a life insurance policy on him. I doubt that Rufus Bousquet has that much principle however. (Come to think of it, neither do I.)

• Unlike Compton, Stephenson King is not a real witty guy. He can’t even play the straight guy like Bob Newhart. So I doubt he and Philip J Pierre could live together. That said, I’m very certain that the Premier Minstre now has the space to accommodate him.

• Este’ gets bumped up to about a 7, 7.5 for the Este4All.com plug. Everything being relative. He’s the only one with an up and running website as far as I know.

• I really think that Guy Joseph should give up the cost overruns bit. It’s played out, he’s been in office a whole year and every time he says ‘DIWI’ I start thinking about shiny little mangoes . . . Unless I’m all mixed here . . .

• Oh, did I mention that the government has often resorted to setting up commissions and consultancies in lieu of actually doing something? Not that I am complaining of course.

• I’d felt at least since the Cabinet appointments, that the UWP doesn’t give a damn about education. But this year they’re doing a lot more, like setting up yet another commission. I’m not sure what happened to last year’s report, as Robert Lewis asked for, but at least it gave them some talking points so they can say they got everything covered.

• Unfortunately, I don’t feel so sorry for the poor MPs who have to get duty-free vehicles. I doubt Richard Frederick takes the bus to work everyday. And why can’t Senators get them too? (Oh yeah because the boys in the lower house want to prove a point.)

• In a related issue, the UWP has a fascination for criticizing the past administration for not creating employment for people qualified to do nothing. (Like me.) The fact of the matter is that more than half of the people my age didn’t even get into high school. Of course the UWP believes that it doesn’t matter since there will always be bananas to cut next Wednesday so who really cares about school?

• Arsene James is so upset because he had to find a whole 500 additional school places last year. Ah the problems we have to deal with.

• Pip had another pretty good presentation. Sounded like he was having fun. This

year he had more material to work with thanks to Allen Chastanet.

• Unfortunately, Musa vs Sarah didn’t quite live up to those Anthony Torrence vs St Clair Daniel jousts. I mean the ‘child killers’ line was nasty but she didn’t bite. Now that would have been fun!

• I thought that generally speaking, when people of the area are consulted about something, their parliamentary representative by definition must be informed.

• Rufus is questioning how a man with a shaky personal business life could have so much control over the country’s finances. I too note the irony.

• Guy Joseph, though he spoke rather well kept talking about cost overruns, CCI and about people running to Dominica. None of which had much direct bearing on this budget.

• Keith Mondesir kept on acting as if he really cared about what the opinions of the people were about the mental hospital. Well Sir the new one was well on its way and I can’t remember the people asking you (y’all?) to stop it.

• What did Spider say that couldn’t have been said within his allotted time?

• Oh yeah Rufus Bousquet was mad. He dismissed this budget as being crappy and out of touch with the needs of the people. I don’t see why he’s so mad this year since its basically the same one as last year, tunnels and all. Oh yeah since Compton was reading it he decided to just let it slide. But this year he has to stand for principle. Where was principle last year? After all, wasn’t he still getting paid? Oh yes I remember, that’s how this whole thing got started in the first place.

• Apparently it’s a big issue that it took the Labour Party four years to get 65 million dollars from the Chinese so they shouldn’t expect Flambeau to get 104 million form the Taiwanese in one year. Now I concede that maybe the ROC did actually give more that 29 million but some of it went directly to where it would have had a greater impact, thus bypassing the Consolidated Fund . . .

• Rufus Bousquet dismissed it as a karaoke budget. But as I always say, better to have a karaoke budget than a karaoke passport. But in all fairness I didn’t go to the LA Business College either so what do I know?

• By the way, since Rufus Bousquet really just wants to help the people of Choiseul, than why is he so upset about not being in office? That should leave him with more time to run around the constituency; unless it proves that something is just wrong with our system of government.

• Why do I get the strange feeling that no one really likes Dove?

• One of the more potentially funny moments was when Jeannine Compton took up Rufus on a point of order, only to be shutdown by Sarah. But since she managed to somewhat get her message across anyway, she might as well have gotten nasty and spilt the beans about the Last Cabinet Meeting. But there’s always next year (or is there?)

• They still claim that the increase in poverty was due to the SLP’s policies. Assuming that the poverty was spurred by the collapse of the banana industry, thus it should be the SLP’s agriculture policy which did this. Yet no one has pointed out exactly what this policy was. After all, I remember those bananas strikes and they didn’t happen under Labour. In any case, no one has explained why all the Windwards and Jamaica followed Kenny’s bad policy. Or why Caroni 1975 Limited is in dire straits. Or why St Kitts pulled out of sugar. They haven’t grasped the rather simple concept that

correlation is not the same as causation. The same reasoning applies to crime, in fact even more so.

• In keeping with the refusal to analyze anything, the UWP still blames the shortfall in agriculture on Kenny’s hate for the farmers. Of course they never extrapolate further to explain why Kenny Anthony would have such a dislike for farmers that he would run an election just to sabotage them. None of this means that the SLP’s policies were solid

per se but if the best explanation you have is that Kenny hated farmers in light of all the other more plausible explanations, then maybe you just aren’t smart enough to improve anything. Perhaps they know about some traumatic childhood experience that the rest of us don’t.

• Emma Hippolyte had one of the best presentations this year, if only in tone. This is probably because she had no reason to play to the gallery. Unfortunately I snoozed through most of the other Senate presentations.

• I must once again commend NTN for their budget coverage online. Though I didn’t actually watch the online video, I appreciated that the presentations were available for download minutes after they were completed in the House. (I also appreciate the fact that Senate debates were televised.)

• Once again, Kenny Anthony was one of the few persons who actually spoke about the budget. And he would have spoken a lot more if he had the chance.

• I knew Ma Beaubrun wouldn’t let an uncouth rogue like me into her house so I didn’t even bother this year.

• Thirty-one thousand dollar return from the Showtime in Paradise? My goodness Allen . . . At least it wasn’t as bad as when Paul Simon and Walcott did Capeman but still . . ..