Good morning. Miss Violet here. Retired schoolteacher, Bridgetown. Forty-one years in the classroom. I know when people are not doing their homework. Let us proceed.
THE FARM LABOUR SITUATION: READ THIS CAREFULLY
Canada is requesting returning workers rather than new recruits. This sounds like good news. I want you to think about it more carefully. If Canada only wants back the people who already went, then the programme is no longer expanding access — it is recycling it. The same families benefit repeatedly. The young person who has never been does not get the opportunity. This is the definition of a programme that has stopped doing what it was originally designed to do. I have seen this happen with school clubs. I have seen it happen with civic organisations. It happens when no one is watching the intake numbers. Someone needs to watch the intake numbers.
THE GASTROINTESTINAL INCREASE
I will say only this: wash your hands. Wash them before you cook. Wash them before you eat. Wash them after you shake hands with anyone at a public event. This is not complicated. This is hygiene, which is what I taught children for four decades and which I will apparently need to keep teaching in retirement. The Ministry is correct. The Bugle will not speculate on the source. I, Miss Violet, also will not speculate. I will simply remind everyone that hand hygiene is not optional.
THE BUSINESSES AND THE COSTS
Yes. Things cost more. The global situation — Iran, the blockade, the oil price — is real and it reaches Barbados because everything reaches Barbados eventually. We import everything. This is our permanent structural reality and also our current acute crisis. Both are true simultaneously. The question is not why costs are rising. That is answered. The question is which businesses have contingency planning and which ones are discovering right now that they did not. Miss Violet knows which category many small businesses fall into and she is not surprised.
BARBADOS IS ON THE CARICOM SUB-COMMITTEE
Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica. Reviewing governance and financing across Community institutions. This is exactly the kind of work Barbados should be doing. Quietly. Methodically. With documentation. The Trinidad situation is unfortunate. The correct response is to fix the structures that allowed the situation to develop — not to match the drama with more drama. Barbados understands this. I trust the sub-committee.
THE POLICE YOUTH PROGRAMME
Three sentences in other coverage. Miss Violet is giving it a full paragraph. A programme that gives at-risk youth a second chance in partnership with law enforcement is exactly the kind of early intervention that prevents the crime statistics from getting worse. It deserves funding. It deserves reporting. It deserves the kind of attention currently being given to stories about gastrointestinal cases. I am not saying the gastrointestinal cases are not important. I am saying this is also important.
TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF BARBADOS
Do your homework. Wash your hands. If you get an opportunity — take it. If you don’t get an opportunity — ask why not and keep asking until someone answers. Miss Violet did not retire so that standards would drop. She retired so that she could apply them more selectively and with even less patience for excuses.
Have a productive Tuesday.
Miss Violet is a fictional retired Barbadian schoolteacher covering real Barbados news events with the authority of forty-one years in the classroom. She is not joking about the hand washing.