THIS CAN’T BE TRUE

The Light Side?
People worldwide love to make fun of their politicians.

Trinis are no different and Patrick Manning is far from immune from being the subject of such comedy.

Here is once such instance that has made the grapevine recently. Admittedly it looks like an adaptation of a George Bush joke.

‘A farmer named Beharry was overseeing his herd in a big field not too far from Valencia stretch when suddenly a brand-new black Prado advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust. In the back seat, a man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Serengetti sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the farmer, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?"

Beharry looks at the man, who obviously feels he is a hotshot Big Boy, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Yeah, why not?"

The Big Boy instructs his driver to park the PCL Prado, his assistant whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Blackberry cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The assistant then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany ... Within seconds, he receives an email on his PDA that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry Storm and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, hands it to the Big Boy who turns to Beharry and says, "You have exactly 586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, Ah guess you could take one of my calves, then" says Beharry with a bemused smile.

He watches the Big Boy in his suit select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as his driver and assistant stuff it into the back of the PCL Prado.

Then Beharry says to the Big Boy, "Aye! If I tell you exactly what your job is, will you give me back my calf?"

The Big Boy thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're the Prime Minister, right?" says Beharry.

"Wow! That's correct," says the Big Boy, "How did you guess that? You have seen me on television, haven’t you?"

"Nah! Ah didn’t have to guess." answered Beharry. "Look, yuh show up here even dough nobody call yuh; yuh want to get paid for an answer Ah know already, to a question Ah never ask yuh. Yuh use millions of dollars of equipment dat yuh pay for wid taxpayer money ,trying to show meh how much smarter dan me yuh is; and you ain’t know a ting bout how hard working people make a living - or bout cows, for dat matter.”

“In de fust place, dah is a herd of sheep!”

“Now, geh me back meh dog.”