Four days after the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Heads of Government reaffirmed the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar of Trinidad and Tobago startled the region with a public statement that CARICOM should “get...
“I am going to bite dem young ladies pardner/ Like a hotdog or ah hamburger/ And if yuh know yuh thin doh be in a fright/ Is only big fat women ah going to bite. “ When I was three years old, I loved calypso so much that I listened on the radio...
John Bercow, who served for a decade (2009-2019) as Speaker of the British parliament, became an iconic figure globally for his unique style for calling for “OOorrrrdeeerr” in the Commons and his quick-witted repartee against recalcitrant members...
Why are so many residents of flood-prone communities so insistent that they will not leave their homes, even in the face of hurricanes and other life-threatening natural disasters? Despite providing the resources that are needed to help citizens...
Last Saturday will probably go down as the largest day of peaceful protest in the 250-year history of the United States of America (USA). Organisers said nearly seven million people – much more than twice the population of Jamaica – turned out at...
AN INTERESTING report came out last week from the Institute of Family Studies in the USA, a right-wing organisation that seems to favour conservative causes such as anti-abortion and anti-gay rights. I add this important fact to give a bit of...
THE GOVERNMENT’S reaching for advice on how Jamaica can make tourism deliver more to the wider society is an obviously positive development. But while The Gleaner welcomes the move, we hope that the proposed study won’t be conducted in a silo, or...
STUDENTS LEARN as much from what’s implied as from what’s explicitly taught. In many teacher preparation programmes, the concept of the formal and informal curriculum is introduced to emphasise that students learn both through direct instruction...
BUT FOR the fact that he shadows the portfolio for the Opposition, Damion Crawford could be forgiven for being seemingly unaware that the Orlando Patterson report on education transformation was actually tabled in Parliament. Few people in the last...
IN THIS column on August 27, concern was raised about the US military build-up in the Caribbean Sea. The US, we have been told, has declared war on cartels supplying drugs, as it had declared war on foreign terrorists in 2001. In the illegal...
HUNDREDS OF children are punished for neurological differences their schools cannot name. In truth, they are dysregulated, unassessed, and abandoned by a system decades behind the science. That scene is no metaphor; it is daily reality in countless...
The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the global cement manufacturer, Cemex, are obliged to say why the company reported a more than US$200,000 payment to the ruling party then expunged the expenditure in an amended filing to the US Securities...
Two weeks ago, a report from the Integrity Commission (IC) regarding its three-year probe into allegations of procurement irregularities and conflicts of interest regarding the awarding of contracts by the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHW) to...
It’s been a while but current media talk about fertility rates stomped on The Old Ball and Chain’s last nerve. So she’s fulminating again. She was listening to a talk shop on morning radio featuring regular radio chatterboxes. They and the host...
It is not clear what the Trinidad and Tobago government intended to signal by reserving its position on America’s naval build-up in the southern Caribbean Sea and Washington’s implicit threat of direct military action against Venezuela. However,...
Last week, an editorial in this paper prescribed how Jamaica could resurrect the prospect of five per cent annual GDP growth. Helpful fiscal measures and issues of social reform were put forward. This is an appropriate effort in the circumstance of...
The former Ministry of Legal and Constitutional Affairs promoted a video which depicted a decorated vehicle proceeding at good speed on a beautiful and smooth highway towards the republican terminal. This image is unrealistic and misleading. The...
The question is no longer about the policy priorities for escaping Jamaica’s low-growth trap – from lowering energy costs, to establishing development corridors and transformational action in education training. The problem is how to get them...
In 1945, following World War II, almost all then-existing states – numbering about 50 – agreed to the terms of the United Nations Charter, a major treaty that remains in force today for all 193 member states of the United Nations. In large part,...
“Your future is connected to the West end.” This is the one thing on which my apocryphal high school principal and I agreed. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, to the Greater Glory of God. The West End is the poor and less powerful; people on the margins,...
I have a lot of respect for and trust in our judicial system and for the judiciary. It, therefore, pains me to express a discordant view on the recent sentencing of 57-year-old Andrew Clarke. Andrew Clarke faked being a duly registered medical...
In an increasingly transactional, materialistic, and individualistic world, the distinction between award and reward has become blurred. Service has been replaced by “what is in it for me” and civil duty by a “payment first mentality” even good...
Now that Sir Patrick Allen is ready to proceed with the instruments of appointment for two critical jobs at the Integrity Commission (IC), the agency can, on its face, proceed with the important work that it was established to do. But, frankly,...
The world has long spoken of a “rules-based order” as though the law itself held dominion over power. Yet, behind the diplomatic courtesies and the fine print of charters, it was power that wrote the rules and altered them at will. The difference...
There was a young woman called Starkie. Who had an affair with a darky. The result of her sins. Was quadruplets, not twins One black and one white and two khaki. Earlier this year, I...
