Belling the cat…

…on Climate Change
So, the leaders of 120 countries have jetted up to Edinburgh, Scotland, for “COP 26” – the Climate Change talks following up from COP 25 in Paris five years ago. (Imagine the climate-warming CO2 was expelled into the atmosphere from the said jets!) As in all the previous COP’s, there were heaps of promises and pledges in 2015 – especially by the developed countries that had created the problem in the first place – but, in the end, zilch was done.
Your Eyewitness remembers that Raphael Trotman represented the PNC coalition government in Paris – it was the same year that EXXON had struck oil here, remember?  But your Eyewitness doesn’t remember anyone asking HIM to leave the oil under the Atlantic, did they? Maybe if they had, he wouldn’t have jetted out to Houston the next year to sign away the store for US$18M. That was over the table – even though it had to be ferreted out!! Imagine what had to’ve been passed UNDER the table. Certainly, more than toes playing footsies!!
Anyhow, your Eyewitness ain’t no “climate sceptic” – he doesn’t have any doubts about what the science has told us about Climate Change. The atmosphere has definitely warmed up since the 18th century when the Industrial Revolution took off on the back of the steam engine invented by James Watt. Just look as to how it hasn’t stopped raining here for the past year!!
Is it coincidental that Watt was from Edinburgh!?! Steam engines consumed coal and later “internal combustion engines” were invented to use other petroleum products – all generating CO2! How else would the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere not increase to trap more heat and raise the temperature? Especially when the European colonists with the same steam engines were cutting down most of the tropical and other forests that absorbed CO2 to act as “carbon sinks”!
So, let’s move on to WHAT will be done and WHO will “do the doing” about reducing CO2 to such a level that the earth’s temperature won’t rise more than 1.5° C than it was before we started spewing all this CO2 like crazy. Call him jaded, but your Eyewitness doesn’t believe anything will change to REALLY make a difference. The problem is those countries that did the damage want those that are trying to catch up with them –- as far as “Development” is concerned – to do the same as they!!
Now you see the catch?? It’s the classic definition of maintaining inequality!! The developed countries just didn’t “develop” with fossil fuels –- they did so by deliberately exploiting and UNDER-DEVELOPING the ones they’re now telling to stop!!  They must cut deeper than others.
Which we know, they ain’t NEVER gonna do!!

…in the PNC leadership elections
Amidst concerns raised in the public arena about the internal PNC leadership elections being rigged in favour of those who control the machinery, the individuals competing say they have complete faith that the process will be open and transparent. Well, something miraculous must’ve happened recently. Let’s not go back too far…didn’t Norton say the 2014 PNC elections were “manipulated” to ensure that Granger beat him for the leadership?
And in 2009, didn’t he claim the same thing happened in the Georgetown District when he lost to Volda Lawrence after there were more votes recorded than the 300 registered? Didn’t he say the lists were “padded”? And what about Team Alexander’s 2008 challenge to Corbin’s leadership?? Didn’t they protest expulsions saying they didn’t want to be “victims of the old political culture that spouted democracy and free and fair elections, but practised the opposite, hence their appeal to the conscience of the PNCR members and supporters”??
Ahh…the more things change…!

…on the oil contract
Your Eyewitness finds it more than passing strange that the vociferous crowd denouncing the PPP’s policies on the oil extraction are completely silent on pursuing action against Trotman, who signed the inequities contract in the first place!!