Fitz Jackson has, potentially, the easiest job in Peter Phillips' shadow Cabinet, although he has been assigned to cover the most problematic of portfolios for Jamaican governments - national security. That it is easy assumes Mr Jackson to be...
Move over, dildos, vibrators and inflatable dolls, and make way for the ultimate sex toys: sex robots. These lifelike dolls with artificial intelligence (AI) are gaining in popularity. They are manufactured in a variety of body shapes and skin...
There are plenty of issues to be resolved over Peter Phillips' shadow Cabinet, but there are also a few notable portfolio allocations that raise interesting questions about how a People's National Party (PNP) administration would pursue the...
Last Tuesday in Parliament, it was time for Finance and Public Service Minister Audley Shaw to answer my questions on the pace, direction and objectives of public-sector reform.The questions were asked to provoke discourse on a matter about which...
A very ill 77-year-old man was taken to one of our no-user-fee hospitals in a collapsed state. He ended up sitting in a chair for more than 36 hours with an IV stuck in his arm. When it became too much for him to be...
Jamaica's two main political parties are getting ready for a series of by-elections.It is therefore a good time to remind the nation of the importance of campaign-finance reform in Jamaica. This country simply cannot tolerate the use of money to...
Heritage Month starts today. Whose heritage will you be celebrating? If you've been conned into thinking that Jamaica is an 'out-of-many-one' society, you'll assume that my question is pointless, at best. Or divisively racist, at worst! Of course,...
It's the question I asked as an investigative reporter as I tried to prepare for one of our shows for the TV news magazine, '18 Degrees North'. But the process to get the answer would illuminate for me the frustration of the Jamaican court system...
It is one thing to read that there are seven and a half billion human beings alive now, but that's an abstraction: It really comes home when one sees the multitudes. Famously, if you draw a circle around India, China, and the countries of SE Asia,...
A frightening crisis is looming in the pharmacy trade, which could shortly result in a severe shortage of medications, as well as a financial fallout akin to that of the 1990s. And the Government appears completely oblivious to the gathering storm....
This newspaper has a serious problem with one of the premises upon which Peter Phillips has founded his shadow Cabinet. According to the leader of the Opposition, the portfolios he announced last Thursday, and the people he assigned to them, did not...
So, because of the recent ferocious hurricanes and the magnitude of the recent earthquakes in Mexico, many folk (including parsons and regular churchgoers) are seeing these events as signs of the end of the age based on a gross misreading of Matthew...
I write on behalf of the members of staff of the Electoral Office who have been left demoralised by the reports carried in the media in relation to the 2016 boundaries report to Parliament.The Electoral...
Just when the tide was threatening to pull the quaint town of Falmouth under, it was handed a lifeline by recent hurricanes that damaged cruise ship destinations in the Caribbean and Key West, Florida. Instead of a port ban by some cruise lines,...
Toil with hearts and hands and voices.We must prosper! Sound the call,In which ev'ryone rejoices,"All for each and each for all."(Last stanza of Dominica's national anthem)I stumbled out of my bedroom at my usual 4:30 a.m. and realised that we had a...
Published:Thursday | September 28, 2017 | 12:00 AM
More than 15 years ago, Robert Pickersgill, then the minister of water, land, environment and climate change, declared that there would be no mining in the Cockpit Country. In his contribution to the 2012-13 Sectoral Debate in Parliament, he...
Published:Thursday | September 28, 2017 | 12:00 AM
The West Indies are now down 3-0 in the one-day international (ODI) series against England. With only one game left, it is now likely that the West Indies may well end up losing the series without winning a game. Having already lost the right to...
Published:Thursday | September 28, 2017 | 12:00 AM
Last week, truculent Trump threatened to totally destroy North Korea. The tubby tyrant, Kim Jong-Un, responded by calling Trump mentally deranged.North Korea's foreign minister accused the United States of declaring war on his country. The White...
Published:Thursday | September 28, 2017 | 12:00 AM
Akshai Mansingh and his new Faculty of Sports at the University of the West Indies (UWI) have probably been handed their first topic for research since its formal launch two months ago: the academic achievements of Caribbean student athletes and...
Published:Wednesday | September 27, 2017 | 12:00 AM
I am quite sure many of us have been subjected to the lamentations of our elders, or have ourselves lamented - 'Oh but for the good old days when...' I can personally attest to the goodness of the old days growing up in the country, when the whole...
Published:Wednesday | September 27, 2017 | 12:00 AM
A few weeks ago, at the 92nd Annual National Convention of the New Testament Church of God (NTCOG) in Jamaica, held under the theme 'Touch me again, Lord',W.A. Blair was on fire as he was installed for another four-year term as administrative bishop...
Published:Wednesday | September 27, 2017 | 12:00 AM
According to reports, when Marlon Perry, aka 'Duppy Film', was shot dead by the police, he was wearing a bulletproof vest, meaning that he was not prepared to surrender or be captured by the cops.For an evil young killer like Duppy Film to be on the...
Published:Wednesday | September 27, 2017 | 12:00 AM
We appreciate that this has been a hectic and intense 18 months for Peter Phillips, since his party lost the government and he, the job as finance minister. Dr Phillips has since become president of the People's National Party (PNP) and leader of...
Angela Merkel's slogan in her campaign for a fourth term as chancellor was terminally bland and smug: "For a Germany in which we live well and love living" but it did the job, sort of. Her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is back as the largest...
Nothing feels better than enjoying an end-of-summer breeze in South Florida on a day with nothing else to do.I was on vacation and nothing else mattered. Sadly, that enjoyment was to be cut short as news broke of a massive hurricane heading our way...
