Afra Raymond was a speaker at the 2019 Annual Conference of the Human Resource Management Association of T&T (HRMATT) on Thursday 31st October 2019 at Hyatt Regency. His topic was “Whistleblower lessons – from Gene Miles to 21st Century Management Styles.”
Programe Length: 00:48: 39
Programe Date: 31 October 2019
AfraRaymond.net 
Do laws matter or is everything is everything?
Like Anansi, Dennis the Menace, Andy Capp and other TV, cartoons, Enron, 9-11 and the still recurring headline reports of scams, illicit deals and cheat codes that educate us from the cradle, we have made an enduring, boastful vocation of being Trickydadians. In every household, stories are told of honest deals going sour, because of our naive insistence on being sincere and transparent. Many call us stupid, soft and antiquated unless we relent, yet the abundance of successes we applaud and honour with National awards, are known to be fraudsters. Cornel West, in his University of Washington, Bothell lecture on 7th March 2014, says that 70% of US university graduates cheat. Here we know that from pre-school and sometimes through secondary school, parents do much of their children’s work and the children, who often know neither what was to be done nor what was done, graduate with honours. Many of my peers similarly crawl through certification in the same manner.
Conscious blind spots accompany insider trading alluded to flood relief policies here, but there are antecedents like J.J. Thomas’s 1889 rebuttal called Froudacity that masterfully rebukes an Oxford Historian’s West Indian history text. George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan, Plato’s Socratic discourses, Dickens’ and Derek Walcott’s satires all support our persistent participation in deception for personal gain. The infamous King Leopold of Belgium, Frederick Lugard of England and all those who still support the apartheid in the US, Africa and other nations certify the dominance of evil, greed and their attendant abuses, on weak, trusting nations and people. Whistle blowers like Gene Miles, have made public and private accusations against illicit acts and the whistle-blowers have become victims. Many valid indictments are reported in the daily newspapers, social media and on television. Many movies use fiction and more often documentaries expose criminal behaviour from genocide to petty theft, but our threatened survival demands that we focus on the immediate and personal. The mismanagement styles reduce business principles to one; Profit By Any Means.