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Commentary

Paulwell strikes again

Published:Thursday | June 11, 2015 | 12:00 AM

By now the country would have been made aware of another missed deadline for the implementation of number portability by Minister Paulwell. This disappointing development has become par for the course with the minister of announcements having now...

Why we suck at cricket

Published:Thursday | June 11, 2015 | 12:00 AM

Another Test match is under way at Sabina Park. It's a good bet that Australia will beat us well before Monday's final session. By then, there may only be a few spectators on hand to witness the final rites.I can't think of any other team in global...

Continued (mis) use of public funds

Published:Tuesday | June 9, 2015 | 12:00 AMJaevion Nelson, Contributor

It is rather frightening that we continue to allow successive governments and public entities to squander scarce financial resources in a country as ours where debt to gross domestic product is one of the highest globally, hundreds of thousands of...

Miracles in the Church?

Published:Tuesday | June 9, 2015 | 12:00 AMDevon Dick, Contributor

Recently, I was told that a church leader was on public television claiming that, for him, a miracle was 'a piece of cake', and to support his assertion, he said he has blown on a person's credit card, which was 'maxed out', and the debt disappeared...

Unequal equality for Muslims

Published:Wednesday | June 10, 2015 | 12:00 AMRobert Lalah, Contributor

We Jamaicans are a complicated people prone to bewildering vacillations on moral matters. We demonstrated this clearly in two very different scenarios recently. The first was Jodi Stewart-Henriques' online tantrum on Usain Bolt's supposed...

Editorial: CDF: Loose with taxpayers’ money

Published:Wednesday | June 10, 2015 | 12:00 AM

Given that Andrew Holness is unlikely to have acted with subversive intent, we should perhaps give thanks for small mercies and hope that an unintended consequence of his seeming inattention is the collapse of that insidious patronage known as the...

British government on trial at the European Court of Human Rights

Published:Wednesday | June 10, 2015 | 12:10 PMAP

Has America no shame?

Published:Tuesday | June 9, 2015 | 12:00 AM

The United States of America is a wonderful country. That nation and its people are examples of so much of what is good about humanity. Anthemic songs about New York sung first by Ol' Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra and then by Alicia Keys and the Jigga...

Another GSAT sleight of hand

Published:Tuesday | June 9, 2015 | 12:00 AMColin Steer, Contributor

Some things in the published comments attributed to Education Minister Ronald Thwaites up to Tuesday, June 9, regarding plans to amend how and where students are placed based on this year's Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), are not adding up.The...

Lower age of consent? Are you mad?

Published:Tuesday | June 9, 2015 | 12:00 AMChelan Smith

Let me jump right in. This morning while going through The Gleaner, I came across this letter to the editor 'Lower age of consent to 14' . For those of you who missed it, let me give you the gist of Owen Crosbie's article:"When will our legislators...

Editorial: The GSAT debate and teachers’ pay

Published:Tuesday | June 9, 2015 | 12:00 AM

Quite fortuitously, a public debate has broken out over what has proved to be a misinterpretation of the breadth of Ronnie Thwaites' plan to this year place grade seven students in high schools near to where they live.What was thought to be the...

Join me at Relay for Life

Published:Monday | June 8, 2015 | 12:00 AMPatria-Kaye Aarons, Contributor

The first time I went to Relay for Life, I bawled my eyes out. Twice.My first bout of tears was brought on by tiny sandbags with candles in them lining the track of the Police Officers' Club. Stapled to them were pictures of a little girl who couldn...

Why keep Holding out?

Published:Sunday | June 7, 2015 | 12:00 AMGordon Robinson, Contributor

Which sporting association, including FIFA, suffers as chronically from maladministration as the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB)?Pundits expressed shock when Sepp Blatter, whose name alone conjures images of urological accidents, was re-elected...

Standing up to Russian aggression

Published:Monday | June 8, 2015 | 12:00 AMGwynne Dyer, Contributor

Just before he sat down to a traditional Bavarian meal of sausage and beer with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the start of the G7 summit on Sunday, US President Barack Obama told the media that one of the meeting's priorities would be...

Editorial: Jamaica’s CARICOM whine

Published:Monday | June 8, 2015 | 12:00 AM

There is a saying about chewing gum and being able, at the same time, to walk a straight line. That, even for the most distracted and ill-coordinated, ought not to be overly difficult.Extracting greater value for members from the Caribbean Community...

Charlie, Charlie and duppy bats

Published:Sunday | June 7, 2015 | 12:00 AMMichael Abrahams

Jamaicans are a special group of people. Most of us believe in God, with Christianity being the main religion in the country. Many Jamaicans will also tell you that they have faith in God. But, at the same time, we are also a very superstitious...

Gays are the blacks of yesteryear

Published:Sunday | June 7, 2015 | 12:00 AM

In the ongoing debate over the buggery law, rekindled by Randy Berry's visit, one fact is consistently ignored: The overwhelming majority of gay people deny their orientation is a conscious choice. They became gay the same way everyone else became...

Your pound of flesh...but there will be blood

Published:Sunday | June 7, 2015 | 12:00 AMDaraine Luton

Assuming Horace Dalley's disclosure that every percentage increase in wage offered to public sector workers would cost $1.2 billion, it seems that the Government will have to engage in either a massive tax package to raise the funds to prevent the...

The root cause of violence

Published:Friday | June 5, 2015 | 12:00 AM

In a recent Gleaner editorial published Saturday, May 30, 2015, titled 'Turn outrage into action, Dr Williams', the piece cited several cases of multiple murders and went on to state: "It is hard to define and explain what causes this level of...

Editorial: JLP’s leadership crisis

Published:Sunday | June 7, 2015 | 12:00 AM

THE JAMAICA Labour Party (JLP), we can confirm, continues to face a crisis of leadership. This is reflected in the party's inability, or worse, unwillingness, to articulate clear, coherent policy options, or sensibly critique and debate those being...

Give us more husbands

Published:Sunday | June 7, 2015 | 12:00 AM

In contradiction to the Islamic Council's suggestion that polygamy can solve the family crisis in Jamaica (published in The Gleaner, June 4, 2015), and with monogamy failing so miserably, my question then is, Why shouldn't a good woman have more...

Militant unions, compliant elites

Published:Friday | June 5, 2015 | 12:00 AMIan Boyne

We are now into the difficult part of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreement. It’s time to take the bitter medicine, public workers and your families. The IMF dictates that the wage bill can’t pass 9% of GDP, or the deal’...

Editorial: Overcoming voter apathy

Published:Friday | June 5, 2015 | 12:00 AM

We doubt much has changed among Jamaicans over the past 35 years over how much they cherish the right to vote, as we were recently reminded by Dorothy Pine-McLarty. But as Mrs Pine-McLarty observed in her remarks at a town hall meeting in Montego...

Celebrity wedding at UWI Chapel

Published:Friday | June 5, 2015 | 12:00 AM

No, it was not the wedding of a superstar athlete or dancehall DJ. Or a politician. Or any of the usual 'cebrelity' types who regularly haunt the social pages of our newspapers. True, the marriage proposal had been made and accepted on air on Miss...

Before you press 'Send' ...

Published:Friday | June 5, 2015 | 12:00 AM

There's a gloriously funny story about an ISIS fighter, now being referred to as 'the moron militant', who posted a selfie on social media and effectively killed himself off. This man was a fighter in Syria who should have perhaps just sent the pic...

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