BEST WEEK EVER:

Vincy sportspersons have been enjoying some notable successes recently, with multiple medallists emerging from the swimming pool and the track, even at the highly competitive Carifta Games.

But our Women’s football team is undoubtedly the icing on the cake of good news, with their stunning first-place finish at the Windward Island Football Association tournament at Victoria Park.{{more}} While talented individuals can often spring up in the unlikeliest of places, championships in team sports require coordination and sustained effort, in addition to a little luck. By demonstrating poise, confidence, maturity and tenacity to go with their obvious talent, the Vincy ladies could teach our struggling men’s sports teams a thing or two.

Runner-up:

Common sense is a rare and precious gift these days, and Director of Public Prosecutions Colin Williams displayed plenty of it in his decision to discontinue the misguided/mishandled criminal case against “teacher” Jozette Bibby-Bowens for her filthy, immature and irresponsible Facebook rants. As TWTW said in a previous column, Bibby-Bowens’ rancid online comments should disqualify her from ever teaching schoolchildren again. But you don’t need criminal cases to fix administrative problems. Interestingly, the same people who were attacking the DPP’s exercise of discretion to “nolle pros” other politically-tinged cases are applauding this decision. When he discontinues cases that were laid against ULP figures, he’s biased and succumbing to political pressure. When he does the same to benefit NDP supporters, he’s wisely responding to right-thinking public pressure. Good thing that the DPP seems to be guided by his independent common sense, not the will of competing political mobs.

WORST WEEK EVER:

Bing Joseph is trying to generate ratings and distinguish his new “Boom 106.6 FM” station on a crowded radio dial. Understandable. But for the father of young children to chronicle his infidelities on-air and try to profit from the obvious pain that he caused his (ex?) wife, is a classless move.

For a wannabe “shock jock” like Bing, there is no such thing as bad publicity, and his tell-all style may probably gain some voyeuristic fans who will clamour to hear his next outrageous confession. But by publicly dragging your own family through the mud, no matter how many fans you win, you’re still a loser.

Runner-up:

Prime Minister Gonsalves regularly criticizes local banks for being little more than “post office boxes” for their overseas head offices. His criticism gained a little more weight with the news that RBTT Bank’s Vincentian branch is firing eight of its service department employees. The reason? RBTT is consolidating its service operations in Trinidad and Tobago.

Mind you, this isn’t the action of a struggling financial institution. It is merely a cost-cutting and job shedding move by a bank that makes a handsome profit locally and internationally. When you cut the service department, you cut the quality of service to local customers. Maybe those local customers should think about cutting their deposits, too.

If I had a question in SVG Parliament

– I’d ask both sides of the House whether, in an election year, they would agree to campaign finance laws that included full, public disclosure of all donors and independent oversight of party accounts.

Media Watch!

– A Vincy migrant returned home after an uninterrupted decade overseas and remarked about the stuck-in-time monotony of our local television news. SVG-TV news and API are pretty much unchanged: set, tone, format, quality, even some on-air personalities.

Why is everything so stagnant? In a medium as dynamic as television, why are our news and information broadcasts so. . . boring? With all the new competing TV channels on-air, our local broadcasts are overdue for a stylistic shake-up.