Exporting in a time of global decline...Part 2 of my lessons from Turin, Italy. Click link to read more

When it comes to the support for SMEs, as a mechanism for export development and promotion, across the globe the public/private mechanics suffer from two things — duplication in resource planning and allocation, in which the possibility of deep focus is lost and secondly, considerable bureaucratic overlap in export development and promotion, across both the private sector organisations and public sector policy and institutional framework.
Click the link above and read Part 2 of my Newsday column

Google "James Philbert" "technology" and "strategy"...nothing comes up. Click link and read Part 1 of this column.

With 15 taxi drivers murdered for 2008 already and an environment where there is a high degree of anxiety, apprehension and discomfort in the society, these many single mothers have to use public transportation. For many of them getting to and from their workplaces— restaurants, pubs, hotels and guesthouses, casinos and rum shops, ice cream shops, burger carts and cinemas — has been made treacherous, since many times they do so at late hours when regular transportation is unavailable. Many will be even more reluctant to take up shift jobs and work requiring late evening and night commuting and many who are in those jobs will simply quit. The impact of this high degree of anxiety, apprehension and discomfort in the society is now visible in the details of the country’s economic statistics.

Click link above and read Part 1 of this column.

Can we fight crime with feet and firearms alone? Click link and read Part 2 of this column.

Trinidad and Tobago’s next Commissioner of Police must have technology uppermost in his or her mind. Facing moving hotspots, threats in the air, on the coast, along the highways and in the deep forests, the Commissioner cannot conceive of a fight that involves feet and firearms. Even if the acting Police Commissioner does believe that more manpower and vehicles will slow the onslaught, then the slow pace of recruitment, the absence of a recruitment and training facility as well as the large number of officers who are unavailable because of sickness, injury or study and the general lack of sufficient manpower makes it impossible for any serious Police Commissioner in Trinidad and Tobago to be heavily reliant on feet and firearms in dealing with crime.

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Employers welcome national ban on smoking in the workplace. Click link and read more...

From a national perspective, smoking and exposure to smokers impact both the health of future employees and the probability that they themselves will be smoking at the time they enter the world of work. An important factor for employers in the context of recruitment for smoke free workplaces is the data on tobacco use by school age persons. The 2007 Trinidad & Tobago Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) showed that 37.4 percent of students had smoked cigarettes; 22.3 percent currently use any tobacco product; 14.4 percent currently smoke cigarettes; 11.2 percent currently use other tobacco products and 13.4 percent of never smokers were likely to initiate smoking in the next year.

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The decline of courtesy and manners...click link to read my comments in the Guardian.

Perhaps when those among us, who remain with sufficient sanity, reflect upon the whens and whys of a cataclysmic decline, we would find three signposts.

The first one reads that we should not have been buying gas tanks, car stereos and other smaller items from pipers who had neither shop nor shack. We also should not have been buying jewelry from people who had neither gold nor craft, but only bags of guile.

Click to read more in the Guardian.

Cancer fighting foods. Click link to read new report

Cancer is no longer thought to be solely the product of factors outside of our control such as heredity or accidental contact with toxic pollutants. In fact, scientists believe there is a great deal we can do to reduce our risk of developing the disease. The 2007 Expert Report by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) found that the food we eat and other lifestyle choices such as daily physical activity and maintaining a healthy body weight are key to preventing cancer. This epic report - which was five years in the making and reviewed 7,000 large-scale studies - found that an unhealthy diet is linked to about one third of all cancer cases.…

Click the link above to access article and read full report.