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.... Editorial

12th January 2010
Hard January

The hard month … if there were to be a nickname for the month of January, that would be it.
Traditionally, it is recognized that St. Lucians (this is no doubt prevalent all over the world, but we know that it is so for St. Lucians in particular) go all out and spend whatever monetary reserves they possess in one enormous splurge so that they may enjoy the Christmas and New Year holiday season to the maximum – then find themselves faced with a long … very long month of January, filled with bills to be paid and hardly anything in their wallets or bank accounts to pay them with.
Well, here we are, halfway through the hard month with the next two weeks stretching bleakly before us.
It may however, provide us with the opportunity to once more practise our belt-tightening techniques, for never forget, we are not yet quite out of the woods when it comes to the area of austerity and financial stress … in every way and from every angle.
Prosperity and surplus have yet to manifest themselves in our little country, reeling as we are from a year that had the whole world in dire straits, in the grip of one of the worst financial depressions ever seen on this planet.
 
 

It is true that January comes right in the heart of the tourist season, and the almost daily filled-to-capacity harbour, disgorging thousands of tourists onto our streets is something that supplies encouragement to all who are involved in the Tourism industry … but it will be some time before we catch up with the backlog of bills and debts that have been incurred in our last two months of wild abandon, and as the days go by, we must proceed with caution and watch every penny we are fortunate enough to earn – while the earning is good.
For of course, the cruise ship traffic will slow down and things will get back to normal … and depending on how strained the rest of the world finds itself, we may have quite a lot of belt-tightening to do once more, before we are in the clear.
So in preparation for what may be in store for us during the following eleven months of 2010, it would be wise to use this “hard” month of January as a training ground for the practice of fiscal prudence we may have to follow.

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