Notes from a small island
A weblog by Jonathan Ali


Tuesday, January 31, 2006  

So Tony Blair's government last evening suffered a humiliating defeat when a number of its MPs joined with the opposition parties and the House of Lords and voted for amendments to the bill to combat religious hatred. This means that someone charged with an offence under the act would have to be shown to have used "threatening" language, rather than "threatening, insulting and abusive" langauge, as the government intended.

An important victory for free speech; and also an instructive lesson in how politics is practised in a serious country. Could anyone imagine, if it had been Trinidad, government MPs taking a principled stand and going against the party line? Never happen--or if it did, those MPs would be looking for a work the next morning.

True, the size of our parliament in relation to Britain's perhaps naturally mitigates against the variety of opinions that are able to manifest themselves in the House of Commons. Also party allegiance is practically law here, and the government has a guaranteed majority in the Senate--not so in the UK. All of this just shows up our faux-Westminster system of government for the sham it really is, and the unsuitability of our present constitutional and political arrangements, where parliament is a creature of the government, a rubber stamp, and nothing more. Even the prime minister, sincere or not, admits things can't go on this way, and the UNC political-but-not-opposition leader has been borrowing a page from Lloyd Best, showing support for Best's "party of parties" idea, where it's not winner take all, but all take win.

What sort of system should we be envisioning? I don't pretend to know (yet), but I agree with Denis Solomon's position: "if we are to change our system, we have to change it into one that in turn changes us."

posted by Jonathan | 11:06 PM 0 comments


Friday, January 20, 2006  

The Studio Film Club, which every Thursday evening screens a film and spins tunes from off the beaten path at the Caribbean Contemporary Arts centre in Laventille, Port of Spain, now has a weblog. Yours truly is a contributor to the blog, along with Nicholas Laughlin, Georgia Popplewell and Attilah Springer. Earlier today I blogged my first post, about last night's offering, Werner Herzog's new documentary, Grizzly Man.

posted by Jonathan | 1:27 PM 0 comments


Thursday, January 19, 2006  

You know, if the sun was an oboe, what would you do?

posted by Jonathan | 4:00 PM 0 comments


Monday, January 16, 2006  

I'm going through a bit of a Billie Holiday phase at the moment (The Ultimate Billie Holiday and Billie's Best have been trading places in my cd player; if anyone's feeling generous, my birthday's in March) so two articles in the local Sunday papers were of particular interest.

The first was Lennox Grant's column in the Guardian. Grant saw an old tv interview recently, featuring a number of our leading calypsonians, including the two greatest, the Mighty Sparrow and the deceased Lord Kitchener:

Sparrow told the interviewer that among his own Kitchener favourites is the song with the chorus, “Mama have, Papa have ... Blessed be the child that have his own shilling.”

I had always thought that theme plagiarised jazz singer Billie Holiday’s 1939 “God Bless the Child”: “Your Mama may have ... Your Papa may have ...”.


I saw the same documentary myself some years ago, before I had any serious knowledge of Billie Holiday's music. Thus I didn't know that the Kitchener tune in question was plagiarising Lady Day. More to the point, neither did Sparrow (it would seem), and Kitchener said nothing in the interview to set the matter straight.

Now as anyone with a passing acquaintance of Kitchener knows, he was a prodigious songwriter, having written over 700 songs (by his reckoning); forgetting old songs to write new ones. He was constantly composing, and stuff of the highest quality by and large. So to think that the Grandmaster would plagiarise (or, being charitable, cover) someone's work--and so brazenly, something as popular as a major Billie Holiday hit--without giving credit, does give one pause for thought. Whether it will make me revise my opinion of Kitchener as the best calypsonian ever, however, is another matter.

The other article was a review of Jill Scott's performance at the Barbados Jazz Festival last week by Michael Mondezie, in the Sunday Express Mix magazine (no link; the Mix isn't updated regularly). Mr. Mondezie was good enough to mention that Ms. Scott performed a cover of "Good Morning, Heartache", but it would seem that he and his editors aren't aware that the first name of the greatest jazz singer of all time isn't Billy, but Billie. Puts me in mind of a bit of dialogue from that sparkling mid-90s Alicia Silverstone vehicle, Clueless:

"Do you like Billie Holiday?"
"I love him!"

posted by Jonathan | 3:34 PM 0 comments


Thursday, January 12, 2006  

Is there nothing Patrick Manning won't take credit for? Following the arrests of Franklin Khan and Eric Williams on bribery charges, our fearless leader, speaking from Guyana (meeting, perhaps, with his fellow clone, president Bharrat Jagdeo?) and speaking of himself in the third person, declared:

"Two ministers of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago have resigned within recent times as a result of reports made by the Prime Minister to the Integrity Commission through the Attorney General.... It is as a consequence of the action of the government itself that this has come about."

And further:

"What is of significance is the determination of the government to ensure that as we conduct our public affairs we do so in accordance with the highest standards of integrity."

It's more than a little curious that Manning should talk about integrity when practically his first act on assuming the office of prime minister after the last general election was to name his wife the minister of education. The Express seems to have forgotten this, as today's editorial declares that "Mr Manning's ethical stocks" are on a high. I suppose their--and Manning's--definition of ethics and integrity is different from mine.

posted by Jonathan | 12:46 PM 0 comments
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