Dear Editor, Lee Halley, as a young man, had a vision, a dream to someday have his own fishing charter business on the same land and water where his father, brothers and many Simpson Bay fishermen kept their fishing boats. Lee’s hard work, determination, dedication and Simpson Bay Pride made that dream come true. A dream that, after 30 years, grew into what is now Lee’s Roadside Grill & Deep Sea Fishing. Closing Lee’s Roadside Grill will impact our lives, the families of our 30 employees, our suppliers, contractors and the Simpson Bay community. At a time when the economy…
Author: The Publisher
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The ease with which politicians use comparisons with the Second World War to characterize the attitude of the Netherlands towards St. Maarten is – to use a Frans Richardson expression – unfortunate. Yesterday the term Gestapo was used by PM William Marlin and by UP-leader Theo Heyliger who threw in the Nazis for good measure. The Gestapo was Hitler’s secret state police, but the organization itself was not by a long shot as frightening as the sources it depended on: ordinary Germans who tattled on their neighbors or on anybody they happened to have a beef with. The Gestapo itself…
Don Quixote was charging at windmills under the illusion that they were giants. Something similar was happening in Parliament yesterday during the debate about the appointment of a quartermaster for the Integrity Chamber by the Dutch government. The term fighting windmills seems appropriate – the Netherlands is full of them and to local politicians, the Netherlands is that giant bent on trampling the little guy. Because what is going on here? The Dutch appointed a quartermaster. That’s based on a protocol former Vice Prime Minister Dennis Richardson signed with Minister Plasterk on May 24, 2015. “The Netherlands appoints a quartermaster…
GREAT BAY – “In the game of politics in St. Maarten there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies; only permanent interests,” Gracita Arrindell, leader of the extra-parliamentary political party People’s Progressive Alliance (PPA) said at a press briefing yesterday morning. Seconded by her treasurer Ed Gumbs, Arrindell addressed a broad array of topics, thus joining the public debate for the first time again, after the party’s defeat in the September 26 elections. And while Arrindell says that she opposes new taxes like the departure tax that is currently in the pipeline, somewhere in her presentation she repeats a…
GREAT BAY – Small businesses are going to die if banks do not facilitate entrepreneurs to receive money online. That is the view of consultant and entrepreneur Ifelola Badejo. “We are in the 21st century. Our banking systems unfortunately are stuck somewhere between the 20th century and the 19th Century…I say that to have a reality check. To understand that if they are not moving with the times, they will cause our economies to die,” Badejo says. Relating from her personal experiences, Badejo recalled inquiring at the bank why she is unable to do transactions online and receive payments, even…
GREAT BAY – Exactly seven years after his mysterious disappearance, the car of American Robert Brous has been found, after tourists spotted it in the sea near the Walter Plantz Pier on Sunday morning around 9 a.m. The car, a dark blue BMW381i, is according to the police “possibly” the vehicle Brous rented in 2010. Chief Inspector Ricardo Henson dismissed media reports that a body had been found in the car. The police have impounded the car for analysis and it released a picture of the car to the media. The French-side website soualigapost.com reported however based on police information…
Today’s story about the art school of Tess Verheij reveals an apparent lack of local interest in the arts and in particular in the training of youngsters in the pleasures of drawing and other creative activities. Reason enough for us to ask in this spot attention for the opportunity Verheij’s project offers to fifteen talented but underprivileged children: a whole year of free art classes. Parents and schools ought to pick up on this, while children themselves are free to drop in at the art school on Old Street. Verheij’s idea to uplift art classes in the school system should…
By Hilbert Haar GREAT BAY – With a grant from the Prince Bernhard Fund, artcraft café and art school owner Tess Verheij thought she had it made for at least fifteen underprivileged but talented local children: a weekly art class for a whole year. The funding is there and Verheij is ready to begin but there is one stumbling block: no children. Verheij calls on children aged between 8 and 18 who have not only a talent but also a taste for art to drop in at her business on Old Street to register. She also calls on schools to…
Over the past couple of months several youngsters have disappeared – temporarily or just forever. In more than one case it was about school children, just like the most recent example, last week’s disappearance of Ezekiel Morris. It would be careless to speculate about the reasons while children do not want to return home, because every case is different. This is certainly true for the two young men who disappeared from the Simpson Bay Resort on December 5 of last year, never to be seen again. The police are still investigation, but people who have not been heard of for…
You wouldn’t know that there is a new parliament in place if it weren’t for the activities of the one man who did not win a seat: Wycliffe Smith, leader of the extra-parliamentary Christian Party. Since the elections, Smith has produced no less than thirteen opinion pieces to the print media. They drop into our mailbox regular like clockwork once a week. The fifteen elected Members of Parliament have been utterly silent since they were installed last October, making many voters wonder what these people are getting paid for. They are getting a bigger bang for their buck from Smith,…
