Editorial

Among the topics that readers write to us about, noise nuisance perhaps takes second place only to politics, and that is politics in the wider spectrum, all aspects considered.

Not unexpectedly, President Obama found himself increasingly pushed into a corner as the elections results to the 144th Congress were announced last week.

The most recent missive from the University of Guyana Students Society (UGSS) President, Mr Joshua Griffith, to the university administration about the physical conditions on the campus is familiar in both its tone and its content.

It must be either complete discombobulation in the thinking of the government, pressure from some external source or a ploy to buy time which prompted Cabinet Secretary, Dr Roger Luncheon to announce on Thursday that the administration was attempting to authenticate the contents of the vulgar and threatening conversation between the Attorney General Mr Anil Nandlall and a Kaieteur News reporter.

We have reached a pivotal point in our political history – perhaps.

When the Republican Party assumes control of both houses in the US Congress in January 2015, it is expected to press for expedited construction of the TransCanada Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline.

By all accounts, last week’s Queen’s College Old Students’ Association (QCOSA) reunion, marking the 170th anniversary of the founding of QC, was a great success, with old boys and, significantly, an impressive number of old girls, gathering to relive the carefree days of their youth and to celebrate the institution that laid the foundation for their many and varied achievements.

When the International Day of the Girl Child was observed last month, much emphasis was placed on the lack of access to education which is still a major issue for many adolescent girls in several developing countries around the world.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party have found little respite from political pressures after his successful fight against the Scottish National Party’s threat to have Scotland leave the United Kingdom.

Truth be told the disruption of the Sunday morning mass at St Philips Parish Church by three gun-toting young men who proceeded to rob what must have been a bemused and terrified congregation, ought not to come as a surprise to anyone.

There will be no disputing that each of us is entitled to private conversations and musings.

Last week Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman instructed Clerk Sherlock Isaacs to convene a sitting of Parliament on November 6, which he refused to do.

The backstory to the uprising that brought the 27-year rule of President Blaise Compaoré to an end is one that has become all too familiar in postcolonial Africa.

Contrary to the report by Tony Cozier, on Wednesday, of an “official forecast that the storm clouds hanging over West Indies cricket are beginning to lift,” based on a joint statement issued by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) and representatives of the West Indies team, following Sunday’s emergency meeting in Jamaica, we are not that sanguine about the prospects of clear skies ahead.

Next year marks the halfway point of the United Nations (UN) designated Decade of Action for Road Safety, so appointed because of the unacceptably high number of deaths as a result of road accidents with the global figure for 2010 being given as 1.24 million.

We adverted, last week, to an editorial and substantial commentary in the New York Times directed towards advising President Obama to bring an end to the embargo on Cuba, and to begin a normalization of relations with that country.

Guyana is one of a number of countries in the western hemisphere where child-begging is a manifestation of poverty and while the practice may not be as pronounced here as in the capitals and bigger, more crowded cities of countries like Mexico and Brazil, any country in which poverty in the family renders it necessary to press children into service as beggars has good reason to be concerned with its social fabric.

While anxieties about Ebola have taken flight globally, it is particularly important in a small economy like ours with definite health challenges and ringed by porous borders that levelheaded approaches utilizing government and non-government resources be deftly and swiftly applied.

Francis Fukuyama’s latest tome on politics and history has recently been released, according to the Economist which reviewed it.

Reporting on two acts of terrorism in the space of a week, the Canadian media’s restrained coverage of events, and the general absence of provocative speculations – most noticeably in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s live coverage – has shown how profoundly a country’s media culture can shape its response to a crisis.