Desmond Judge Gibbons
Live within your means! That statement means only one thing to me. It means ‘look at you, try to spend less money’. It does not mean to go and look for more money; it means spend less .But it hints at wastefulness and lavishness. Yes, one must not live lavishly and then depend on others to help out. It creates an opening for insults.
Is Montserrat too wasteful and too lavish? Maybe we are and maybe we are not. Let us examine the facts and test the results. It is no secret that before the volcano, the government spent much less on salaries and allowances to provide services for ten thousand residents than it spends today. Yet today we provide services to less than five thousand residents.
Are we wasteful and too lavish? Again let us examine the facts but in greater detail. A political minister of government is paid huge sums of money as allowances; these allowances are in addition to his salary. For example, each year, a minister of government gets $64,000.00 for house allowances; he gets paid that amount just to go home and sleep in his house. The same minister gets $60,000.00 for duty allowances; he gets paid that amount just to appear on the job for duty. He also gets $18,000.00 for travel allowances; that is to drive to the office and drive back to sleep in his house. If that minister spends five years in office he will be paid $710,000.00 just to drive to work for duty and return home to sleep in his house. Mind you, he will still receive a salary to perform his duties as a minister of government. Montserratians, are we too lavish? Could Montserrat afford that type of payment?
Are we wasteful? Are we living above our means?
The facts and figures in the above paragraph were taken from the Ordinances and Statutory Rules and Orders for the year 2007, number 42 of 2007. Every amount stated above is the absolute truth. The truth and the facts can portray negativity. When Montserrat lavishes $13,000.00 a month in allowances on a minister of government who already gets a very good salary, and especially now that the government plans to send home 25 percent of the workers, the impact is negative. Clearly, before we go begging for more money, Montserrat needs to review its lavish payments to politicians and pensioners; or else it would appear as if we live above our means.
There is another side however. But unfortunately, the story is never told that some Montserratians live below means. Many people on Montserrat live on the brink, and God only knows when they will fall over. For some as little as $2.00 a day will reduce the hardship that these Montserratians have to endure; yet we lavish so much on the few.
Here is one such story.
My cousin Desmond ‘Judge; Gibbons was dismissed May 2009 from his job at the Golden Years Foundation after more than 10 years of service. During the period that he worked there, he was paid less than $30.00 a day for his services. He lived below means. Unfortunately for him he was dismissed for alleged inappropriate behaviour and given a payment of less than $1,000.00 as termination benefit.
Desmond ‘Judge’ Gibbons’ application for welfare assistance and his subsequent appeal for consideration were turned down May 2010 by the P.S to the political minister of Health. Desmond Judge was denied welfare assistance because it was alleged he had savings above the required threshold. He was also told that with regards amounts being withdrawn from his account the Board will request substantial evidence as to the purpose and use of the money withdrawn.
The story is true, it is fact but it is negative; and if the details on file were to be analysed and published on MNI Alive or in The Montserrat Reporter, the end result would be worse than birds litter in the face of Montserratians.
Today February 2011, unemployable, retarded and challenged, Judge walks the trail to baker hill from anywhere with a bag of grass on his back looking for work or money. He lives below means and on the brink.
My God, how can any ‘suffering decision maker’ look at Desmond judge and tell him… ‘Go away; you have too much money in the bank to be on welfare’. Seriously, how can they?
Yet each year Montserrat lavishes on the minister of health over $100,000.00 to drive to work for duty, to sleep in a house, to buy drinks for friends or to bee bee text messages although he gets a very good salary to do the government’s work. Yes, we add to the pile of politicians and pensioners …without asking how much they add or subtract from their savings.
No wonder the Man of State can say to Montserratians…mother bird’s chicks, live within your means. Confused…, Montserrat confuses the secretaries to the Man of State, as we lavish large sums of money on the few.
And right here on Montserrat there are a number of Desmonds and Gibbons’ and Judges who live below means and on the brink; they look for a tree stub to hold, oblivious to the income inequality that surrounds them. They are too retarded, too challenged or too weary to understand how we lavish the cash on ‘special others’.
And now Montserrat, lavishing and wasteful, imbalanced in style and with unbalanced budget we boogie onwards to the mother bird looking for ‘top up’ to lavish on a new set of privileged few’. But along with the chick feed mother bird will drop litter in the nest, by the nest and on passers by; so we dodge, and unbalanced we laugh at one another pointing finger and claiming insults.
Someone should have told us to expect the unexpected from the Secretary of State so that words like ‘chicken and birds in the nest’ would not stun us. But tell me, is the statement ‘Montserrat live within your means’, an insult?
Maybe! It depends. I honestly do not know.
What I do know however, is that we are an imbalanced society crippled with income inequality; and very soon we will push more into unemployment, greatly increasing poverty, thereby expanding the lines seeking welfare assistance and emigration to motherland UK… Think of it!
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