ABBA is a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1972 by four young people with musical talent and the willingness to try.
ABBA's name is derived from the first letter of each of the first names of its members.
They became one of the most commercially successful acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1974-1982.
ABBA is one of the most successful groups ever to have taken part in the Eurovision Song Contest. The group is estimated to have sold over 500 million records, making it one of the best-selling groups of all time and contributing to the stability of the Swedish economy for a decade.
Having listened to the Calypso Monarch finals this year, it seems obvious to me that the musical talent in this country, if encouraged by expert marketing, could outrank energy income over the decade to come.
As we go through the predicted recessions and economic depressions ahead, given the continuing uncertainty of the Dragon Field ever coming to pass, perhaps if we realise the talent and creative energy of TT's people, and implement Machel Montano's advice to put Carnival studies on all school curricula, from primary school up, rewarding associated entrepreneurial talent, "We can make it if we try."
As the Marquis of Salisbury said, "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by life as that you should never trust experts" who have seen Carnival as mere entertainment. It is not. It is potentially one of the major building blocks of an economy and an entire and unique culture.
In this time of uncertainty, people are increasingly turning to their employers and business leaders as a source of truth, rather than their institutions and government officials, according to a new global survey by Harvard Business School's Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society and the Edelman Trust Institute.
It is a phenomenon that aeons ago arose from the growth of standards developed by the wisdom of proliferating faiths in human abilities. Supported by the more admirable tenets of beneficial socialism, it began as an astonishing concatenation of spiritual and cultural explosions that took place in a short evolutionary time - a few thousand out of several hundred thousand years of history.
As the astrologists and psychic historians are telling us, we are moving into a totally new period in human evolution, which exhibits temporal, spiritual, intellectual, existential and historical changes, resulting in "shifts in human consciousness."
Leaders of change are once more emerging in all spheres, including culture and commerce. Change will continue to expand over the next decade. Watch out for it!
Recently, some managers were criticised for dabbling in metaphysics, or a very small part of it, facing public and private ridicule for so doing, which is not surprising.
They are not unique: a couple of decades ago, one expensive training consultant gave business executives in TT plastic 'mood rings' as part of their sensitivity-training workshops.
The plastic changed colo
