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Stray dogs at Rawacou Recreational Park on Dec. 27, 2024.
Stray dogs at Rawacou Recreational Park on Dec. 27, 2024.

Now, about this recent Dog Bill that renders penalties for offences by dogs on beaches — it is a sensible one. But in practice? It is yet another platitude law: a theoretical concept soon to be forgotten or ignored. It is an inane edict far too impractical to patrol. It is a law to do nothing about something, and the legislators would not waste the opportunity to pat themselves on the back. That is really the whole point in the first place.

Yes, dogs on beaches are a matter for concern. No argument there. But let’s be sure we line up the issue correctly: dogs are the symptom; owners are the problem. While “dogs on beaches” must be controlled, there is another pressing problem — one we have been tolerating for years: noise. Ironically, we have a platitude law to deal with that as well. It has been there since 1988. Have you noticed how that is working? Then, expecting different from this new one is the definition of crazy.

Take Lower Bay beach on Bequia on Sundays, it can be palpably unpleasant. It is a competing cacophony of “music” ratcheted up to distortion levels — which is the classic definition of noise. And noise in open public spaces is noise pollution. Sorry, it is. Considering our current murder pollution situation, complaining about something as mundane as noise pollution feels petty, but we cannot let the bigger problem paralyse us into doing nothing about the smaller problem.

Now comes the touchy bit — the subjective/objective issue. Our tolerance for noise — and our definition of it — is not the same as it is for foreigners. Since tourism is a high priority, we have to consider the tourist experience. Sorry again, but we have to. And that is not me talking — it’s your minister. In defending the Dog Bill in Parliament, Caesar warned, “We have more tourists in the country, our room stock is going up, and we have to be very, very careful.” Very, very careful indeed.

A tourist visiting Lower Bay might unwittingly put themselves in harm’s way, but the yachtsman who chooses to spend his time peacefully on-board is worse off, and not only because he is getting the full blast exactly what he is trying to avoid. He is getting a modified version of it.

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Sound travels more easily and further, over water than over land. Not only that, but bass travels further than treble over water. So, while the people on land suffer from the noise, the peaceful yachtsman far away is getting a more distorted version. The already garbled noise becomes an unholy racket for the yachties.

There is more to tourism than hotel stays, restaurant bookings, and sightseeing. Ask Dr. Jerrold Thompson, CEO of the Cannabis Authority SVG. The Caribbean is set to become the first intensive zone of medicinal cannabis legislation in the world and SVG is trailing just behind Jamaica as a “start-up”. Marketing, though, is a different ball game. He said we would have to compete with rich countries like Canada — a powerful stretch, certain. Our small population cannot sustain an internal market, so the solution, he says, is tourism.

Well then, how does the old insular refrain, “St. Vincent is for Vincentians,” fit into that? Polluting beaches with distorted music is not the way forward. At the very least, it needs to be tempered. Good luck with that.

Patrick Ferrari

PS

This has nothing to do with the foregoing, but I am compelled to say that Ralph Gonsalves’ obsequious and shameful support for the deranged despot and his criminal regime in Venezuela lays bare the reason behind it — and there isn’t a nugget of moral fibre nor integrity in it. His disregard for the plight of the Venezuelan people is glaring and is the very antithesis of what he champions: The almighty citizen; the highest office in the land. Blabber. Blabber. Blabber. Gonsalves is biting the hand that feeds him with his pandering support for the fascist tyrant. The seven million exiled Venezuelans — oil barons who have financed some of our projects — are living a funereal existence in foreign lands. For that, I say: shame on you Ralph Gonsalves. Shame on you. Know this good for certain, though: the “Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines” is waiting in the epilogue.

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