Masks have gained new respect for the role they play, specifically in infection prevention and control. They are now being credited with saving lives and even creeping into fashion. But what exactly is a mask? The meaning of mask (noun) is; (1) “a...
IF THE Government is committed, as it declares itself to be, to the efficient use of taxpayers’ money, it must insist on an urgent determination of whether HEART Trust/ National Training Agency has gone the way of big, shiny bureaucracies with...
Jamaica’s yawning digital divide, running along traditional economic fault lines, is being starkly highlighted in schools as the island restarts a stalled education system with online classes. There are growing fears of poor children in...
COVID-19 has attacked President Donald Trump and 33 other Trump White House staffers; and an amazingly large BLACK fly lands on Vice- President Mike Pence’s head just as he is denying that systematic racism exists in America! Uneasy lies the proud...
Last week, I wrote about regional trade in services which is dominated by tourism. Since then, two things have happened which influenced my decision to remain with the subject of trade-in-services this week – one was children returning to school...
There is no need for reminders about the prevalence of criminal violence in Jamaica. They are there anyway. On Sunday, for instance, this newspaper reported that in the seven months since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in early March, more...
Just over 200 days ago COVID-19 reached the shores of Jamaica. Our health authorities acted with alacrity to contain the spread, keep the population informed, and prepare the country, both physically and mentally, for the challenges which the...
Just like you, all of us are tired of COVID-19, and that is just the plain truth. As a result, we switch the television channel or radio station if there is any talk about COVID-19; we avoid the news like a plague; we quickly scroll past any social...
As I write this, I am grieving. Three days ago, I lost a colleague and friend to COVID-19. I had worked with Dr Lenworth Jackson for the past 15 years at the medical centre he operated. We worked in adjacent rooms and shared many patients and...
This is our little island, the place that we call home, but people strayed from discipline, and crime began to roam. It soon became the norm, to ignore all traffic signs, To drive wherever anyone pleased, ignoring all the lines. The mentality of...
I want to tell you about a primary school which has a long history and is connected nominally to a major religious denomination. Its story is replicated elsewhere throughout the country and explains, in part, why the crime rate is so stubborn that...
Dr Nigel Clarke’s little nod last week to Maynard Keynes was wholly appropriate. However, the finance minister must now offer a fuller analysis of his expectations from the additional J$6 billion of capital expenditure, coming halfway through the...
It turns out that I had the opportunity to test, at first hand, the experience of entering Jamaica in this new COVID-19 environment. Mostly what I have to report is positive. Back in late January when the virus wasn’t any longer a minor news item...
As we speak, there is a 100,000-plus petition for a 21-year-old Jamaica-born man, residing in the United Kingdom since he was four years old, to not be deported to the country that he doesn’t know. Osime Brown was convicted under one of those ‘...
Last Monday, the online literary magazine, Brittle Papers, published an intriguing essay, ‘Decolonizing the English Department’,written by two distinguished scholars at Cornell University. Professors Carole Boyce Davies and Mukoma Wa Thiong’o...
It might have happened earlier, as much as five months ago, when this newspaper first raised the likelihood of the coronavirus’ impact not only on the physical well-being, but also the mental health of Jamaicans. Nonetheless, the project...
Once again Senator Kamala Harris made history. Last Wednesday night, she became the first black woman, the first Asian-American woman and the first Jamaican-American woman to take the debate stage for the vice-presidency of the United States of...
On the heels of a big majority win (49-14) in the House of Representatives in last month’s general election, the decision by Prime Minister (PM) Andrew Holness to end the tradition of opposition chairmanship of parliamentary committees (PCs),...
Even though the eyes of the world are firmly fixed on the COVID-19 pandemic, those who are wise must continue to prepare for that other looming crisis – climate change. We have had the sternest of warnings from the climate-science experts – if we...
Ronald Reagan, actor and United States President, spent his early life living above a variety store in the Illinois town of Tampico, so when he made it to the White House and heard the hundreds of noisy tourists downstairs, he said to his wife...
There was a time when the prevailing opinion was that businesses cared only about generating revenue and not enough about the people they served or the environments in which they operated. Intentional or not, it created the narrative that...
The opening of the school year with virtual rather than face-to-face classes has run into easily predictable problems. I foresaw these stumbling blocks six months ago, and included them in my column published in this newspaper on April 17, 2020. I...
With time on my hand, I may just produce a compendium of COVID-19 language. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, where there is overwhelming confusion, anxiety and fear, we look forward to hearing in simpler terms, words that we can understand...
Taxpayers will be glad that the Government’s Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), as is claimed by Minister Robert Montague, has begun implementing the recommendations of an audit that unearthed mismanagement on a scale bordering recklessness, or...
WHEN PRIME Minister Andrew Holness spoke at the opening of Parliament after last month’s election, he reminded us of an agreement, signed in early August, with the Opposition, the private sector and civil society organisations on priority actions...
