Nightmare 12-Hour Flight From BGI To JFK

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/09/caitlin-gorry-american-airlines_n_833349.html

Urbanisation vs. The Countryside: Barbados Becomes a City State

"An SOS has gone out to Government to withstand pressure from developers and save the Scotland District from the rapid urban sprawl sweeping across Barbados.

However, president of the Barbados National Trust and historian Dr. Karl Watson believes that the urbanisation of Barbados as it moves towards becoming a city state is “unstoppable”.

“The Scotland District is the last frontier that the real estate barons of this island are going to target, and not only are they going to target it, but they are going to actively develop it,” he warned.

He has reservations about Government’s ability to prevent this kind of development.

“I think that even with the best will in the world and with the imposition of controls and with the full authority that Town and Country Planning has, I think that the economic aspect of development and the economic drivers of development are so gargantuan, so all-consuming, overpowering, that they are going to break down any hurdle that we put in their way to act as a brake on this runaway development.”

The noted historian and archaeologist was delivering a lecture entitled Urbanisation vs. The Countryside: Barbados Becomes a City State at the LB Harcourt Lewis Training Room, Barbados

Public Workers Credit Union Headquarters, on Monday night. It was part of the 13th anniversary celebrations of the Urban Development Commission.

Watson said the National Trust eagerly awaited the day when the formal Cabinet decision to legally establish the National Park of Barbados would become reality.

“... We need some guarantee that at some point in time in the next 15 or 20 years there will be some green spaces left in this island that we can go out and enjoy. It has to be done,” he said.

With the assistance of maps and photographs spanning three centuries, he illustrated how “urbanisation from the east and urbanisation from the west are meeting”.
The decline in acreage for sugar production from nearly 52 000 acres in 1966 to 17 000 in 2005 was cited as an indication of how agriculture had progressively given way
to housing development.

“From North Point to South Point we are busy cementing over every available square inch that we can,” Watson observed. “We have to say enough is enough. Let us slow this process.”

“Ultimately it moves out of the hands of Government and has to come back to us the people,” he added.

“We have to decide as a people, do we collectively reduce our expectations so that we don’t continue to ruin the environment of this island [or] do we restrain our zeal for consumption?”"

Source: NationNews.com

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Video: New Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental unveiled

Video: New Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental unveiled

The World Is In A Coma: More lessons for those who would Dubaify Barbados

Proposed island to be located north of Bridgetown Port

"The islands were intended as the ultimate luxury possession, even for Dubai.  But the World, the ambitiously-constructed archipelago of islands shaped like the countries of the globe, is sinking back into the sea, according to evidence cited before a property tribunal.

The islands were intended to be developed with tailor-made hotel complexes and luxury villas, and sold to millionaires. They are off the coast of Dubai and accessible by yacht or motor boat.

Now their sands are eroding and the navigational channels between them are silting up, the British lawyer for a company bringing a case against the state-run developer, Nakheel, has told judges.

"The islands are gradually falling back into the sea," Richard Wilmot-Smith QC, for Penguin Marine, said. The evidence showed "erosion and deterioration of The World islands", he added.

With all but one of the islands still uninhabited – Greenland – and that one a showpiece owned by the ruler of Dubai, most of the development plans have been brought to a crashing halt by the financial crisis..."

Click here to read entire Telegraph article.

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Abramovich, Eclipse & Barbados: Three of a kind

Source: Barbados TravelAdvisor Forum

REDjet ready to fly

"THE Caribbean’s newest airline hit the ground for the first time on Thursday.

But it’s not up and running just yet.

REDjet, expected to bring low-fare seats to the rest of the Caribbean, touched down at the Grantley Adams International Airport for the first time Thursday afternoon.

The airline will be operate out of Barbados.

A number of Barbadians were interviewed for jobs with the company earlier in September.

The first MD82 aircraft received a warm welcome as two tenders of the Barbados Fire Service’s Airport Division also came on the tarmac and gave it a showery blessing just after touchdown via a water-cannon salute, as is customary when airlines come to Barbados for the first time.

On arrival, the company’s two top executives, chief executive officer Ian Burns and his son Robbie, held a special function with photographers aboard the aircraft taking pictures of the maiden flight into Grantley Adams.

The two then posed in the cockpit with a Barbados flag to commemorate their first arrival.

No REDjet agents are in place at Grantley Adams just yet, but the airline is expected to start taking on passengers from as early as January next year.

Cost

REDjet was founded in 2006 when CEO Burns, working in the region at the time, was amazed by the cost of flights within the region and on routes to the United States and Latin America.

There was a huge disparity in the market, as Caribbean carriers were losing substantial sums year after year while the American carriers flying into the region were reporting the Caribbean to be their most profitable market.

Working with his son Robbie, who is the company’s business development manager, the father and son team built REDjet in conjunction with investors to develop the first Caribbean Low Fares Airline and bring the substantial economic and social benefits of low-cost travel.

REDjet is a privately owned airline with a mixture of international and local backers who share a common vision of lower fares to make travel affordable for everyone in the Caribbean.

Over the past two months, the 42 members of the all-Barbadian cabin crew have completed intense operational, medical emergency, ground school and aircraft safety training on the MD-82 aircraft, just like the one which arrived Thursday.

The preparations were conducted locally and at the world-renowned PanAm International Flight Academy in Florida, United States. The final phase of training will take place once the company’s first aircraft arrives in Barbados.

“We took a holistic approach to our MD-82 training and included a member of the Barbados Civil Aviation Department who trained alongside our crew, thus ensuring there was a local expert on the aircraft in Barbados,” Burns noted upon the plane’s arrival.

“To date we have invested over BDS$1 million in the flight training so our team will be ready to welcome passengers once we have received final permissions from the regulators to commence operations.”"

Source: NationNews.com

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Lessons In Sustainability For The Barbados Brand

The Government Of Barbados Distances Itself From The Merricks

If you blinked last week you probably missed it - "it" being the ground-breaking exercises for the "destination that is different” in Merricks, St. Philip, Barbados.  Both leading papers carried front page articles covering  the event, but curiously neither of them mentioned any members of the current government of Barbados in attendance.  Ok, I suppose the Prime Minister gets a pass because he is ailing and we all have him our prayers, but where was his deputy, or the Minister of Tourism, or even the Parliamentary Representative for the constituency?  This is certainly a "different" ground-breaking for Barbados for a project that's supposedly worth nearly a billion dollars in construction.

A few months ago they hauled the Prime Minister off his sickbed to turn the sod at Pickerings, St. Lucy on a project where we later learned that the principals probably have no money let alone own the land upon which it is to be built.  Perhaps it's the flak off Pickerings that has made Government gun-shy on Merricks.  Whatever it is or was, it speaks reams about the level of trust and confidence the Government of Barbados has in the project at Merricks when reportedly the highest public official in attendance at its ground-breaking was the Minister of Tourism - not of Barbados - but of St. Vincent And The Grenadines.

This blogger who has followed the vicissitudes of The Merricks over the years became so concerned about this obvious "different" turn of events that I raised it as a question with two senior civil servants, one with over 40 years experience who boasted that it was the civil servants who build Barbados - not the politicians.  To my surprise both of them pleaded ignorance of The Merricks - they didn't know what it was or anything about its existence.  To be fair, neither of them were in tourism, but I find it inexcusable that a Permanent Secretary in the Government of Barbados would have no knowledge of the saga of The Merricks and Harlequin Properties in Barbados or the rest of the Caribbean regardless of his/her portfolio.  This Permanent Secretary also went on to boast of (as a general rule) not reading either of the two main daily papers, so that should tell us all something about him, if not about the state of governance in this country.

Lack of government trust and confidence notwithstanding, Harlequin did "finally" break ground on The Merricks Resort last week and is already proudly proclaiming it to the rest of the world on its website.  They even include links to the articles in the Advocate and the Nation even though the latter made the absence of the Government of Barbados pretty obvious.  We know also that they (Harlequin) recently had a "soft opening" (re: unfinished and trouble-ridden) on their St. Vincent property, Buccament Bay Resort, and are widely promoting (re: collecting deposits on) other unstarted/unfinished resorts in St. Lucia, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and probably other locations.  Many people (apparently now including the Government of Barbados) have been looking for what many have termed a house of cards to come tumbling down, but so far it has defied the odds.    

Lesson for those who would Dubaify Barbados

"Dubai's central belief, summed up frequently as 'build it and they will come', has served it well in the past, however the policy crashed badly in the financial crisis leaving a landscape of half-finished skyscrapers...

A glut of vacant office space is continuing to spiral, despite the economic crisis, thanks to the forests of new tower blocks started by developers as the boom reached it peak in 2007, researchers said.

With some "holes in the ground" awaiting further development already being filled in, further radical solutions to the problem are needed, said the authors, researching for the property firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

"The best prospect for reducing vacancies lies with initiatives to limit future supply and encourage the withdrawal of existing buildings from stock through conversion to non-office buildings or even demolition," the report concludes..."

Read more: Dubai may have to knock down buildings constructed during boom - Telegraph

See also: Mullins Bay Blog: "This Is Monaco: Is This What We Want For Barbados?"

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Turtle Butchered

Barbados TravelAdvisor • View topic - Turtle Butchered