When otherwise intelligent people engage in seemingly irrational behaviour, it is usually because that action makes sense to someone. That is why the Government is obligated to explain why, after more than three years, it is yet to fully resolve...
The first task of historians is to “tell it like it is”. This present generation of Jamaicans needs to know the facts – with the gory details – of our past as a nation, for positive or negative, that is our heritage. The men and women who populate...
The Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB) seemingly has a penchant for frustrating potential and existing borrowers who depend on the agency for loans to obtain a degree at one of several tertiary institutions across the country. There is an urgent need for...
Corruption and COVID. Two words that, aside from the fact that they both start with the letter C, couldn’t be any further apart in terms of the reaction they elicit from Jamaicans. One immediately generates anxiety, fear, frustration and a longing...
A dilemma is a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives, especially ones that are equally undesirable (Oxford Dictionary). Employers are mandated to maintain a safe and healthy work environment in order...
Growing up in the 1980s, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother in the then informal community of Stand Pipe in Kingston 6. My grandmother lived in a big yard, the same one that my mother grew up in. As a little boy, I would walk from Old Hope...
Until last week, questions about the fortunes and policy direction of Petrojam had receded into the background. The Zacca report on the future of the Government’s oil refinery continued to wander in policy purgatory. But now that the faux pasby...
We are in a very busy period of regional and international meetings, all focusing on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic with the aim of recovery and building back better to fulfil the objective of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (...
The directors of the Government’s Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo) (or is it the tourism minister, Ed Bartlett) will probably get credit for the speed with which they reversed their appointment of Lionel Myrie as the agency’s interim CEO...
Gene Autry and I won the first three games against Dessie and The Dunce, bringing forth my usual taunt, “Half-Way-Tree! Next stop Telephone Company.” That was then. Names change, but Carlton Crescent is still a landmark. Regular kibitzer, ‘...
Excerpts from UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks at the Opening Ceremony of UNCTAD 15 in Bridgetown, Barbados, on Monday, October 4, 2021. A gathering like this comes only once every four years. UNCTAD 15 is the Olympics of trade,...
The development of vaccines has been a game changer in the management of COVID-19. The vaccines may not necessarily prevent infection, but they do reduce the risk of severe illness, need for hospitalisation and oxygen, and death. According to the...
There is an inescapable parallel between the setting of Revelation chapters 4 and 5, in which the seals are opened, and the judgement scene of Daniel chapter 7. We'll consider some of the parallel elements and the implications for the present...
On Monday, September 27, after reading two quite different reports, one of the realities about Jamaica struck me yet again: until more of us stand up for justice and reduce levels of inequity, the sense of unfairness is going to grow into...
The spirit of pride in our independence and maturity should lead us all to try to identify areas for constructive change in our personal behaviour patterns and in the social life of the Jamaican nation. But are we even trying? Last week, two of the...
There was a time that, whenever the Government told us to get vaccinated, everybody got vaccinated; although, as with all vaccines, there was always the extremely remote possibility that there could be an adverse reaction. Getting vaccinated is for...
Having followed this newspaper’s recommendation of using Concord Resources’ acquisition of DADA Holding’s 49 per cent of Noranda Bauxite as a platform for reinstating the bauxite production levy to that company’s mining and sale of the mineral, the...
Count 160 dead in 365 days. More than any other 12-month period in Jamaica’s history. Many Jamaicans may already know that the National Road Safety Council (NRSC) has failed to reduce fatalities for at least the last seven years. Road fatalities...
The Friday family was very well known in our village and their only daughter, beloved by all, was deemed a ‘Good’ girl by everyone who knew or met her. One Monday morning, as we pushed and shoved, fighting to get into an already full and very...
Over the year and a half of the pandemic, I’ve kept on wondering who is the target audience for the press conferences hosted by the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW). It couldn’t possibly be members of the public who are not fully competent in...
It might be a stunt thing but I have to agree with Bunting. To get to the crime, we cut out the slime and surely, we’ll find something. At St George’s, I had a Chinese friend whose jokes were as corny as the bread we gulped wrapped around piping...
It has been three years since the Road Traffic Act, promising a rigorous approach to punishing traffic breaches, was passed in the Parliament. As the act made its way through the various stages, it was seen as the remedy for road recklessness and...
Bruce Golding, the former prime minister, is right that the Americans sometimes wield their entry visas as a political cudgel. We agree, too, that they should tell Jamaica why they rescinded Daryl Vaz’s, only to damn the return of his travel...
It is arguably true that all humans spend their lives seeking truth. “And what is truth?” Pontius Pilate asked. Truth means an indisputable fact, being in accord with reality. As I stand on the sidelines and watch pro-vaxxers and anti-vaxxers...
From my layman perspective, Jamaican law seems pretty robust. We have laws to govern what seems like … everything. Yet, the great sense of law and order that we would expect to see is missing from society. I get the feeling that a big part of the...
