A tourist rides in a taxi from Argyle after 6 p.m. He asks the driver how come there is no activity along the way? How come there are not many people out and about?
How do you think the taxi driver will respond to that tourist? Actually, forget the tourist and the taxi driver. What is your answer? You are a local resident. What is your answer to that question? Why is the road so “dead” after 6 p.m.?
The NDP agitatingly erected a billboard broadcasting what is known about SVG’s homicide rate, and there’s all kinds of ejaculated outrage over it. West Kingstown has had the most violent crimes in the country over the last several years. Why the outrage over a billboard? Is it because we’re nasty, worthless, and a bunch of diabolically selfish and self-hating people?
What’s flabbergasting is the reason for the outrage. Tourism is not something new to SVG. Where’s the outrage when yachties were robbed, raped, wounded, and murdered? We’ve had several cases over the years. Have we not read the stories in sailing publications and online forums? Oh, I forgot; we don’t read; but do we think this is not known widely among sailors in our surrounding waters? All the news headlines of violent crimes coming out of the United States, for example, do not stop Vincentians from flocking to the embassy for tourist visas.
Like covered-up rotten meat, it appears as though we like our own local nastiness, and we enjoy wallowing in worthlessness. What we don’t like is when certain people advertise it. At least if you are going to broadcast it, put it in a newspaper article or something where not even the tourists would see it, is what’s seemingly being suggested. Whatever you do, do not put it on a billboard for all to see. We don’t want that.
Nearly all surgeries are painful. Maybe this is the surgery that SVG needs. Surely, you can wait until a natural disaster shuts down whatever it is you call a tourism industry, and then try to fix the crime situation then; or let’s wait for COVID-25.
In the meantime, we’ll just continue to watch as our young men kill each other. We’ll continue to watch their children grow up without fathers. We’ll continue to watch as our young girls are murdered and dumped along the roadsides. Then we’ll accept our fate and sentence as our communities become prisoners of fear at the 6 p.m. dusk.
You’re not outraged that most people who appear to be fearful of coming to SVG are your own people. That doesn’t appear to bother you. Vincentians who live abroad are the ones who mostly express fear of coming home, and this was long before any billboard.
It’s like a man who is comfortable living like a wild hog, until school children pass and point at him feeding from the trough. That’s the only time he gets outraged, with his muddied face rising out of the trough with slime dripping from his mouth.
Man, sit your a@@ down…
In our next piece, perhaps we’ll address this in a historical context, like what happened in Canouan when — as was reported — opposition forces decided to cook in the road leading to one of the resorts, causing disruption to a wedding of a young couple who had to flee to a neighbouring island; or what happened at the airport during the 2000/01 protest.
Observer
I totally agree with the billboard.They need one about the culture of rape ,unemployment ,culture of dependency and poverty that this government has nurtured in this country. Stop enabling this government to brainwash and exploit Vincentians at every turn. Put up a billboard thanking Vincentians in the diaspora for helping to keep their families afloat in Vincy by the remittances they send. We need more billboards to help people everywhere to get a true picture of what’s happening in SVG.
Maybe the administrator will bring a law banning ” honest billboards that depict true vincy life”. They have communist / dictatorial tendencies.
Noone is out after 6pm, because the transportation system here sucks. Not discounting the presense of crime in SVG, but most of those murders were as a result of gang related activities..
Esmie Pringle- well said.
Esmie Pringle, me also support that, strongly agree.