Published:Wednesday | December 18, 2019 | 12:00 AM
During a recent debate on Britain’s foreign policy, John Casson, who recently served as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Egypt and was previously foreign affairs private secretary to David Cameron, offered an anecdote of a conversation he had...
Published:Wednesday | December 18, 2019 | 12:00 AM
#TalkbackTuesday: The national security minister has announced that the Government will be cutting the majority of the funding provided to the Peace Management Initiative (PMI) and will instead be investing more in the rehabilitation of social...
The “huge surge” in the number of motorcycles on Jamaica’s roads in recent years, might, as Lucien Jones suggests, be a major contributor to a sharp rise in traffic fatalities. The hike, we believe, also points to policy weaknesses that require...
Civility is contagious, and a society that tries can produce men and women who, daily, unconsciously express HRC (honesty, respect, consideration). Being cultured is a mannerism that everyone at some time or another takes seriously. We may not...
So, the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) relented and registered the United Independents’ Congress (UIC) as a political party. In my October 22 column (‘Colour Prejudice?’), I took the ECJ to task for its unreasoned and seemingly...
Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ exhortation of African capital to look for investment opportunities in the Jamaican market is a timely, and positive, move about which this newspaper hopes he is serious, but as part of a wider process of political...
Sticks and stones may indeed break our bones; they were our first weapons. They were sometimes used to pummel people to death. Then they evolved into sharpened sticks and stones that were thrown or propelled from a sling. The ‘sticks’ morphed into...
Road fatalities in 2019 have exceeded 400 and the year has the usually perilous holiday season still to endure. We don’t hear much about the thousands who are injured, maimed, all becoming a burden to the State and their families, all forfeiting...
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programmes by their intentions rather than their results” – Milton Friedman Murders committed by organised crime groups continue to have a devastating impact on many Jamaicans as well as the...
When some ‘Jamaicans’ speak, I am embarrassed. Embarrassed, because it is clear that they have absolutely no regard for our heritage and hold our culture in very low esteem. We have grown so ashamed of our own ancestry and we try everything in our...
Many black women in Jamaica are under the spell of beauty contests. They keep wishing and hoping that someone who looks like them will be selected to wear the crown of Miss Jamaica. Our fraudulent national motto, ‘Out of many, one people’, appears...
My family was so poor, that when my rich uncle died, he owed money to the church mouse. Call it being Christian or idealistic, but there is a hidden logic in the admonition in I Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is the root of all evil”. Now,...
The international credit rating agency, Moody’s, last week upgraded Jamaica’s credit rating to the highest rating Moody’s has assigned Jamaica in 10 years. Standard...
We take at face value André Haughton’s claim that his statement that a reduction in the rate of the general consumption tax (GCT) would be bad for the fiscal accounts wasn’t intended to undercut his party leader, Peter Phillips, which amounts to an...
If we were to hazard a guess, Kingston, already among the world’s noisiest cities, is about to become a lot noisier – for the long term. And for Kingston, you might as well read Jamaica. This week, in the face of pressure from promoters of music...
There has been quite a bit of discussion, lots of lazy and uninformed arguments, and way too much banter over the last couple of weeks about the petition to make Jamaican (or Patois, as we like to call it) an official language. Unsurprisingly, the...
“The wife said we needed a new coffee maker. So I got one. Her name is Jill. The wife was not amused.” I found this post by my friend Michael to be amusing, especially since Jill was a scantily clad, well-endowed, buxom blonde wench. I did not...
We are being driven to conclude that the decision by the former government, consummated by the Andrew Holness administration, of removing product-compliance oversight from the Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ) and giving it to a new agency was...
It is safe to say that, in Jamaica, human rights seem to be synonymous with gay rights or are perceived as a euphemism for gay rights. The moment the words “human rights” are uttered in a conversation, it is seen as a gateway to the championing of...
Jamaica was once a fairly peaceful place, a place where many Jamaicans were proud to call home (some including myself still are). But over the last 20 years or so, our nation has become quite literally a battlefield and our streets are paved with...
Jamaica has long had two parallel education systems, differing in quality of content and producing graduates with different potentials for social and educational mobility. One track takes young people through government primary and secondary...
This week’s report by the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC) on Jamaica’s recently concluded standby arrangement with the International Monetary Fund reconfirmed what was already well known: that the Government had met, and, in several...
Last Monday, while I was hosting the mid-morning talk show on Nationwide Radio, ‘Cliff Hughes Online’, the well-known medical professional, Dr Jephthah Ford, called the programme. On his mind and lips was the subject of dengue and how best the...
There is little doubt that, with general election due by 2021, both major political parties are moving into election mode. Some people may hold out hope that their prayers for roads being fixed, getting running water, and perhaps electricity, may...
Last week, Ian Randle, publisher and historian, inquired of me concerning National Hero Sam Sharpe, as he prepared to narrate a documentary for a British television crew next month. The first thing I told him was to ensure he gets Sam Sharpe’s age...
