I am all for reducing food prices, but I don’t see how the United States Virgin Islands can help us achieve this. Surely most of our imported food comes from Puerto Rico or Miami?

Suppliers ship direct to St. Thomas or Tortola. There is a huge price differential in shipping costs between freight to our neighbours (national shipping rates) and the VI (international shipping rates), but how could we take advantage of this? It would hardly be economic to trans-ship in St. Thomas, and what would be the “quid pro quo,” to use a phrase recently in the news? Neither this territory nor the USVI can make international trade deals without the involvement of the United Kingdom and the US, respectively, and post-Brexit deals may put a stop to that.

 

Noise in USVI

It seems our neighbours in the USVI have similar troubles to us with noise, motorbikes and so on. The police there say motorcyclists and ATV riders wear crash helmets and remove their licence plates to defeat the facial recognition cameras the police have bought. Consequently, the cameras have fallen out of use, and nobody now knows how to operate them. That was a great waste of money. Similarly, they are plagued by noise, but their noise-measuring meters have also fallen out of use with nobody to operate them.

 

Gov’t claims

Aren’t you getting fed up with government officials continually telling us that such and such is now commissioned, or will be at a certain date, only to find that it isn’t? A resident of St. John has said that the smoke from our waste disposal plant was unbearable a few days ago. So that isn’t fixed then? Similarly, schools (with no or old furniture), the Virgin Gorda clinic, police stations and fire stations are all reported to be back in use, but don’t seem to be. And in the private sector, when is FLOW going to complete the upgrade of its network and start offering customers their landline phones back? And is cable television a thing of memory now, or is it going to rise like a phoenix?

Don’t forget the fundraiser for VI Search and Rescue at Government House tomorrow night.