Taking a side, or even taking aside, is sometimes reasonable even in fights and furores. However, when you’re trying to take both sides at the same time, the combatants are very likely to throw you aside or worse, beat you left, right, front, and...
When Jamaica signs an internationally binding treaty, do we mean what we sign to? When we take an oath, do we mean it? The Jamaican government has announced its intention to sign the Samoa Agreement between the European Union (EU) and the...
More often than not, this newspaper agrees with Chief Justice Bryan Sykes’ observations on things to be done to enhance the quality of justice for all Jamaicans. He is usually on the right track. Which is why we look forward to a fuller and...
Imagine having to complete an obstacle course almost every time you have government business to transact. Why would a customer need to join the line outside the building, to then be allowed to join another line in the lobby of the building, in...
Lamenting the unwillingness of Jamaicans to sit on juries, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes highlighted the socially skewed complexion of those who agree to serve. In Montego Bay, at least, they are mostly the poor and working class. In other words,...
I RECENTLY had the sad occasion of attending a funeral for a loved one in deep rural Clarendon. It was my first ‘country funeral’, and although the departed was known to me, the vast majority of mourners were unfamiliar faces. At the customary ‘set...
GARBAGE COLLECTION In recent times, this service has evolved to become a weekly collection effort. In my community where the service had been almost non-existent for months, garbage trucks are now rolling through at least once per week. At first...
Hopefully, the United Nations climate conference, COP28, hasn’t been irreparably damaged and will still be able to reach agreements, based on credible science, to divert the earth from its spiralling towards becoming catastrophically hot. For this...
I ended my article last week on the Guyana/Venezuela border controversy by suggesting that climate change may well be dictating that the value of fossil fuels, particularly oil and gas, may be diminished in the future. I hope so. Scientists have...
This year, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah – also known as the festival of lights – has more significance than ever before. Beginning on Thursday, December 7 and running through December 15, the eight-day holiday commemorates the victory of the...
In recent times, the global workforce has been undergoing a transformative shift, prompting discussions about alternative work structures that prioritise employee well-being and work-life balance. One such proposition gaining traction is the four-...
Anyone in doubt elections are nigh need only monitor the current proliferation of asinine arguments based on putrid political propaganda. They remind me of many similar quarrels around Gene Autry’s domino table in the 1970s. Gene never participated...
Should anyone have forgotten, there have been plenty of recent reminders that Jamaica, in common with the rest of the Caribbean, resides in an earthquake neighbourhood. But the country, it seems, remains largely complacent about it. There has...
The Gleaner lead story on December 1, titled ‘Hill to die on’, reported that Cabinet Minister Aubyn Hill, at an event, ‘Pre Chanukah-celebration, in solidarity with Israel’, declared his wholehearted support for Israel in divisive Gaza conflict....
Chief Justice Bryan Sykes will have gained broad attention with his latest declaration of his intention to make digital/computer technology central to the operation of Jamaica’s courts. What Justice Sykes must now do is reduce his ideas to...
A mirror was held up to our nation and we have been found wanting. The image projected over the past few weeks – fights in schools, murder of women and children, and more claims of corruption in high places – is one of a nation bent on self-harm...
“Is a nex set of terrorist dem a create.” That was the assessment of the big woman downtown as she recounted to this newspaper last weekend how a man in her community was slaughtered by the police. I make absolutely no judgment about that event....
I met Alao Luqman at the Grosvenor Gallery soon after he arrived in Jamaica in 2017. Enith Williams, a social and economic activist, introduced him to me. She’s the founder/executive director of the Reparations Finance Lab. Alao came as a...
With the creation of the new ministry with a long name, it does appear that it is focusing on the antecedents which lead to the production of criminal elements and violent behaviour in the society. With great pride I watched my colleague,...
The improvement of artificial intelligent (AI) programmes and applications has opened up an entire world of fantasy. Now, anyone can create their own ‘reality’ and no one can be the wiser for it. The obvious danger inherent in those artificial...
This month makes seven years that Audley Gordon has been the executive director of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), the agency that runs Jamaica’s landfills and regulates the collection of garbage in the island. That’s a long...
Jamaicans cannot be sidetracked from journeying toward full decolonisation even with comforting reassurance from the Privy Council president, Lord Reed, that he and his brethren are honoured to serve us, coupled with an intransigent Jamaica Labour...
The banker-customer relationship in Jamaica appears broken in many parts, judging from the mounting complaints in media made by dissatisfied customers. Customers’ experiences are instructive whether they relate to in-branch service or online...
The climate-change meeting in Dubai – COP28 – is enveloped in hype, yet expectations of transformational change are misplaced. Industrialised countries, major greenhouse gas emitters, along with developing oil and gas producers like India and Saudi...
When I was in my 40s, my friends and I used to joke that “three score and ten” had to be our success with women and the number we had dallied with. In our language, they were “scores” and we had indulged with scores of them. We really did not look...
