Growing concern with the level and duration of unemployment spells has led several governments to design programmes that provide economic support for the unemployed.One such programme is unemployment insurance (UI), which is intended to mitigate the...
Twelve years ago, at the end of the first month of the New Year 2006, I wrote a column with the title 'Wendy's big do'. It started, "'I wonder what get into Wendy?' several people asked me, some rhetorically. It certainly wasn't Casper, the friendly...
Published:Thursday | September 27, 2018 | 12:00 AM
Guyana's President David Granger recently stated that his government sees Guyana's future in the Caribbean and the Caribbean's future in Guyana. On the verge of becoming an oil-producing country and seeing a turn in its economic fortunes, Guyana...
Published:Thursday | September 27, 2018 | 12:00 AM
I am more than pleased that the Government has promised to ban single-use plastic bags, plastic straws and Styrofoam next year and to implement a deposit-refund system for certain plastic bottles. Over the last 25 years in this column, I have...
Published:Thursday | September 27, 2018 | 12:00 AM
Perhaps the most frightening statistic to emerge at the recent forum hosted by this newspaper on the St Andrew community of August Town wasn't the number of murders there so far this year, which, at 13, is by any measure phenomenally high. Rather,...
Published:Wednesday | September 26, 2018 | 12:00 AM
This week's announcement by William Mahfood's Wisynco that it is acquiring a 30 per cent stake in the sugar manufacturer Worthy Park Estate and taking over the distribution of all of the latter's products may be viewed merely as the corporate...
Published:Wednesday | September 26, 2018 | 12:00 AM
A man meets a woman and something 'clicks' and sooner instead of later they become sexually intimate. Without the woman knowing it, or the man telling her so, once she has, without coercion, consented to allow the man repeated contact with her most...
Published:Wednesday | September 26, 2018 | 12:00 AM
Easton Douglas was the first Cabinet minister to ask me to sit on a government board. It was while he was minister of housing he wrote a letter inviting me to serve the National Housing Development Corporation, now Housing Association of Jamaica....
Published:Wednesday | September 26, 2018 | 12:00 AM
The recent cass-cass between the leaders of the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) over which party is more corrupt reflects a major failure to man-up to the realities within their respective parties, which is that...
The men who carried out last Saturday's attack on the parade in Ahvaz, in Iran's southwestern province of Khuzestan, were well trained: four of them killed 25 people and wounded 70 others before they were shot dead...
Oral Tracey's most recent article raises an important point which is being ignored - a large number of our secondary-school students are not achieving their best, and they are allowed to travel on to the next stage of the conveyor belt of poor...
We want to believe Prime Minister Andrew Holness that his administration has strategies, other than the declaration of states of emergency, for combating Jamaica's crime problem.In this regard, the Government and the police owe the public a greater...
Speaking to the Rotary Club of New Kingston on September 7, the forthright president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), Howard Mitchell, bemoaned a "loss of confidence" by the Jamaican private sector. He went on to lament Jamaica'...
In Apocrypha, that unreal Fantasyland far beyond the clouds, Opposition political party, Promoting National Poverty (PNP), was all excited about its upcoming annual conference.The secretariat, in planning sessions, asked itself the most important...
It is common knowledge worldwide that farmers get the lowest prices and the middleman and retailers make the most profits.Jamaica's sugar cane farmers must be at the top of the list for being shafted - and mostly at the doing of government agencies...
So James Johnson has left this earth, pushed into the netherworld by the force of a gunman's bullets. His 29-year-old frame was hit not once, but seven times, like a paper target at one of the gun ranges he used to frequent.James was indeed a...
I decided not to vote for the extension either of the ZOSO in Denham Town or the state of emergency (SOE) in St Catherine last week in Parliament. Had the matters not been presented in a slap-dash fashion, out of respect I would have supported the...
Eventually, when the newly constructed road-ways are flooded with the newly imported cars and are choked at various bottlenecks, what will we think of the much-vaunted 'legacy' then? As we throttle, burning off precious fuel and poisoning ourselves...
“One good thing about music, when it hits, you feel no pain” – Bob Marley The phenomenal cultural influence of Jamaica never ceases to astonish me. Our country is so small that it is a mere speck...
Having, after much prompting, provided blurry outlines of his Government's security arrangement with Israel, Prime Minister Andrew Holness is obligated to bring clarity to the deals being struck with Bibi Netanyahu's government and how they fit into...
Published:Saturday | September 22, 2018 | 12:00 AM
The stench of corruption is invading the nostrils of everyone in Jamaica. The promise by Prime Minister Andrew Holness to be new and different is turning out to be a broken promise.The revelations seeping out of Petrojam and connected organisations...
The Government ought not to find it unreasonable, or ascribe partisan motives, if people question, as has the political Opposition, the logic and efficacy of the taxation deal that it has locked itself into for the next quarter of a century, with...
Schools in Jamaica, like businesses, are governed by boards of management. This is in keeping with the Education Act, 1965, and Regulations of 1980, popularly known as 'the Code'. The school boards, which report directly to the minister with...
The People's National Party Youth Organization (PNPYO) notes with grave concern that Jamaica has maintained a Tier Two status on the United States Department Trafficking in Persons Report, which means that the country has not fully met "the minimum...
Pon September 8, Gleaner publish one article weh Syranno Baines write wid dis ya headline: 'UWI focused on output rather than quality output - PSOJ president'. It sound bad eeh! But wen mi read di article, mi see seh a no Howard...
