"TIMES MAY BE TOUGHER this year, but a lot more Christmas gifts are being wrapped for Barbados' needy children.
Word of this came yesterday from acting director of the Child Care Board, Denise Nurse...
While Christmas was "a time of giving and sharing", some families were short of food and their children had no toys, she pointed out.
Nurse made the comments at the board's Cheapside, Bridgetown headquarters, after receiving several toys, games and books from former St Thomas resident Julia Robinson...
Robinson, who now lives in Washington, DC, United States, said she knew how it felt to be without gifts at Christmas, being one of 13 children in a family in which getting a balloon at Christmas was an achievement."
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Published on: 12/4/2009.
by HEATHER-LYNN EVANSON
WITH AT LEAST one Amerindian site in danger of falling to developers and another already under the back-hoe, a noted professor has issued an urgent call for archaeological preservation legislation.
Peter Drewett, professor emeritus of archaeology of the University of Sussex, made the call after a round-the-island tour last weekend of Amerindian sites from Silver Sands, Christ Church, to Greenland, St Andrew.
The tour, dubbed Prehistoric Barbados: A Field Trip, was coordinated by the Barbados Museum & Historical Society.
Most, if not all, of the sites visited boasted major private development or had been turned into parks by Government.
"Barbados is probably now the only country in the entire world," Drewett told the WEEKEND NATION, "that has no legislation specifically to protect its archaeology."
He revealed that draft legislation was in the works for the past 25 years but "each Government in the last 25 years has promised that they would enact this legislation and for a variety of different reasons it has never happened".
"The island has lost a lot [of its archaeological sites, treasures and artefacts] but in many ways the more that is gone, means there is less and less surviving, so it becomes more and more important to preserve what you have got," he stressed.
"So it is more and more important to get that legislation through and have effective legislation. It's well overdue," he said.
Drewett, who conducted the field trip, revealed to those gathered at Chancery Lane/Long Beach, Christ Church, that there had been "endless proposals" for the area, which included caves known to hold Amerindian artefacts and a swamp, to be developed.
"But if this is developed, in terms of the environment, natural history and archaeology, you may as well write off Barbados," he said, adding that Amerindians lived at the site from around 200 AD to their disappearance in about 1200 AD.
And in the event that permission is given for the site to be developed, Drewett said a major archaeological excavation would have to be undertaken because "the whole of the Amerindian history of Barbados is right here and it is the only one left of this quality".
"If that (development) happens, this must be seriously looked at archaeologically. I mean we could have a development here but a sensitive one," he said.
Drewett also commented about the development under way at Port Ferdinand, St Peter, close to Six Men's.
Labelling the initial groundwork "that huge hole we passed", he told those on the field trip: "The whole of that was just machined out right down to bedrock without anyone doing any observation or archaeological work. It shouldn't have happened."
The professor hastened to add that Barbados was no different from any other island when it came to development.
"It's just a pity we haven't sorted out the legislation and because there is no legislation, the Museum (Barbados & Historical Society) cannot make Town and Country Planning ask the developers to submit to archaeological surveys."
* heatherlynevanson @nationnews.com
http://www.nationnews.com/news/local/LEAD-from-amerindia-with-love-copy-for-web
"I know this is a subject most bajans don't like to talk about, but while watching the Rihanna interview the other night, I was surprised to hear her talk about domestic abuse in her home while growing up in Barbados. according to her, she used to watch her parents fight all the time, and would sometimes hold on to her father's leg and try to get between them to stop the physical abuse endured by her mother. and because of that, she used to say she would never date a man like her father...."
The Breadfruit Tree Lime • View topic - Domestic Abuse and ViolencePosted using
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"You have become a typical bajan now! dem does come up here to your house and spend not one week but weeks at a time and don't contribute a thing (not that they should) does take all their money and buy up de whole uh North America but when you go to bdos, they don't even invite yuh over to breadfast, lunch or dinner..."
The Breadfruit Tree Lime Forum • View topic - "Hi Wunna"Posted using
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"I have to say though (and this is something I’ve observed over the years and raised elsewhere on the Internet) that there does seem to be a disconnect between blacks and the beach/sea here in Barbados that did not exist when I was a kid, at least not to the extent that it does today. And, I am saying this as a black man myself. The beach/sea is seen as something they probably did as kids, is best left up to the tourists, but not necessarily something to make time for as adults..."
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Barbados Underground
"Stanford University economists Peter Blair Henry and Conrad Miller recently published an interesting NBER Working Paper in which they compare economic policy and economic performance between Jamaica and Barbados.
Henry and Miller point out that in Jamaica, the People's National Party rose to power in the 1970s with the promise of "democratic socialism." Unfortunately, the PNP delivered, nationalizing companies, taxing trade, and imposing exchange controls. The PNP also distributed income through job-creation programs, schemes for housing development, and subsidies on food. Government spending rose from 23 percent of GDP in 1972 to 45 percent in 1978. The government financed much of its huge deficit by printing money, leading to 27 percent inflation by 1980.
The government of Barbados, by contrast, avoided nationalization and opened the country to trade. It also kept government spending under control although, unfortunately, Henry and Miller don't present data on government spending as a percent of GDP.
The economic results: between 1960 and 2002, real GDP per capita grew by an annual average of 2.2 percent in Barbados but only by 0.8 percent in Jamaica.
Henry and Miller pitch their study as a critique of the Douglass North view that institutions are crucial for economic growth. They point out that both countries were British colonies until the 1960s and, therefore, had a two-party political system, a free press, constitutional protection of property rights, and the English common law. The difference in performance, they say, was not due to different institutions but to different macro policy. But aren't such big differences in macro policy--nationalization and distribution of wealth in one case and not in the other--themselves a difference in institutions?"
Source:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/03/tale_of_two_isl.html
