I am grateful to a friend for drawing my attention to China’s gift to the African Union (AU) of a new headquarters in Addis Ababa, completed in 2012. It was completely funded, furnished and equipped, and built by China, and the building – the...
PwC Jamaica’s disclosure that it has joined its global partners on an initiative to radically reduce its carbon footprint is a significant development, which, hopefully, will be an example for other firms, perhaps leading to a larger private-sector...
As far as I am concerned, the person most deserving of the leadership of the People’s National Party (PNP) is Dr Peter Phillips. With one important caveat. The timing is all wrong. For his sake, he should have won when he made the second challenge...
We find ourselves slapdash in the middle of another by-election campaign and the attendant ‘cruff-ism’ that comes with political activism in Jamaica. It is bad enough that this by-election came about as a result of the murder of a sitting member...
Last week Thursday, the day before International Women’s Day, a fellow columnist said, “ I had a five-year separation from my wife, and it nearly drove me over the edge”. From that sentence, his story was told, but the readers were not told how...
Bryan Sykes, the chief justice, has laid out a set of clear and, given the history of the Jamaican courts, clearly ambitious targets by which he intends to transform the island’s judicial system into being “the best in the Caribbean” within three...
The minister of Education, the Honourable Senator Ruel Reid, has, in recent times, expressed concerns about educators and board members who are active in politics and who are critical of him and policies of the education ministry in the public...
The February 1 announcement by United Sates’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the US would suspend its compliance with its obligations under the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) because of Russian violations brought echoes of a...
The 2019-20 Budget focuses on growth with equity by providing economic opportunity for all, protecting the vulnerable, and pursuing economic independence. There has been much attention on the elimination and reduction of several distortionary...
Justice Bryan Sykes risked his national broadcast Sunday night, to mark his first year as head of the judiciary, being dismissed as a bit of self-serving pomposity. As it turned out, the chief justice’s address was a significant step towards...
Damion Crawford appears to have stepped into a ‘pitty-me-lickle’ fire ants nest by bringing up the issue of race and class politics. However, what is wrong with healthy political debate? Wasn’t that the way it was in the 1960s to 1980s? Nowadays,...
Everybody knows I’m in love with Patria-Kaye. There are problems. She’s taken. I’m captured. Oh, and there’s the small matter of her being half my age and a schoolmate of the Old Ball and Chain’s eldest son SkullDougery (a.k.a. the Computer Whiz...
When rational people do glaringly irrational things, it’s because, usually, it makes sense to somebody. In that respect, the act is rational. Which is how we expect cynics will interpret the apparent inability of a large chunk of Jamaica’s...
I began the analysis of the 2019-2020 Budget for education last Tuesday at the Standing Finance Committee of the House of Representatives by assuring the minister that the purpose was to offer critical support to the ministry’s objectives. Even if...
As Christians reflect on the inner life before God, it would help to revisit our notion of sin. Beyond the traditional view of sin as a breach of God’s requirement, I urge a provocative and troubling view of sin from Christian philosopher Dallas...
Besides the swirling reports of Donald Trump’s controversial, possible former business dealings in Russia, the Trump campaign flatly refused to accept the United States intelligence belief that Russia was ultimately behind hackers targeting the...
Several years ago, I came across a study that changed my life. The results of the research prompted me to not only introspect, but to also observe more keenly the behaviour of those I interact with socially and professionally, especially the...
It will be a while yet before the jury determines whether Dr Nigel Clarke pulled the right levers. But if his J$14-billion tax giveback proves anything, it vindicates Jamaica’s hard economic slog of the last seven years, with its bipartisan...
After the untimely passing of Dr Winston Green, I had written a column suggesting that voters pray for their MPs to die. Now I wish to clarify. It’s not that I want to see anyone (else) in Gordon House kick the bucket, but because by-elections are...
On a day when Dominican poachers were caught sucking conch from under our noses, our minister of finance, Dr Nigel Clarke, has delivered a Budget which is unusual and promising. With an unprecedented loss of immediate revenue from April 1, 2019,...
The facts are bloodcurdling. The Partnership for Women’s Health and Well-being has issued a grave reminder that we simply cannot ignore. “The practice of unsafe abortions and the consequences of abortions performed by untrained, non-...
Last month was the third anniversary of the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) control of the reins of government. I believe it is important to grade the party’s performance now that it has gone beyond the halfway mark. I give it a ‘C’. Readers, and...
Americans will need a visa to enter Europe starting in 2021. In just a couple of years, Americans wishing to travel to Europe will have to apply for ETIAS (European Travel Information and Authorization System) in order to gain access to the...
An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory ideas or terms are combined. While one dictionary lists as examples the phrases “thunderous silence” and “sweet sorrow”, I recently, and quite by accident, discovered what Saddam...
A few years ago, when the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was launching our hemisphere’s largest microfinance conference for small and medium enterprises in Jamaica, we had a special item designed to infuse local culture in the proceedings....
