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About Me
Blog Archive
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2013
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June
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- Speak Up Saint Lucians, Speak Up
- Should Saint Lucia Join The Caribbean Court Of Jus...
- Painting the Wind: The ambition and frustration of...
- Observing CARICOM’s Crabs…..
- Is technology hurting our human development? (Part 2)
- Confusion At Wimbledon
- Comments of Evans Calderon on the CCJ
- Analysis of the Report on the Financial Operations...
- A Time For Action
- Saint Lucia on Tier 2 Watch List
- GROOVY FINALISTS NAMED
- “You Are Extraordinary” Says Digicel To Kids
- “You Are Extraordinary” Says Digicel To Kids
- USA & Canadian Industry Insiders Prepare For Saint...
- Making it Easier to Do Business in St. Lucia!
- Employers’ Federation Launches Handbook on the Lab...
- Unplanned Settlements
- Training For Educators Pursuing EEICTP’S Advanced ...
- TODAY IS CARABOBO
- Nation building
- “Men’s Fair”
- Jim Snow Needs Gigs!
- Victory For Bonne Terre Again In Primary School Sw...
- STRONG ST.LUCIA TEAM
- St. Lucian Boxers for Martinique Card this coming ...
- Jean Philippe Murray In COTRCC Top Three
- Digicel Continues Its Support For W.I. Captain
- CRUCIAL GAME TONIGHT
- 2013 BOSL / Guy Memorial Starts tomorrow
- To All Secondary School Graduates: Never Give Up o...
- Stubbornness at the helm is destroying our Country
- St Lucia government called upon to clarify intenti...
- Praedial Larceny
- Pope Francis Says Thanks
- Pope Francis: Starvation in a world of plenty “sca...
- NWU and RBTT successfully complete negotiations
- More Questions for Chastanet from SLP Soufriere Group
- LPM leader unperturbed by Clarke’s belittling
- Choiseul/SaltibusTownhall welcomed by Constituents
- Carnival Band Registration
- THE UN SECRETARY-GENERAL -- MESSAGE ON THE INTERNA...
- “UWP NEEDS CHANGE”
- Electric Cars for Saint Lucia
- PALIG Brings Innovation to St. Lucia
- PALIG Brings Innovation to St. Lucia
- Daily Markets Wrap Up – Monday, June 24th, 2013
- Seed Funds Awarded for Joint Projects between The ...
- LIME Embraces Local Artistes!
- LIME One Rate Hits The Spot!
- Digicel Connects with its ‘Caring Connections’ Pro...
- Bay Gardens Resorts Introduces New ‘Stay & Play 75...
- The Royal hosts Carnival Princesses
- Preparations for Schools Extempo Intensify
- NIC Toastmasters Installation and Awards Ceremony ...
- Nation Building 50
- Tough Going for St.Lucians Faulkner and Caesar In ...
- St. Lucian Golfers Can Qualify For Scottish Tourna...
- St.Lucia’s Platinum FC third in SVG Regional Small...
- Martinique defeats St.Lucia to win Coldu’s Shield
- Levern Spencer end’s her 1st European Tour For 2013
- Facebook Fan Chooses Name for CPL Mascot
- COMBINED SCHOOLS AND COURTS JETS 1 UP
- 20th St. Lucia Squash Open Served Off Last Evening
- Talkin’ Trash
- STRATEGIC PLANNING WORKSHOP - 29TH June, 2013 at M...
- Regional Conference on Youth Employability
- “Conditions Are Not Unique”
- Of Saints and Saviours
- No ‘Freeness’ at New Hospital
- Couple arrested at hotel for drugs
- Civil Registry to Perform Better?
- 18 FOR KAISO SEMIS
- SYTOP’s 4thSeason Summer Drug Free Expose’
- SLTB Endorses ‘Amy Stephen’ For 2013 Carnival Quee...
- Precision Productions Out of T & T Does It Again!!!
- Leverage North Stars Steel Orchestra
- Jookay Video
- Jazz in the South
- Dreams
- Electricity Rates Lower This Year Than Last
- Digicel Endorses ‘Ricky T’ As Its ‘Be Extraordinar...
- Digicel Sponsors An Extraordinary Carnival Queen C...
- ‘Because My Boss Said So’
- Junior Achievement’s 17th Annual Record Keeping Wo...
- Insurance Corner
- Market Watch
- DIGICEL Group Records 8% Revenue Growth In Its Ful...
- Accreditation: Facilitating World Trade
- 10,361 new members join ACCA in 2012 / 13
- Pass It Along…Or Else
- What type of Lease do you hold?
- What a Wick: the last 7 days in 12 (15th to 21st J...
- Rights of the Indigenous People of Saint Lucia – P...
- Is technology hurting our human development?
- “Elder” World Awareness Day
- Dixon’s ‘Beloved Country’
- Becoming a Justice of the Peace
- Analysis of the Report on the Financial Operations...
- NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
- Inter District Netball Final Today
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June
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30 comments:
Times are tough. Several companies are either quietly retrenching, skipping salary payments or simply disappearing. Rising inflation, a burdensome VAT, an economic recession and public sector ineptitude aren't the only reasons for failure.
Many managers and owners of small and medium enterprises lack the necessary business acumen to weather such storms. Not only do they resist change, they hardly keep abreast of global realities or dynamics. They hoard their financial information. They rarely surround themselves with people who know better.
Several local companies are employing yesterday's strategies to combat today's challenges. They also hire top-tier managers with decades of experience (and degrees from the 1980s), but who seldom update their skill-set or knowledge.
Regarding the viability of the Blue Coral Moral, I'm not surprised that it's becoming a white elephant. As usual, no one sees the need to reevaluate and restrategize.
The building could provide optimal night-time use as a university/academic satellite center. If appropriately outfitted, institutions like Monroe College, UWI and even NRDF--heck, anyone offering evening classes could maximize the space.
Imagine the accessibility and after-work convenience of such a prime location. The town shuts down at 7pm, anyway! Do better.
Many people, including visitors, would love to come to Castries to do a little sightseeing and shopping; but there is no parking for those with access to cars.
Right there on Bridge Street, next to the Post-Office and across the street from the Blue Coral,should house a major, (multi-level) parking lot; not a one-level bank that is ill-suited for that location.
As things are right now, there's very little incentive for people with cars to come and shop in the heart of the city.
The problem is people generally don't want to pay for parking. That's one of the reasons why the Conway Car Park is so underutilized. They would rather risk a ticket than be forced to pay for parking.
If memory serves, the original design for Blue Coral was supposed to have included rooftop parking--not sure what happened there. Finding a parking spot after-hours is much less of a hassle, so the evening class concept could work in the interim.
Some slaves learn to love their chains. Supermarket chains that is.
The thing about it is that, there is no real reason that one person can't own 'that much' however, the point WHO owns it. Mr. Chastanet is relentless and unrelenting as a business person. I just wish that there were more SL business men like that around. The gov't should be the one to blame for promulgating such an unproductive, unfriendly and unattractive business environment. Think about, if Mr. Chastanet did not buy it, who would? or rather who else could have made a success out of this place??? VAT is not his fault, the rising cost of living has nothing to do with him...come on Lucians.
Worked for and with Mr. Chastanet a while back and I could tell you that this gentleman is indeed relentless and will stop at nothing to "get it done". Business is cut throat and only the fittest will survive - period.
If we had a SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE culture, government policies would reflect that in consumer protection legislation.
Based on this, government policy would ENSURE the creation of a kind of anti-trust legislation that would prevent ANTI-CONSUMER CONSOLIDATIONS in business in whatever sector it raises its ugly noncompetition head.
The fostering of a business culture which encourages a lack of competition means that our SUPINE and callous administrations are playing midwife to THE WIDESPREAD FLEECING OF CONSUMERS in Saint Lucia.
No ifs! No buts! No maybes!
The self-delusional crap that is being bandied about regarding S.T.E.P. and its variant by the copycat UWP, ENSURES that POVERTY REDUCTION is merely euphemism for the continuous symbolic manipulation of the poor, the retention and deepening of POLITICAL PARTY DEPENDENCE and yardfowlism, the fostering of entrenched mendicancy and deepening pauperization, and the facilitation of vote buying.
Sadly, so many people are just too dense to see through the crap that politicians are spreading, and that they, the people at the receiving end are being taken down the garden path.
Saint Lucia they say is idiot country.
Eh, eh! And UWP still want to put a former UWP fox to guard the hen house, oui,
I have known Mr.Chastanet since we were teenagers at school. Mike is a hard woking St.Lucian; I always did and I'll always like and respect him. He doesn't play to lose, he is relentless in succeeding in every business endeavor; do you blame him? the people of Soufriere had an opportunity to cash in with the Chastanets, but as usual, they rejected success; so enrouge to them and good luck.
You up there! So is that the kind of logic you got from your colonial schooling? So, if the father is good at business, then the son is equally good at government?
Are you still in your colonial family dynasty building and entitlement mindset, old chap?
Eh ben bon! You hear crap!
So you are still going through life shooting your non sequiturs at will, whilst carrying this load of crap in your head even to this very day?
Have you and others like you been spreading this crap around that is why the masses have remained so damn poor?
Follow our colonial and slave plantation dinosaurs like you, and they find themselves stuck with always taking a six for a nine?
Tell me this. Are you freaking blind?
The son is the one running. Not the father!
On the god damn ballot paper, people would not voting for 'the Chastenets'. They would be voting for a single 'Chastenet'.
For the record too, oodles of cash were secretly paid to American Airlines to ferry plane-loads of empty seats to Saint Lucia. Empty seats mind you! Airlift it was called.
'Air' lift indeed!
But as with our other 'entitled families', there was stubborn refusal to account to taxpayers how much was being frittered away on that harebrained scheme. It was like it was ministers' money being spent, and not the taxpayers' who were paying for each and every bit of foolishness that that government was continuously doing.
Next, a so-called expert, Dr. Cripple was paid a tidy sum for producing a report that few people have seen. The chap was so happy with the assignment that he fired his employer before the planned end of the contract. He fired the job!
Again, in the heyday of the inter-island schooner and coastal boat days, with vessels like the MV Michael David, Lady Joy, MV Dearwood, the Potomac, the Missy Wallace, and MV Steadfast, and the local Jewel and Flight, the Chastenets never built any social capital. None whatsoever!
They took care of themselves and their ethnic and civil service social groups. That is alright.
They had the job position power and the money power. They did well for themselves. Who can blame them?
But did Saint Lucians see any kind of altruism on display, that some seem to be so madly falling over each other to conflate with individual family member and personal success?
Is this bloke going soft in the head?
Oh how sad for St. Lucia.
All that is bad and worthless is happening to this country.
The people are being fooled by the so-called leaders/ government officials/politicians; day in and day out.
What a very sad mess, this country is in.
Chastanet is a good business man and there is nothing wrong with that. Just wish that all business men could have been so focussed.
The very sad mess is caused by the likes of the writer just before you, and his/her SLP gang who sank St.Lucia into heavy debt for Rochamel etc.etc. Just wait for the next elections you'll find out.
Political Parties come and go, but Chastanet will still be around; you know why??? THEY ARE HARD WORKING PEOPLE...period.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
And what if yard fowl, the 'likes of the writer just before you' happens not be SLP? Some of us are educated enough not to allow ourselves to be mesmerized by any halo associated any particular family name. That is knee-jerk reaction and holdout from our slave past. Are you still there?
I'm not one for hating on other people's success, especially fellow Saint Lucians'--the exception, of course, being ill-gotten gains. I fully respect Chastanet's business insight. There are reasons why his business has survived this long. Foresight and commitment allows him to keep ahead of the curve--regardless of who's in government.
There is nothing stopping anyone from entering the supermarket business. You must be prepared to compete and challenge the status quo. Who would've thought that Digicel--a telecoms unknown--would've decimated C&W/LIME; a textbook monopoly?
I often wondered about Chastanet's fascination with foreign current affairs, now I understand. Those who do not keep abreast of global realities will be blindsided by tomorrow's challenges.
I often wondered about Chastanet's fascination with foreign current affairs, now I understand. Those who do not keep abreast of global realities will be blindsided by tomorrow's challenges.
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I am both surprised and amazed at the remarks made above. It shows the abysmal shallowness of our formal and informal systems of education.
Culture is "the software of the mind". So says world-renowned authority on culture, Geert Hofstede.
We behave like a computer according to our cultural instructions and cultural assumptions.
It means too that if we ignore, as we most certainly do in Saint Lucia, the cultural assumptions (which are hidden, but unconsciously guide all our interpretation of the world around us) that make us behave unconsciously to both internal -- and in the case of the Chastanet senior -- the external environment, we will always remain like in boiling frog metaphor, in the boiling pan of hot water until it is too late.
Take a look at bananas. We joined the WTO. Yet few, if any, of our very senior ministers bubbling up from the general population base, can boast any awareness of its international trade implications for Saint Lucia.
John Compton kept on living in his cultural bubble in the past, with his miserable leadership skills.
He led? No. He managed? He did. Yes, no matter how badly, with impunity or how cruelly.
He like our so mentally lazy Saint Lucians, he preferred to take in all the pollyanna rubbish that was coming from Saint Lucia's ambassador for Europe regarding bananas. He even won re-election on a mythical revival of a sunset banana industry promise!
We all can see where that has taken us.
To date, Saint Lucia has yet to produce a single political leader who shows any kind of understanding or appreciation of the impact of the lack of strategic positioning of our all of exports in a globalized world.
OK. That is very much harder than preparing for the next elections, even it you have just won the last one overnight.
The lawyering class nor the clerical classes do not have the skill set necessary. After all this is much harder than beating your chest on your way to watered-down independence,
Today, the masses are still being fed continuously unadulterated hogwash from government ministers, our media houses and the bane and blight of this poor country, the various idiotic and myopic party spin doctors parading as peacocks on the talk shows.
This political prostitution keeps on producing a virulent disease of cultural ignorance and the birth of ignoramuses as future government ministers.
Our national culture is opposed to learning to keep abreast of developments in Science and Technology, in Management and Business. A misguided majority still goes to school and stop learning when knowledge is being created at an unprecedented rate each year. Then we hear the wishful thinking of increased FDI, if only to produce low-class maids and bell hops in the tourism industry.
A culture that is well aware of the imperatives of learning and knowing, if only just to keep abreast of the competition in a globalized world, would realize that we have to run twice as hard just to remain in the same place where we are now, to paraphrase Lewis Carrol's "Alice in Wonderland".
It is small wonder that we continue to produce leaders who know so very little about the world that they continue to take themselves very seriously whilst they talk their usual solemn nonsense regarding issues like borrowing from the IMF, or are too relevantly uneducated to perceive the irrelevance of their grandiose but hollow (perhaps even purposely deceitful) statements and expatiations regarding poverty reduction.
No offense but you really should self-edit. No one has time to sift through irrelevant, pompous verbiage to get to valid points. Why were you "surprised and amazed [sic]," again? The reality is that, in the past, Chastanet has consistently ignored local goings-on to focus instead on external affairs in his weekly commentaries. I wondered about his fascination with matters external, when there was so much in SLU that he could offer informed opinions on.
Then again, he was probably being the consummate diplomat/businessman and was playing it safe. To oppose idiotic government policies in SLU is to leave yourself and your business open to the vindictiveness of petty politicians and their delusional "expert" henchmen.
Sorry. I hate it when I try to write like George Orwell (as in 1984, and Animal Farm); like Charles Dickens (as in Great Expectations); and like Aldus Huxley (in Brave New World). To make it worse: add the philosophies of Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, Bertrand Russell and John Locke rolling all of that into one. You know. It just doesn't come out right sometimes. Pass me the cup of hemlock.
"LMAO" - me, circa 2013. 'That strain again, it had a dying fall. O, it came o'er my ear like' ... no one cares, just get to the point. Keep name-dropping and quoting the Literatti if you must--whatever strokes your ego, but I'll just skip to the relevant part.
"In CLR James' The Black Jacobin ..." (Holds book up to closest camera.) There's a joke in there somewhere, but I'll stop since it borders on irreverence. You have a great day!
"Love it when an act comes together." Chastanet still does what's best for him, which is to look at the external environment, anticipate the necessary adjustments that have to be made. He makes them and wins!
Our market size will always place the local economy in a situation operating as a subset of the larger global or international economy.
That knowledge and understanding puts him way ahead of the game. This, in part, explains his focus which is still confusing to so many.
This nation's inordinate focus on irrelevance and trivia titillates. It entertains. Unfortunately, this clouds our perceptions leaving so many of us unable to see the forest for the trees.
So, Chastenet's apparent use of some form of SWOT analysis leaves the wilting competition standing in the wake of his dust storm, sheepishly applauding in awe, total embarrassment and confusion. Otherwise, they express their gut-wrenching unhappiness at seeing him execute his game plan as he continues to run rings around our parochial run-of-the-mill local competition.
Money Laundering, Money Laundering, Money Laundering.
I was also impressed with some of the revelations made by CFL's perishables manager, regarding their supply chain. Just goes to show the amount of planning and research that goes into running such a company. He was able to cite some bio-technical advancements taking place at US universities, that have implications for their business. They do not limit themselves to this region.
How many managers in Saint Lucia --- and in the region for that matter --- are au fait with the goldmine that is there for exploitation and mastery, namely, the supply and value chain.
Listening to some of the senior management actors in LIAT for example, the initiated would easily recognize that most of the leadership of that company is totally out to sea regarding even some very basic concepts of modern management -- and know even less about operations management in the airlines industry.
Hopefully, the Australian university branch and the Monroe College will, perhaps in some four years or so, bridge some of the gaping knowledge canyons -- and not just knowledge gaps -- in our management technologies.
Besides, the technical capabilities in the public service is long overdue for an overhaul.
Perhaps, because of our social engineering policy of retiring senior personnel early, just to make room for junior ones, the resident skill sets necessary for effectively delivering our public services are constantly being placed in the balance and have been found wanting.
"educated fools from educated schools", Curtis Mayfield.
@June 21, 2013 at 7:55 AM
You should do some editing. Anyway, we cannot expect rapid growth, if we do not have very accurate, relevant and timely national data driving all our initiatives.
If you guys cannot offer full employment to those FAMILIES now employed by MC: put up or shut up!!
If MC were to employ all the unemployed in St. Lucia, what, we would sacrificing virgins on an alter for him monthly then?
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