DESPITE MAKING up more than 95 per cent of the population, black Jamaicans have remained largely excluded from real political and economic power. Except during progressive periods under the People’s National Party, it is the wealthy minority who...
ON APRIL 2, Liberation Day, President Donald Trump announced his new tariffs on all countries trading with the USA. This was outlined in this column in article titled ‘Confronting Trump Tariffs’ on April 9. Generally, a baseline tariff of 10 per...
Three Sundays ago ( Production is key to Growth) I dispelled the illusion of Jamaica’s GDP stats and explained why we need production transformation. Two weeks later, PM Holness went off on a rant about low productivity which he blamed on...
Recently, a patient of mine sent me a video of a woman delivering a health talk to a live audience. As she strode confidently across the stage, she instructed the attendees to avoid Pap smears. She said, “Please don’t have a Pap smear. Every time...
Someone finally gets it. Which could mean the start of a real transformation of Jamaica’s education outcomes. It’s reading, stupid! So, last week, the education minister, Dana Morris Dixon, announced that reading is being formally added to the...
Delroy Chuck, the justice minister, ought by now to be conversant with the adage about bad policies. This newspaper repeats it often enough. What’s usually worse than their formulation is their actual implementation. That is why this newspaper...
One in five Jamaicans, over 600,000 people, live in informal communities lacking tenure, services, and safety. Yet, the 2021 National Squatter Management Policy focuses on evictions that would worsen poverty, homelessness and crime. Regularisation...
This was one of the mantras of Pope Francis. It was originally understood as the holy man’s riposte to the then US president who thought that walls and expanded prisons are the solution to migration and anti-social behaviour. But the Pope’s rebuke...
How many of us, when our time on Earth is over, can say that we changed the world for good? Such was the life of Professor Graham Serjeant. His dual passions, for his wife of 60 years, Beryl, and research to improve the treatment and lives of...
Assuming that Chief Justice Bryan Sykes was captured in his intended context, it is surprising that the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) will only this year hold its first ever retreat to review a near two-decades-old report with proposal for the...
Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ scarce venture into the constitutional reform arena has not been encouraging. Significantly, though, it can be successfully argued that he is not to be held entirely, or indeed substantially, responsible. His recent...
She stood before us – calm, composed, and brave. A young woman from an Indigenous tribe in Mexico, she told the story of being imprisoned for two years. Her crime? Defending her ancestral lands from powerful mining interests. She spoke with passion...
Vere, Franciscus mortus est, “Truly, Francisco is dead,” or is he? What timing? Pope Francisco left us as the Kingston College (KC) centennial came to a close and right at the beginning of those related to the north side of North Street, St George...
Just like petrichor (the earthy smell that occurs when rain falls on the dry ground), the smell of politics is becoming pervasive. In fact, the smell of politics never truly left; it hung around, clinging to public service announcements, the...
In a convenience store in New York, a bottle of San Pellegrino mineral water from Italy, originally priced at $5, saw its price jump to $6 overnight due to the 20-per-cent “reciprocal tariff” imposed by the US on the EU. This epitomises the fallout...
In 1969, Canada Hall in The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad, was definitely not the right place for a slighter older, married Trinidadian to be inducted into campus life. It was a hall full of Jamaicans, Guyanese and...
While he appears not to have offered specific solutions to the problem, this newspaper supports Wayne Henry’s call for coordinated action by Caribbean governments to slow, if not reverse, the outflow of the region’s most educated people to...
The Catholic Church has been in change mode for more than 60 years, but it hasn’t been smooth sailing. It was Pope John XXIII – the compromise candidate – who surprised everyone in 1962 by convening the Second Vatican Council to begin to bring the...
It is tempting to believe that the current international trade environment can only yield challenges for small developing countries like Jamaica. While major disruptions are to be expected particularly in traditional sectors such as tourism, there...
The Government’s intention of upgrading the “deplorable” laboratories at Jamaica’s technical high schools is an obvious move in the right direction. Indeed, decent labs can, and do, contribute greatly to the delivery of first-rate technical and...
Peter McConnell’s recent anecdote about what happened at his company’s farm largely confirms what this newspaper has long argued; farm theft in Jamaica is no longer small-time hustle, if it ever were. It has evolved into organised crime, which...
SO APRIL 16 is now National Kingston College Day. Wow! Between that and the big, unsightly purple truck that led last week’s big unsightly anniversary purple parade, I think I can speak for everyone who didn’t attend a school on North Street when I...
BELIEVE IT or not, if your child is born with sickle cell disease (SCD), their greatest risk of preventable death is in the first four to five years of life. Needless death can be prevented by simple and inexpensive interventions. This is the...
If it were merely the number of congregants, the death of Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, might have been of little moment to Jamaica. For, based on the last published census data, for 2011, approximately 58,000 Jamaicans, 2....
“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” – Lena Horne PREDICTIONS OF inflation, economic downturn and market volatility over the past two weeks have resulted in excess worry, anxiety and stress for many businesses and...
