Commentary

Almost all of us who grew up or lived in the Caribbean call their mother by many variations of ‘mother’ – including ‘mummy’, ‘mammy’, ‘ma’, ‘mooma’ and, when the chips are down, out, and needing replenishment, there is ‘mother dearest’. Fathers are...

Jamaica’s willingness to send police and soldiers to be part of a multinational force to help return public order and security to Haiti has the general support of this newspaper. But Jamaica must not merely be an appendage to another Great Power...

The police beating and subsequent killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 7 was shades of George Floyd, 2020. Except this time, it wasn’t a gang of white police officers thrashing an unarmed black man. All five officers involved...

Between Dr Nigel Clarke’s tactical release of information and leaks by other sources, Jamaicans are facing an olfactory assault from a swampy management culture at Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL) and a spectacular failure of regulation that...

Reading a book on travel in the Caribbean in 1903, it was evident that travel among the islands was not a pleasure. One needed Job’s patience and stamina. This is still very much the case in 2023. There is only limited maritime transportation in...

The Old Ball and Chain says I spend too much time on character updates when recounting my Apocryphan fables. “But what should I do for recent readers? They might not know the personality?” I calmly and rationally (gotta watch my tone, remember?)...

“O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts and men have lost their reason!” a quote by Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar, a play by William Shakespeare. It may be more appropriate for Jamaica to say that men have lost their reason, integrity, their...

“My dear, they terrified the children and the whole of us nearly to death with their long guns and battle gear,” a resident in the gated community where the SSL lady lived, told the audience at the supermarket. The ‘they’ were the police. “It was...

Prime Minister Andrew Holness last week warned clients of tottering Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL) – and any other financial entities that fall into trouble – not to look to his government for a bailout. “Were we to do that it would send a...

Give me a word starting with ‘F’ that you do very poorly. In response he said, “Spelling!” The follow-up question about something he excels at and his answer was either making factories or crockery. Background noises and idle chatter muffled his...

Incomprehensibly, as the dawning of 2023 has come and gone, Jamaica continues to lurch from year to year, clinging unsteadily to the apron strings of the erstwhile Mother Country following the transition from Elizabeth II to Charles III as head of...

There was a time when downtown Kingston, Jamaica’s capital, was in pristine condition. For a generation of Jamaicans, that picture may be impossible to visualise. However, there is a viral video making the social media circuit showing downtown in...