When I was growing up, ‘accra’, for me, was a fried delicacy made of flour, seasonings including pepper, and small pieces of salt fish. It was a case of nearer my cod to thee. In Barbados, it is a beach and a hotel. The difference between a...
Jamaica is hopefully closing the chapter on the periodic contentions over students being thrown out of school for how they are groomed, which mostly has to do with their hair. And usually it is because the hair is locked or worn in some other...
Just two years ago, Sha’Carri Richardson was ‘Sha Can’t Run’ and ‘Sha Come Last’ and all the other uncomplimentary descriptors Jamaicans could find. She had just clocked in ‘dead last’ in her first race after having missed the Tokyo Olympics due to...
On September 1, 1957 – 66 years ago today – hundreds of parishioners of St Anne’s Roman Catholic Church in Kingston boarded a train at the Kingston Railway Station for an all-day excursion to Montego Bay. Their pastor – Fr Charles Eberle SJ – had...
Given the UK’s new policy that banks cannot charge their customers for withdrawing or depositing personal cash, it would be timely for the Holness administration to provide Jamaicans with a status report on the promised initiative by the...
‘TRILLIONS FOR REPARATIONS’ was the June 9 front page Jamaica Gleaner headline. Oh, boy! For months I have avoided commenting on the reparations debate because I think it highlights the problems when pragmatism gives way to intellectual...
WHEN I enrolled as an undergraduate history major at The UWI, way back in the days of post and telegram (the service, not the app), it was supposed to be a first step towards a career in law. The law faculty gatekeepers at the time didn’t think my...
It is likely to be very surprising to most Caribbean citizens that the issue of reparations for slavery is not formally on the agenda of the Commonwealth. Which, on the face of it, is a major failure of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and its...
In a world where the demands of the modern workforce can often lead to burnout, a growing trend is emerging among the younger generation in Jamaica – a trend that challenges traditional notions of work and life. Recent discussions around the globe...
The 15th BRICS Summit ended on Thursday, August 24, following the adoption of their outcome document, the Johannesburg II Declaration. Making headlines globally was their decision to expand the membership from January 1, 2024, by six countries,...
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is slated to make a decision soon on the deployment of foreign armed forces to fight gangs and their enablers in Haiti. It is expected that the secretary general of that quixotic organisation is likely to...
Jamaica knows more than a thing or two about the potential rewards, and the clear risks, of attempting, as Ludovic Subran, the chief economist at the global insurer Allianz SE, unfortunately, frames it, to erect “iron curtains” around strategic...
We’ve entered a new era of banking where the Banking Dictionary defines “Customer Service” as an oxymoron. Customer is always wrong; bank’s convenience takes priority; and customer inconvenience is shrugged off as collateral damage. The Old Ball...
Last week we buried Lorraine. She was only 47, racked with cancer. Her pet name was ‘Tuffy’. Her name fitted her nature. It had to. Hers is the story of the lived experience of Jamaicans. Tough – but noble. She was the consummate hustler,...
Leighton Johnson’s ambition of returning teaching to a profession that attracts Jamaica’s best and brightest deserves full embrace. But as the new president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) will appreciate, fulfilling that aspiration...
It has long been held that islands will be the first and most seriously impacted by the intensification of climate change, or more broadly natural hazards arising from our increasingly reckless interaction with nature. One of the most nefarious...
Last Tuesday, I discovered that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is way ahead of government agencies in Jamaica. The Jamaican language is one of the options that can be used to submit an application to the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS)...
Like the governor of the Bank of Jamaica, Richard Byles, one must take responsibility for the comments one made earlier. Of course, when it looks as if there is dissonance between what one said in the first and second instances, then, one is either...
Labour productivity is defined as output per worker or per hour worked. Several factors impact labour productivity, including workers’ skills, technological change, managerial practices, and changes in other inputs such as capital. Labour...
With a growing and rapidly ageing population comes the need for medical care. The most available ‘ambulances’ are family members, friends, neighbours, taxicabs, and the police. Our [public] ambulance service is abysmal and basically, unavailable...
It is lazy, as too much of the early analysis has done, to frame the expansion of the BRICS group as an emerging East-West contest in which the new entrants are essentially lining up behind China and Russia and twisting the tails of the United...
It mightn’t have been the kind of event that attracted major public interest in Jamaica, but this week’s landing by India of a lunar module on the south pole of the Moon is a kind of development to which we should pay attention and is another...
The saying, coined by the Latin poet, Horace, that “you too are in danger when your neighbour’s house is on fire” is particularly relevant now in relation to Latin American countries which are the closest neighbours to the member states of the...
It is said that age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. If you mind, you mutter like the comedian George Burns who said, “Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.” Like him, I look to the future...
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”. This pithy adage is attributed to the American author Mark Twain, who himself attributed it to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. When fresh out of sixth form I went to The...
