Satiricus was appalled at the level that the spit press would sink. When he was a callow youth and used to read those “westerns”, Satiricus had read a fella “couldn’t sink lower than a snake’s belly”. Well, to print what the Stabber did on Trottie’s Taxes made them sink lower than the Kaieteur Fall’s gorge.
It wasn’t what they printed was untrue. Trottie had NOT been paying his NUS as the law required him to do while he was working. But the Stabber didn’t state the context in which Trottie committed – or actually did not – commit that act. There is “text” and then there is “context”. And “context” added another part to the “text” – con. You had to “con” the text.
Like when Trottie explained what was going on when business folks give big time money to politicians – like the drugs man who built Trottie’s KFC office for 0 million. It was called “political investment”. “And there’s nothing bad about investments,” thought Satiricus. “Was there? That was real good con-text!”
And that is why Trottie “trip them up” when he replied to Stabber’s accusations that he hadn’t been paying NUS. Looking them straight in the eye, he announced loudly he’d been paying NUS on the money he earned since he acceded to high office. And not so loudly he admitted he had NOT PAID when working as a lawyer.
Now Satiricus knew, as a lawyer, the law demanded Trottie pay 12.5 per cent of his salary. And when the Minister of State had explained about some people had to take a BIG cut in salary when they took high office, he’d been thinking of lawyers like Trottie. These were fellas who could charge clients millions for just signing a paper like Trottie’s former client Prakosh revealed. So to pay 12.5 per cent on those millions was like pulling out molars to lawyers like Trottie.
But on the other hand, now he was employed by the Government in high office, the Government was paying 8.4 per cent of his salary to NUS and he was only paying 5.6 per cent.
5.6 per cent of “only” 0,000.
So the con-text the Stabber refused to print was the millions Trottie had to pay to bring his NUS up to date.
“Unless,” Satiricus smiled, “Trottie didn’t declare those lawyerly earnings!”
