Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

Unusually destructive wave action along Trinidad & Tobago's north & west coasts makes the front pages of the newspapers again today ("Spare us, O Lord", begs the Express, "Las Cuevas beach gone", laments the Guardian), but the local press doesn't seem to be reporting on similar conditions in neighbouring territories. In Guyana, the sea wall has been breached in several places in West & East Coast Demerara, causing major flooding in some villages, which the Stabroek News calls "a replay of what happened ... during the January floods". The Guyanese newspapers are blaming this on "extraordinarily high" spring tides; the T&T press quotes the Met Office saying it's the coincidence of three separate weather systems.

Meanwhile, Patrick Manning has had the nerve to stand up in parliament & say he knows who's responsible for the four Port of Spain bombings, but "there is a difference between information and evidence". I'm frankly fed up with Mr. Manning's repeated claims of superior knowledge about matters of national security which don't seem to translate into effective action to stop the crime wave that's been demoralising the country these past months. What's the point of him being such a know-it-all if the murder & kidnapping rates are spiralling into the stratosphere & bombs are going off in the city on a regular monthly schedule? "I know & you don't know" is another power-trip, just like the $40-million "spy blimp", the disruptive helicopter fly-overs, the stupid "eye-in-the-sky" elevated platforms etc etc etc, none of which has made the slightest difference to anything except Mr. Manning's healthy self-esteem. And after the red-herring arrest of Abu Bakr a few days ago, can we believe this "Mr. Big" even exists?