Inflammatory Insults, Intransigent Inner-cities, Inadvertent Inclusions and Indecent Inducements

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It's been a while since we did one of these weekly wrap-ups, hasn’t it? Well, thankfully, a lot has happened this week, so here goes:

On Monday morning, we had a conversation about the caustic remarks and insults flying about in all directions these days. It happens everywhere. People calling people liars and likening them to dim school kids, others calling people prostitutes and worse… and it's not just celebs and political commentators either. Just go and read the conversation threads under any old facebook comments and you will see people call each other names and cussing their mothers, all in a bid to make a point.

In a bid to understand this disturbing phenomenon, we spoke to Presidential Staffer, Sam George, who has slung his fair share of mud in recent times. Now, he actually expressed some regret for his famous jibe at Ivor Greenstreet's disability, and condemned those who sought to justify their insults by referring to the dynamism of language, but then he also seemed, in the same breath, to be justifying his own insults. I don't know about you, but I just got confused by the whole business.

Later in the Week, Former President Rawlings also added his voice to the conversation when he condemned those who were insulting Yvonne Nelson and colleagues for staging the #DumsorMustStop vigil. As for me, I just think we can all make our points without insults. If you have a view, by all means express it, but if you're right, does that make those who have other views stupid?

On Tuesday, We went urban, seeking to understand why our poorly planned cities were continuing to overspill their bounds, with settlements and markets springing up in unauthorised places, and the authorities appearing incapable of bringing any sanity to the chaos. We also examined our own roles in the proliferation of these illegal roadside markets - after all, they're only there because we patronise them, aren't they? We threw in the street naming exercise, which was supposed to help restore order, and tried to understand whether or not it had.

Wednesday was when we learnt about the NDC's inauguration of a number of committees to help them achieve "One Touch Victory" in 2016. Only, they seemed to have "accidentally" included Togbe Afede Agbogbomefia XIV in their Economic Committee. Yeah. They included him in error. I have racked my brains to understand how this error happened. Does his name rhyme with that of some other NDC Economic guru? Is there a Schmogbe Schmafede Schmagbogbomefia somewhere in the party who is currently missing a committee nomination letter? In any case, we heard later from the Party's National Organiser that to many, there is no issue with a traditional ruler being a member of a party committee, since that is not considered "active politics". What do you think?

Yesterday, we talked about the Code of Conduct Bill making its way through Parliament as we speak. There were a couple of aspects of the bill in its current state that the nation's legislators could not quite agree on. The first had to do with the language of a clause dealing with acquisition of property after declaration of assets, which some MPs saw as a violation of the constitutional presumption of innocence. The second one had to do with the minimum value of gifts Public Officers would be required to declare. The threshold was set at GHC1000 in the new bill, and Honourable Alban Bagbin proposed an increase to 10,000. Many of our listeners thought that would just help institutionalise corruption.

We also heard from Hon. Muntaka Mohammed, who clarified that this reference to gifts was to do with Declaration of Assets, and not the separate clause that dealt specifically with receipt of gifts in the line of duty. My question is, does it actually make a difference? Should an MP be able to receive gifts worth more than their salaries from any source, for any reason, without declaring them? The debate is clearly not over.

Today is World Family Day. We connect this to the recent results of the OECD report which placed Ghanaian schools last in Science and Maths out of 76 countries, and ask the simple question: are parents and families playing their role in ensuring excellence in our children's basic education?

My name is Kojo Yankson, and it's been a week of Inflammatory Insults, Intransigent Inner-cities, Inadvertent Inclusions and Indecent Inducements.

GOOD MORNING, GHANAFO!

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