A NICE BROWN MAN, an upstanding citizen, possessed of a sharp mind, has declared that he’s had enough with the foolishness which has possessed us. He’s sick of the lying and the games being played with the future of a nation. He’s had enough. He will no longer play the game, so he resigns from not one but all of the appointments he has held as a director of three important government institutions.

Why should we even care that Mr James (Jimmy) Moss-Solomon took such a drastic step to demonstrate his disaffection with the way things are going in our fair isle? Maybe he’s made the headlines because (a) he’s among those who could be described as “a leading citizen”; (b) the popular assumption that if you’re appointed to the board of a government institution, you have friends in high places; (c) if you’re in Jimmy Moss-Solomon’s position, you shouldn’t rock the boat.

Well, he rocked the boat on Monday using RJR’s call-in programme Hotline as a confessional. He broke the news via host Dickie Crawford, that he was resigning from the boards of the University Hospital, the International Centre for Environmental and Nuclear Sciences and the Scientific Research Council. This is his mark of protest against the perceived failure of our main political parties in providing strong effective leadership for the nation.

It was highly anticipated that after Mr Moss-Solomon’s confession on Monday, other conscious citizens who have been bemoaning the state of the nation, but doing so privately, would have rushed forward to speak up also and turn in their resignations… but it didn’t happen. To date, the overwhelming silence has led us to believe in the ancestral adage that “coward man really keep sound bone”. We’re at our best talking behind the scenes, in case you’ve forgotten. Everybody is waiting for somebody else to get up and say something.

Someone I know heard someone he knows, asking, “What does he want? What does he expect to gain?” It seems that we can’t believe that someone who appears to have it all would want to make waves. Why would he give up the prestige of being in the leadership of important organisations? “Resign fi what?” some ask.

If anyone hoped for some mass defection of the kind of persons who could be regarded as having influence and whose action would result in embarrassment for the government, now engaged in a frantic public relations blitz to regain hearts and minds, forget it. The quick call has gone out: “Stay there and fight.” This seems to have calmed other troubled souls, for the time being at least.

Anyone remembers Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin who unburdened himself of a heavy-heavy load of some of the twists and turns which have brought us here? When last have you heard anybody utter even one mumbling word about him and his attempts to call us to check ourselves?

MOVING ON… What about the tyranny at the stop lights? You know what I mean. You come to a traffic light, prepared to wait your turn to proceed. You’ve barely come to a stop when your car is attacked. The invaders are armed with dirty squeegees and accompanying bottles of grimy soap water. They advance. You try to communicate through your rolled-up glass, “No, no I don’t want it cleaned. Leave my windscreen alone. No, no, Don’t pop off the wipers. No, no.” You might as well save your breath.

You find yourself trying to see through a cloud of dutty water. Your windshield wipers have been yanked up in the air. The squeegee is making sweeping arcs across the glass, leaving it dirtier than before. If you’re really unlucky, the operation is being repeated at the back glass.

You are besieged from all sides, and the light refuses to change. You’ve given up trying to communicate. You know enough to prepare for what comes next… Payment due. “But I told you I didn’t want my windows washed.” Out come the “bad wud dem”.

Dare to continue the protest and you get the full treatment. Spit trickling down the windscreen… Screw face, beating on the glass. Can’t take it anymore so you cowardly wind down the window, just a chenks, and slide a modest payment through. Too modest and you could find it flying back in your face. If you’re lucky, the light changes. You make a getaway… till next time.

The police have announced, they fully intend to put a stop to it. From now on, they’re going to wage war on the monsters, slap a fine on them in court and if they can’t pay, lock up dem blouse…

Not so fast, the good people cry. Those boys at the stop light may look like monsters to you but they really are victims of hard times, trying to do a ting. Repeat the magic words… “So-shall inter-ven-shon.” But it has been done before.

One of the most intense has been that carried out by St Andrew Parish Church to deal specifically with the boys at the traffic stop in front of their premises. The church community has made considerable investment of their money and time to help the boys with daily necessities, to involve them in upgrading their education and getting skills training. Facilities have been built at the church premises to house the project and to give the boys a place where they can shelter. The government-run Possibilities Programme also assisted.

The YMCA, under the indomitable Sarah Newland Martin, has done much also to try to change the living of what we call street boys. This included training in customer relationships, how to approach motorists and politely make the offer to wash windows. The boys were equipped with a uniform of sorts – T-shirts identifying their objective. Much time and much effort went into this and other similar programmes. Before long, the lawlessness returned.

These days, I’m told, dons organise the boys and send them out to work at the stop lights. The boys get a percentage of the take. That’s why they hustle so hard. There’s evidence that coke heads have joined the action. Poor us motorists. A driver recalls how she deliberately drove through a red light to escape a coke-head window washer who was harassing her. She still shudders at what the consequences could have been.

Let’s support the cops. Deal with the criminals. Rescue the children even if some of them, I hear, want to get PAID, apparently for doing their benefactors a favour by joining the very programme which is designed to help them, free of cost. Yes, I know… but we still have to try.

gloudonb@yahoo.com