Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

?We jokey. No, we not just jokey, we glad. As I hear some­body say the oth­er night, is a good thing to be hap­py, but a sad thing to be glad. Glad, as they de­fine it, is when you dotish, spend­ing mon­ey like a fool all over the place with­out a care.

The min­is­ter must have been mak­ing sport, as the Ba­jans does say, when he pro­nounce that a $2 mil­lion flag (and the flag­pole, if you in­sist) is a good in­vest­ment for pa­tri­o­tism. Mr Min­is­ter, you all didn't hear some­thing fall be­hind you when you walk out from Fire­One? That was your change. Be­cause no way no how it mak­ing sense to spend that kind of mon­ey on a flag, it don't mat­ter how big it is. For $2 mil­lion you could get a cheap made in Chi­na flag for every one of we 1.2 mil­lion cit­i­zens to give them per­son­al­ly. Imag­ine a lit­tle flag fly­ing from every man­jack house or car. Now that is pa­tri­o­tism! If you don't like that idea, I have some oth­er ones on how to spend $2 mil­lion. For ex­am­ple, you could plant a field with toma­to or red sweet pep­per and white cab­bage, with two stripe of fal­low black dirt in-be­tween. From the sky that could look like a flag. No­body go see it un­less they in a plane, or up in Mt St Bene­dict, but that shouldn't trou­ble you, Mr Min­is­ter. Af­ter all, every­body doesn't get to see the big ma­co flag in the sta­di­um nei­ther. Plus too when you har­vest the cab­bage, toma­to and sweet pep­per you could sell them or give them to poor peo­ple. Un­like the flag. When a flag get rip-up, be­cause you know all flag does mash up even­tu­al­ly, you can't fly it no more. You can't even reuse or re­cy­cle it, be­cause is against the law to do any­thing else with the flag but fly it.

If agri­cul­ture is not for you– you be­ing a PNM Cab­i­net mem­ber, af­ter all, and every­body know them not on agri­cul­ture–what about build­ing a house? I think you could spend a cool mil­lion on a new house some­where which part plen­ty peo­ple does pass, and paint it like a flag. (The next mil­lion leave back go have to spend on air con­di­tion­ing, as Miss Thing say. You know dark colour house does make hot.) PNM love to spend mon­ey on new build-in­gs. We could bring a crew of Chi­nese work­ers to put it up, and have a Chi­nese de­sign-build arrange­ment like this Gov­ern­ment ac­cus­tom. When it fin­ish you could put a home­less fam­i­ly in it. I sure that go make peo­ple feel more pa­tri­ot­ic. Bet­ter fete, put my fam­i­ly in it. I go tell every­body I meet how great this coun­try is. I promise. Mr Min­is­ter, I have more ideas, eh. But I go hit you on your Face­book page with it, and every­body know what it have on FB is gospel truth. I see you have re­al faith in the "Feeb," Min­is­ter. Ria Taitt quote you in Thurs­day Ex­press as say­ing, "You just have to go on Face­book and you would see some of the ar­gu­ments and sup­port that is there. It has huge sup­port on­line." On­line? In T&T? As­sum­ing the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (TATT) know what it talk­ing about, is on­ly 224,000 sub­scribers it have to In­ter­net in this coun­try. TATT and all say them fig­ures could be over­rat­ed be­cause the mo­bile phone providers does count every­body with a mo­bile phone with In­ter­net ca­pac­i­ty as a user, even if them doesn't use it.

(Like me so.) But as­sum­ing TATT was talk­ing good talk in the doc­u­ment it pub­lish, the An­nu­al Mar­ket Re­port, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and Broad­cast­ing Sec­tors (Jan­u­ary-De­cem­ber 2008), and is re­al­ly a quar­ter mil­lion In­ter­net sub­scribers on­line here, how much of them on FB? And, Mr Min­is­ter, how much of your 2,079 FB friends ac­tu­al­ly liv­ing in T&T? Is on­ly your friends' pages you does see, sir. And on­ly them could com­ment on your page. I don't think cit­ing FB as a gauge of pub­lic opin­ion was the smartest thing you ever do. But then again, you just spend $2 mil­lion on a flag so who knows. Be­fore I go, look one more idea. What if you use the flag­poles it done have in the sta­di­ums and them and put up reg­u­lar size flags at sport­ing events the min­istry hav­ing in­stead of rais­ing a new "lega­cy" flag on a "mon­ster" pole? What if you look for lit­tle sports clubs, like Cougars that The La­dy now join, and give them mon­ey to spend on uni­forms, re­fresh­ments, fa­cil­i­ties, coach­ing? Two mil­lion is a good raise in my world. It mightn't seem like plen­ty to you, but give a $10,000 grant to 200 lit­tle sports clubs all over the coun­try and you go see what hap­pen to na­tion­al pride.