COME IN PLEASE

Algebra and the CIP

Dr. Lester Simon-Hazlewood

Let me confess I was the student in first form at the Antigua Grammar School who asked the math teacher if I could do mathematics without algebra. I will also say, thanks to the best male math teacher in the world, Mr. Bennett of the Antigua Grammar School, and thanks to the best female math teacher in the world, Miss James of the Princess Margret School, a group of us ended up realizing that mathematics, the queen of the sciences, was the most beautiful, logical and rewarding subject in school, even more so than (some of) the girls at The Antigua Girls High School.

So imagine my consternation and starry constellation when I read an article in The Daily Observer about the Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP). Eric Major of Global Managing Partners of Henley & Partners noted, inter alia, that “What I would like to see also is a double digit refusal rate from the CIU” (Citizenship by Investment Unit).

The responses from three learned men were that they disagreed with the need for a double digit rejection rate. Can it be that they preferred a single digit rejection rate and I am making an algebraic storm in a teacup, or a mathematical hurricane in a saucepan?

One of the wise men said, “If it is the people qualify, we have set out certain requirements for eligibility…” Another wise man stated, “What we should be concerned about is not the number of rejections, but whether or not the independent overseas providers are in fact doing the due diligence to the best of their abilities”. The third wise man added, “You’d wish to have all applicants pass the test”.

Simple, algebraic, linear equations should inform us that the rejection rate is on one side of the equation and that the other side of the equation comprises the composite of requirements for eligibility, independent overseas providers doing due diligence, and the statistical improbability of having all applicants pass the test.

The CIP program must be attended by algebraic commonsense, lest CIP will not mean Citizenship by Investment Programme, but instead, Come In Please.

FLU

What’s on my mind?
The flu of course
Flu in my head
Flu on my chest

Cover your mouth
Cover your nose or nares
Open your ears
Healthy tips AM and PM
On Healthy Choice FM (94.9)

Imagine you travel from Antigua to Brazil and Argentina to catch flu
What happen? Antiguan flu not good enough for you?

Next holiday I will stay home; have a long nap
Spread out and read the entire world map
If I really have to travel I will walk on water
Yes, laugh at my charade and dance on my watery grave

But seriously, next holiday I will not fly
You want to know why?
I got the flu because I flew

Which Doctor?

The Doctor In Spite of Himself

Dr. Lester Simon-Hazlewood


It saddens me to the core of my trembling heart to have to write about this matter of a doctor and denial of his registration in Antigua and Barbuda. It is my firm and confirmed opinion that the good doctor should be registered. But registered as what?

There are clear and written guidelines to register a medical doctor. In general, the medical school the doctor attended and the hospital where the internship was done after graduation are two key elements that form and inform the registration process.

For registration as a medical doctor, it does not matter one jot if the person is the nicest, sweetest, most caring and respectable person in the world proclaiming the gospel of health. It matters not if the person speaks with the tongues of men and of angels, bestows all his goods to feed the poor, heals the sick, and that the sick bellows the healing powers and charity of the healer. If the guidelines for registration as a medical doctor are not fulfilled then registration must be denied by the medical council and registration sought and obtained from some other council or body, as some other good doctor.

How then was the good doctor registered in the first place? It is my understanding and it is also my view that the first registration should not have been granted. Indeed there were copious objections in some quarters to the initial registration but the majority won. The then majority made a fundamental blunder, a cardinal error of commission that is haunting this entire harrowing matter.

But what irks me the most is this: If you are walking amongst flowers and butterflies and swarms of bees, and stepping in cow dung and horse manure moistened by leaking hoses of spraying water, you must know to yourself that you are being taken down the garden path. Why go along this wrong route when there are other legitimate paths to travel and register and conduct your good work? Why? How can you see through a glass so darkly?

So when good people from all walks of life, from sinner (like me) to bishop, in a band of sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, cry victimization, I have to cry. It cannot ever be right that because I can preach; because I can touch the sick and heal them; and because I can sprinkle red cool-aid in water and claim to turn pipe water into fine wine, that I can be registered as a cardinal, or an archbishop, or a bishop. Register me just as I am, without one plea.

Those who should know better should do better.

Parasols

What colour shall I dye my hair?
Green
Tangerine
Chatterbox red
Or weeping indigo
Parasols
Dark shadows walk beside us
In this blazing Caribbean sunlight
What parasols do we bear?

HEALTHY CHOICE FM 94.9

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Cinderella's Dance

Cinderella And The Steel Band

Dr. Lester Hazlewood-Simon

Once upon a time there lived an unhappy, motherless girl with her stepmother and two stepsisters. The stepmother did not like her one little bit because she was prettier than her own two daughters. In fact, the poor girl was prettier than anyone else in the whole, wide world. She should have had a web site, www.noneprettier.com.

She was forced by her spiteful stepmother to do all the housework. Her only respite came at the end of the day. Even in her stepsisters’ hand-me-downs she had a calming effect on all around her, except her stepparents. As she ate and shared her scraps of food, the cat did not eat the mice and the mice did not eat the pumpkin. Together, they sat in the pumpkin patch near the fire, looking at the shapes of the dying embers of the coal. She gazed at these fallen cinders so much, they called her Cinderella.

One carnival day, two beautiful costumes arrived at the house for the stepsisters to go to the steel band panorama at Carnival City. Cinderella was very sad she could not go. But suddenly that evening a moko jumbie appeared and turned her raggy clothes into a beautiful carnival costume, the pumpkin into a coach and seven mice into six horses and a coachman. Before she went off to panorama, the moko jumbie warned her that she must leave carnival city at midnight, when the spell would end. And the cat said, “meow”.

As the steel bands played at panorama, Cinderella danced. She danced, she danced, she danced, until she and the steel band became one. The upper parts of her body danced to the front line steel pans, the single and double tenors and the double second pans. Her lower chest and abdomen danced with the mid-ranged pans, the guitar, cello and quadrophonic pans. All the basses from the four bass to the nine bass pans went to her lower back and behind, and the engine room was strung along her hands and feet. She danced.

All the while, her two stepsisters were gyrating rudely to the steel band, dancing out of time, out of rhyme and out of everyone’s mind. Cinderella danced so well she forgot the warning until she heard the first stroke of midnight. Quickly, trying not to miss the next beat of the clock and the next beat of the music, she ran from Carnival City, lost her glass slippers and vanished into the night.

The next day, the winning steel band, for which she had danced the best, went in search of her, using the glass slippers to find her. When they reached Cinderella’s house, her stepmother tried in vain to get the slippers to fit her daughters. But Cinderella was the perfect fit instead. As the steel band played again, Cinderella danced again. Legend has it that for every panorama since then, the band to win must make Cinderella dance the best.

The music for panorama must satisfy the criteria. The arrangement carries 40 per cent of the points. The judges and the audience must follow the intro, the outro, the development of melody, the development of motif and the re-harmonization. If you are not a very well trained and tested musician or an ardent follower of steel band, you should go to the pan yard to see how these elements of the criteria are developed, shared out, interchanged and exchanged from pans to pans.

You have to listen keenly to hear these musical elements, changes and interplay. Otherwise, it is all noise. Listening keenly simply means going to the pan yard often and just being there without trying too hard to listen. A quiet, passive, receptive mind is all you need. Witnessing the development of an orchestral performance is an invaluable tool that can assist you in all facets of life. It will really make your life dance, like Cinderella. The bounteous treasures in the steel band are yet to be fully unearthed for personal and community gains.

The general performance also carries 40 per cent of the points. This comprises interpretation, dynamics, creativity and balance. The remaining 20 per cent points are divided equally between tonal quality and rhythm.

As steel band arrangement becomes more sophisticated, the overall sound of the band becomes paramount. Cinderella must dance throughout the entire piece in such a way that the entire musical story unfolds from intro to outro, with all the nuances and surprises in between. There must be an overall harmony throughout the steel band so that crucial parts to be heard above others, at certain times, are indeed heard. Without this, remarks from a passionate pan lover, about her own steel band and mine, will include, “After the flat tune, the band played “ pure stupidniss”; “pure stupidniss”. Either the remark was correct or the inner beauty of the music was lost. It’s all about the design and architecture of sound, on the panorama stage, on the night and not just in the pan yard.

Frontline pans can become background pans and vice versa. Also, the mid-range pans can soar to the front or fall to the back. Cinderella’s dance will teach you when to listen and when to talk and how different parts can work together or work separately and still be part of one glorious, dancing whole.

Some arrangers here and in Trinidad and Tobago are calling for more sophistication in the arrangement of music for steel bands as they try to stay within the panorama criteria and yet get away from the historic, formulaic simplicity of most of the arrangements. However, regardless of the sophistication of the music, the physical setup on stage, the overall balance and the overall storytelling on the panorama stage are fundamental requirements for winning, lest all the hard work in the pan yard reap little.

During the next panorama performances, and indeed for any steel band performance, listen well. This means your mind must be open and at rest. Listen well and see if you can see Cinderella dancing from rags to riches. It will be easy to determine the winning steel band. The winner will be like the prince who puts the glass slippers on Cinderella’s feet and make her dance the panorama criteria so well, so logically and so clearly that she and the steel band will be married and will live happily after. And the cat that knows music will say, “Meow”.

Mr. Browne and Mr. Greene

All The Leaves Are Brown Again

Dr. Lester Hazlewood-Simon


In 2006 The Daily Observer carried an article, All The Leaves Are Brown. You can read it on my blog, www.myantiguabarbuda.com. It ended with the prediction that …… “the opposing forces will one day come to see and know that the ALP will only win again when all the leaves are brown.”

Throughout the campaign of the recent general elections, there was a very arresting and counterintuitive reaction to the promise that personal income tax will be abolished. The overwhelming, positive response came from those (the majority) who do not pay personal income tax. On the other hand, many of us who pay personal income tax wondered where on earth (or in heaven, or hell) will the replacement money come from; as if we felt obliged to pay and to issue a warning. Some even wondered what was wrong with the non-paying majority greeting the promise like the best thing since bread, sliced or not.

The study of economics, like the study of all things, has an inherent logic that appeals to the common person in less sophisticated ways than it does to the experts. Despite what was done to lessen the economic burden on the common person, taxing the middle class to the extent that there was less money in circulation for the common person was the reason for the seemingly counterintuitive response to abolish personal income tax.

Money, like blood, has to be in circulation for it to have common good. It cannot stay in one place, like the unaccompanied woman who sits or stands or, worse, lies down, and refuses to jiggle, wiggle, wriggle or waggle to the dancing music of the Mighty Shadow.

The search for what will replace personal income tax and the general question of the movement of money led me to the book on economics that is taking the world by storm. It is Capital in the Twenty-First Century by French economist, Thomas Piketty. He has been hailed as the modern Karl Marx, writing the book of the season that is influencing thousands and forcing economists to think and re-think. Any book on economics that cites the novels of Jane Austen and Honore de Balzac and contains tons of carefully researched data must be good at best or provocative at least. It is both. Read it.

The central theme of the book is the evolution of economic inequality. It speaks more to advanced economies than to those of the Caribbean but it will be foolhardy not to read it to understand capital and inequality, even if the inequality we see in our emerging economies is arguably proportionally less.

When wealth accumulates in the hands of few and money does not trickle down, the economy will not grow despite the growth of private capital. In fact, the analysis of data from the past two centuries informed Piketty that capital does not naturally tend to trickle down but to remain in the hands of the wealthy. Circumstances have to force the unnatural trickle down effect. Or governments will have to tax hoarded wealth.

A direct quote from the Economist magazine will underscore the central dogma of the book. “ Other things being equal, faster economic growth will diminish the importance of wealth in a society, whereas slower growth will increase it (and demographic change that slows global growth will make capital more dominant). But there are no natural forces pushing against the steady concentration of wealth. Only a burst of rapid growth (from technological progress or rising population) or government intervention can be counted on to keep economies from returning to the “patrimonial capitalism” that worried Karl Marx.”

For Antigua and Barbuda, it means that the burst of rapid growth that the government is pursuing fits directly into the equation to balance or offset the hoarding of capital. Hoarding, here? Additionally, with the loss of money from personal income tax, it must mean that the government will collect all the other taxes with neither fear nor favour.

But can you sense there is something missing? Look again at what the Economist magazine says, “…..there are no natural forces pushing against the steady concentration of wealth”. The central question is, what forces can we muster to counteract the unbridled tendency to hoard capital and in so doing encourage spending? Over and over again we hear of the “enabling environment”. Is this simply and only an economic environment?

If the love of money is the root of all evil, surely the world of economics and our survival cannot be based solely on the movement of money, whether is moves slowly, as on a slow boat to China, or trickles down and circulates fast as prescribed by Mr. Browne. There must be something else that makes you want to live here and put your capital to work here; indeed not just live here but be human here, in Antigua and Barbuda.

The article in 2006 in the Daily Observer, addressed the question and idea of the soul of the nation. It made reference to the definition that ‘A nation is a community of mutual obligation that is based on a shared history’.

Money is undoubtedly a unifying, and dividing, force. As we seek to find ways to grow the economy of Antigua and Barbuda, the task of capturing and securing one vital underpinning of the community of mutual obligation may very well reside in how we regard, nurture and celebrate our culture. Maybe this is why we have one composite ministry of Trade, Industry, Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Sports, Culture, National Festivals and Youth Empowerment.

Indeed, for all the leaves to be “Browne”, firstly all the leaves will have to be “Greene”.