Commentary

On my visit to deep rural France last month, I spent time with a friend on an organic farm. It is a medium-sized farm by French standards - about 400 hectares - and has olive groves and fields of wheat, lavender, thyme and other aromatics, among...

The Jamaica Urban Transit Company Limited (JUTC) notes with concern an outline from one of our commuters in the form of a letter to the editor in the Monday, December 5, issue of The Gleaner.The commuter's outline included sexually suggestive...

Did it cross your mind occasionally, in the past week, to wonder where all of the "250,000 civilians trapped in eastern Aleppo" have gone? As the area of the city under rebel control dwindled - by Wednesday morning, the Syrian regime's troops had...

Did you know that despite his towering stature, no buildings, streets or monuments in Cuba will be dedicated to, or named after, Fidel Castro? Apparently, the Cuban leader made his brother Raul Castro promise that his name and likeness would never...

The operators of Jamaica's hackney carriage franchises are, it appears, a species unto themselves. They adhere to the most perverse of logic.By their own account, they often knowingly facilitate the breaking of the law and placing their customers at...

Desmond McKenzie, the local government minister, says he has high expectations of the municipal councils that were elected a week ago and whose members are to take their oaths on Thursday. And as a former municipal councillor himself, including the...

While stumbling through the 'stoosh' bush trying to locate my car after the latest society soirÈe, I overheard a security guard marvelling at the ostentatious lifestyle of Jamaica's moneyed elite that exists in sharp opposition to his own humble...

A Jamaican church lobby has forced the publishers of the 2017 Yellow Pages to produce an alternative cover of the telephone directory because of an "offensive" dancehall depiction it says is spreading "wrong" values. One of the...

True story: A very wispy nine-year-old girl was raped and impregnated with twins by her grandfather. If she carried the twin pregnancy to anywhere near term, she and the twins would die. However, in Jamaica, any attempt by anybody at aborting (...

Portia Simpson Miller's announcement that she is stepping down as president of the People's National Party (PNP) and, presumably, retiring from politics altogether was not entirely unexpected. But now that it has happened, it still appears to have...

Thanks to three self-righteous civil-society groups, we now have a choice of covers for the 2017 Kingston and St Andrew Yellow Pages business directory. One good and the other evil! The original evil cover features a dancehall scene painted by...