It would be laughable were it not so serious. That's the only conclusion one could make after inmates of the Fort Augusta Adult Correctional Centre, now housed at South Camp, took to Facebook Live on Sunday night to broadcast allegations of human-...
For many years across administrations, there has been an expressed desire for the dream of a universal pension scheme for workers in the tourism sector to become a reality. The need for it is inarguable.Figures in 2013 showed that in the...
Something that seems an everyday occurrence at Victoria Jubilee Hospital scares the bejesus out of me. I don't think a mummy who wants to pee should have to ask the mother in the bed next to her to give an eye on her newborn.But, apparently, that's...
Faddish thinking seems to be replacing policy at the Ministry of Education. This could be the only logical justification for the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) exam.Policymakers are positing that PEP, which will be replacing the Grade Six Achievement...
It’s official. We are now in the midst of a dengue outbreak. Like chikungunya and Zika, dengue fever is a mosquito-borne tropical disease caused by a virus. Unlike chikungunya and Zika, however, dengue is endemic to Jamaica. In other words,...
We do not know if Troy Caine was a religious man, but we suspect that if he was, he would have died worrying about his soul's destination for his greatest sin: not committing his inestimable knowledge of Jamaican politics to tomes for future...
Jamaica's urban water-supply crisis in the southeast is legendary, but the unfolding dilemma of dysfunction and incompetence, not only owing to the culpability of the National Water Commission (NWC), is unacceptable.The ritual hand-wringing with...
It would have been best to have discussed this first. For then there could possibly have been full agreement about transformation going forward, and particularly about the Government's grand design of providing free access to education from...
My all-time favourite core subject was 'The use of English'. Although some 45 years have elapsed, I still remember the principles of what I learnt and how they apply to everyday life. People use language not only to communicate on a personal level,...
Jamaica's Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Kamina Johnson Smith's announcement, on January 9, that the Jamaican Government "proposes to use legislation to retake ownership of the 49 per cent shareholdings in Petrojam currently held by PDV...
The Jamaican Government must be acutely aware that the torrent of criticism it has received for what some observers deem foreign-policy aggression against the Maduro administration has been made worse by diplomatic schizophrenia.Unlike others who...
The sheer audacity of this gambit is amazing: I see the Holness administration setting itself up to rule in perpetuity. How so? Alienate the Venezuelans, seize their large local asset, socialise the debt, then privatise the profit, and maybe...
Driving a route taxi is a highly stressful occupation. Many drivers don't own the taxi. They are accountable to an employer who expects them to bring in a whole heap of money each day. This means making as many trips as quickly possible and packing...
Jamaica and Venezuela have had friendly relations going back to the 19th century, and diplomatic relations going back to the 1960s. We have also engaged in various energy cooperation efforts notably, the San Jose Accord, out of which developed the...
The only thing worse than being a comic in the elementary school I attended was getting not one, but two, in the mail. Our headmaster, whose parents had bestowed on him the grandiose title and appellation 'Prince Alfred' Forde, was huge and loud.His...
How is it possible for a woman who has been in a coma for 10 years to get pregnant and bear a child? And how could this happen without anyone even noticing over the nine-month period after conception? These are questions that United States...
Jamaica Labour Party ministers and their surrogates in mass media and digital space do not like any counternarrative on the premature and precipitous act of drafting legislation to expropriate the 49 per cent stake in the Petrojam refinery, owned by...
Ruel Reid, the education minister, is fast becoming a socialist junkie.That's the only conclusion we can make after the senator made the "bold statement of 'zero to 18 public free education' strategy that gets all our students up to the minimum of...
One of the first things you learn as a development scientist is that if it was easy, it would have been done already! By now we know that dealing with the cancer of crime in a sick society like Jamaica is not a simple matter.Why do I say that...
Every year, we are inundated by family and friends wishing us a merry Christmas and a happy new year. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride; or so the saying goes.Unfortunately, wishes for your happiness, some well intentioned (not all), are,...
A little after mid-day last Monday, still hours before a heavy downpour of rain made known its sudden fury, my lady and I drove casually through sections of lower St. Andrew. I was on a lookout for the state of gullies and searching for the extent...
Published:Wednesday | January 9, 2019 | 12:00 AMj'aristotle
And so it came to pass that as 2018 came to an end, common sense jumped ship and left quite a few politicians fluffing and lost for logic. US President Donald Trump’s determination to secure funding to build his promised border wall at...
Published:Wednesday | January 9, 2019 | 12:00 AMDevon Dick
Basil Dawkins wrote a Maas Mat sequel. Normally, we associate sequels with movies such as Rocky 1 and II or Shrek 1 and II, Lethal Weapon 1 and II, but not a play. Dawkins was breaking different ground. No wonder the 2018...
The Jamaican Government ought to tread cautiously in its attempt at a takeover of Venezuela's 49 per cent stake in Petrojam, the local oil refinery, even though the Maduro administration looks increasingly indifferent to, and impotent in, fulfilling...
Repetition is a source of redemption for those who are hard of hearing. And so it is for Prime Minister Andrew Holness. He is not renowned for his jocularity, but we believe that his attempt at humour with regard to the resuscitation of Andrew...
