The ink hadn’t dried on last Tuesday’s column before this facety query arrived from a Gleaner editor: “Teacher, how you preaching English and yuh misspell ‘practice’ as a verb?” This is the same Nosey Parker editor with whom I once had a...
It is not this newspaper’s intention to rob Prime Minister Andrew Holness of any glory from his appointment to Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, which was announced last week by the governor general, Sir Patrick Allen, and rebroadcast by...
I worked at one of the top architectural firms in Kingston in my 20s, and I had the pleasure of meeting the company’s office attendant/auxiliary staff. Her name was Phyllis. She was a middle-age woman with three kids, living in the inner city and...
Domestic work has traditionally been characterised by informality – poor working conditions, long hours, low wages, forced labour, and little or no social protection. In other words, domestic workers, such as cleaners, cooks and gardeners, are...
Dr Christopher Tufton, Jamaica’s minister of health and wellness, wrote an excellent article titled ‘Clarifying issues on front-of-package labels’ ( The Sunday Gleaner, In Focus, Sunday, July 4). He cited the crisis and dangers of the lifestyle-...
That was her evaluation of the member of parliament’s (MP) performance. “Look how the constituency stay bad!” “Boss, like how me support you, jus’ set me up nuh,” another pleaded. Those who have served long will not find such assessments...
Haiti is a country that allows us to feel better about ourselves. The former crown jewel of the French colonies, now failed state, allows us to say that if we don’t fix our problems, we are going to end up worse than them. The poorest country in...
Having had three years to observe its operation, it would be prudent for Parliament to review, and amend, the legislation upon which the Integrity Commission (IC) rests, including making those changes the IC has flagged as important to improving...
In 2015, The University of London’s Goldsmiths College launched an innovative research project: Sound System Outernational (SSO). The college’s website describes SSO as “an ongoing initiative of practitioners and researchers ... dedicated to...
Map tande anpil bato avec kontite moun aytien. That’s Kreyol for “I am waiting for the boatloads of Haitians”. It is a familiar image, Jamaicans on the beach or in our waters looking out for our brothers and sisters from just under 500 kilometres...
Watchful observers look with appropriate distress at the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and wonder where Haiti goes from here. The collective view – if it can be called that – is that the killing is an expected outcome of incomprehensible...
Jamaica has set a target to cut carbon emissions by 25 per cent by 2030. It is also committed to securing about half of its energy requirements from renewable sources by 2030, all of this with the full recognition that countries must manage their...
The coronavirus made no promise on how it would behave, as, over a year since its arrival on our shores, it continues the game of sickness and death. The response via policies under the Disaster Risk Management Act (DRMA) and a variety of protocols...
If, in these COVID days, your country is in lockdown mode and a State of Emergency with police roadblocks everywhere, yet, despite all this, citizens are shot to death by men in cars, who would you believe are the perpetrators and who will you hold...
I have been to Haiti several times, once by boat directly from Jamaica. It’s not that far away; the distance from Dame Marie in southwest Haiti to Port Antonio is only 218 km (135 miles); by comparison, Jamaica is 235 km (146 miles) long. It is...
It pains me to repeat this premise, supported by historic precedents, that in countries lacking democratic ideals and practices, where there are no viable democratic institutions, where autocratic leaders govern with impunity, it is only a matter...
Its recent disarray over foreign policy will make sceptics of many people that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) can play “a lead role” in helping Haiti back to stability in the wake of this week’s assassination of the country’s president, Jovenel...
AT THE recently held G7 Summit in the United Kingdom, global finance leaders agreed to endorse a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15 per cent, resulting in a wave of concern about the likely impact of this historic decision, particularly on...
JAMAICAN GOVERNMENTS are notorious for declaring important policies and enacting crucial legislation which work for a while, before they drift into a state of suspended animation. In other words, there is a deficit in follow-through and...
IT HAS been my long-standing belief that this nation ought to take up the mantle inherited from our leaders in the 1950s and 1960s and make Jamaica a republic. Unfortunately, while many of our leaders over the years have talked the talk, very few...
Jamaica and the United States have not only concluded the revision of the operating protocols of their Shiprider Agreement, but the amended pact has been in operation since June 16, the foreign minister, Kamina Johnson Smith, reported to the Senate...
People in the Caribbean face some of the highest levels of violence in the world. Of the 22 Latin American and Caribbean countries surveyed in 2020 by the independent think tank Insight crime, three Caribbean countries ranked in the top six with...
The CARICOM Committee of Ambassadors, that is, ambassadors of members accredited to the community, has been considering how to increase the visibility and understanding of CARICOM among its people. They are launching an ‘I am CARICOM’ publicity...
In an energetic and emotive defence last week of his Government’s use of states of public emergency (SOE) as a crime-fighting tool, Prime Minister Andrew Holness insisted that they worked not because of any mass detention of citizens or any abuse...
I first met Gene Autry 60 years ago at Musgrave Prep, that iconic educational establishment on Marescaux Road. We were less than ten years old. He had no brother (did end up with a much younger brother several years later) and mine was five years...
