Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
You don’t know me; I know you, I know what’s being said about you. I’m the ‘whisperer’.
I am socially mobile: Arab, Brit, Indian, Pakistani, American and the rest, they all invite me and share their world with me. Not much gets past me but if you think it may have done, email me on . . .
Taxing times
I had an email the other day mentioning the added contributions through Gosi that are being levied in order to support the poor and needy.
The correspondent was rather miffed that they were paying this ‘extra tax’, as they put it. It made me think back, however, to a chat I’d had over the dinner table not long ago with a senior banker from the Gulf who was certain of two things: firstly, that Kuwait would un-hook their currency from the dollar and secondly, that Bahrain would soon introduce taxation.
The first has happened already... how long until we have income tax of 15 per cent (he predicted) or VAT on selected items?
Reading palms?
Apparently, a new department is being set up to check whether Bahrain is still the ‘land of a million palm trees’.
It seems that the good old symbols of Dilmun are in decline – the checkers have been issued with those little clickers they use on aeroplanes to count passengers – must be a big clicker if they hope to get up close to a million ... but I wonder how many there really are? Does anyone know?
Where’s Hamad?
One of the images of charismatic Bahraini Khalifa Shaheen in his role as a leader of a gang of smugglers was wrongly captioned Hamad in last week’s GulfWeekly.
Hamad was, of course, played by 14-year-old Khalid Abdullah Marsad Al Kubaisi.
He was selected from a group of 500 local schoolboys for the lead role in Disney’s Hamad and the Pirates back in 1969. Whatever happened to Khalid? The Whisperer would love to know.
Taking flight
Power boaters are up in arms about plans to eradicate bird island, it seems. There is pressure from environmentalists to dredge away the little sand pancake beloved of weekend revellers.
It seems that there is so much accumulated rubbish that it’s beyond saving – little lives there and it is proving hazardous to the health of dugongs and turtles.
Hot air
Questions are being asked in high places as to why DJ Krazy Kev was allowed a holiday during term time.
One mother, who complained to Radio Bahrain, said she was forced to play CDs in her car to keep the children entertained in recent weeks.
“At least when he’s (Kev) on the air I don’t have trouble in the mornings with the kids screaming because they’re too busy texting him requests or answering his silly quizzes,” she said.
