Northern merchants dug out our eyes!

It would be sad if companies always only thought about maximizing profits.

I still find time to visit a bar or two for entertainment, recreation, relaxation, or just somewhere to relax, but it is worth noting that the prices of drinks and food have skyrocketed.

In a pub in the city centre or on the edge of a county town, one can buy a drink or a meal at prices close to supermarket prices, but for some reason the same thing costs exorbitant prices in a pub in our north.

Without mentioning specific bars, I think it’s outrageous that a bottle of water that costs about a dollar in the supermarket costs five dollars in Gros Islet.

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A Black & White Scotch costs $12, twice as much as in downtown or other regular bars. A Guinness is $10, and the minimum price for a meal is $25.

I know the North is a tourist hub, but it’s mostly frequented by locals, especially in the off-season.

I understand that rent and in some cases overheads can be high, especially as the country is about to introduce a minimum wage. However, greed and a capitalist mentality allow businessmen to exploit the country.

Every day most people and customers struggle to make ends meet, with food, transport, rent, mortgages, school feeding children, taxes, VAT, insurance, licensing etc., and at the end of the day people try to relax and find that social life is a nightmare in terms of costs.

Locals are not tourists, not everyone is paid well, some barely make ends meet, and find the cost of relaxing, having fun or entertaining in the North to be brutal and overwhelming.

Now we face another question: whether employers will get value for money in terms of a fair working day and the newly mandated minimum wage.

We humans always have excuses for not getting to work on time (“rain” or “traffic” are still excuses), or that we should spend more time on personal devices like our phones, or have to be told over and over again what to do because no one is taking the initiative.

Everyone is right and no one listens to advice or cares about the bottom line because it’s always about them and not us.

We need a balance in life, we can’t always take without giving, in our local parlance we call it “bwa”. Everyone is trying to cheat others in every possible way.

Lawyers, doctors, banks and other financial institutions, merchants, government agencies, food markets and supermarkets, wherever you shop you will see the same khakis. I was even told that most of the killings were due to bad deals and robberies which forced people to take some kind of revenge or “justice” action.

Country people also bribe, cheat, deceive, defraud, blackmail and are selfish.

If we don’t address the current issues, the road ahead will be much worse. The government is working in many ways to provide more help to those in need or the vulnerable, but today’s culture needs to be investigated because prices are out of control.