Fri | Jun 19, 2026

Commentary

Published:Friday | January 3, 2025 | 12:06 AM

I wish to take this opportunity to wish my readers a very happy and holy Christmas. Today – January 3 – is only the 10th day of Christmas, and there are two more days to go before the Christmas season is consummated. On December 25 we celebrated...

Published:Friday | January 3, 2025 | 12:06 AM

As children growing up in ‘town’, sometimes my brother and I would play cricket in the backyard. We happened to have a cricket bat and all we needed was three sticks straight enough to serve as the wicket, and whatever ball we could find to bowl...

Published:Thursday | January 2, 2025 | 12:05 AM

International trade is often viewed with scepticism when it comes to climate change. Many people associate trade with transport, and transport with emissions from trucks, planes, or cargo ships. As a result, buying green is often equated with...

Published:Thursday | January 2, 2025 | 12:05 AM

At a conference in Miami in December on digital connectivity, Dickon Mitchell, the outgoing chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), outlined a raft of initiatives planned by CARICOM to enhance the use of digital technologies to support the...

Published:Thursday | January 2, 2025 | 12:05 AM

The new year is typically a time of reflection and renewed hope. And in reflecting on the last year, I’ve come to realise that the topics that seemed to dominate this column in 2024 were as diverse as the Jamaican culture itself. From cybersecurity...

Published:Wednesday | January 1, 2025 | 12:09 AM

Congratulations! We have made it to 2025! Praise be to all the deities who got us here because at one point I was sure whoever was writing the global script had truly lost their collective minds and the plot to boot. 2024 was a massive political...

Published:Wednesday | January 1, 2025 | 12:08 AM

The United States is teetering on the edge of a financial disaster, and it’s clear that President Donald “The god-king” Trump, along with his proposed administration, have no clue how to handle it. Trump’s trade war with China is already...

Published:Wednesday | January 1, 2025 | 12:07 AM

It is likely, at best, to have caused the merest ripple in the memory of most Jamaicans: that Boxing Day was the 20th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami. January 14 will mark the 118th year since the Great Earthquake of Kingston. Although the...

Published:Tuesday | December 31, 2024 | 12:07 AM

While this newspaper understands the uncertainties of business and does not have the details of what drove the decision, we are saddened by last week’s disclosure by McIntosh Bedding Company that it is closing after 60 years. This sense of...

Published:Tuesday | December 31, 2024 | 12:05 AM

During Jamaica’s 20th century pre-Independence years, King Street was the scene where shopping was supreme. It was destined that most of the land bordering the main street within the original city limits of Kingston would be used for the sale of...

Published:Tuesday | December 31, 2024 | 12:05 AM

The Data Protection Act (DPA) has placed numerous responsibilities on data controllers, who are now required to act in accordance with the rights of data subjects. Rights are referred to in this way because they are, in part, a mechanism to compel...

Published:Monday | December 30, 2024 | 12:06 AM

Solar is most famous for being a planet-saving addition to the roof of your home. But it can help us meet our growing energy needs while creating a pathway to a clean energy future for us all. Which is why in just a decade, solar has skyrocketed...

Published:Monday | December 30, 2024 | 12:06 AM

The wise elder of Jamaican statecraft, Hon. P. J. Patterson last week pleaded with us to come together to refine the value and meaning of our Jamaican life. What could be more fundamental? Yet, what could be so often unexamined and therefore less-...

Published:Monday | December 30, 2024 | 12:06 AM

Monique Lewis’ call for the greening of Jamaica’s urban infrastructure is not entirely new. But given her job, she adds an important voice to the public advocacy for new approaches for dealing with the island’s growing urbanisation in the...

Published:Sunday | December 29, 2024 | 12:07 AM

The recent wave of work stoppages at Jamaican resort hotels have subsided. It is however unlikely that the causes of workers’ disgruntlement have been fully resolved. Large swathes of the industry’s employees, especially those at its lower rungs...

Published:Sunday | December 29, 2024 | 12:07 AM

This year ends with rumblings of discontent in the booming tourism industry in Jamaica and possibly the Caribbean. The rumblings are from workers who feel disrespected, exploited, and underpaid in a foreign-dominated and managed industry. There...

Published:Sunday | December 29, 2024 | 12:07 AM

Just like that, 2024 is a memory. Like every other year, it has been one of heartbreaks, surprises, some unfulfilled promises, and yet, there has been a lot for which we should give thanks Being the track and field buff that I am, my highs and lows...

Published:Sunday | December 29, 2024 | 12:07 AM

Many years ago, when I wrote a piece posing the rhetorical question, “… who will be the first to die this year?” a few readers expressed that they thought that I was being pessimistic, or ‘goat mouthing’ the nation. Nonetheless, as expected, the...

Published:Sunday | December 29, 2024 | 12:05 AM

Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) was seemingly set up to fail. Multiple successive governments have long passed the buck to the next and still none are willing to fix it. The human rights abuses and lack of access to citizenship...

Published:Saturday | December 28, 2024 | 12:06 AM

There is every expectation that national attention will shift sharply to the general elections due by September 2025. From all the recent soundings we are already in campaign season. Even with an election looming, people expect the machinery of...

Published:Saturday | December 28, 2024 | 12:06 AM

I had made a New Year resolution to lose 20 pounds. However, Christmas came first, and now I have 24 pounds to go, and counting. But as one of my friends said when I told him what the great prediction experts expect, “Tony. Better bread than dread...

Published:Saturday | December 28, 2024 | 12:06 AM

Most people spend all the working days of their lives doing eight or more hours a day, or through the night. Some, because of the nature of their jobs, belong to the essential services and, for considerable portions of their lives, work far more...

Published:Friday | December 27, 2024 | 12:06 AM

Humankind is obsessed with celebrations. We look for every excuse to cut a cake, drink some juice and have a good time. The excitement feels organic when someone has got married, had a baby or made some other accomplishment, but we actually don’t...

Published:Friday | December 27, 2024 | 12:05 AM

The Jewish people – once a mighty nation which conquered their neighbours – were now themselves conquered by the Romans, who taxed them and subjugated them. They remembered their glory days under King David, a shepherd turned mighty warrior who...

Published:Friday | December 27, 2024 | 12:05 AM

The cynically opportunistic might perceive an advantage of some kind for the Caribbean in Donald Trump’s threat that the US could take back the Panama Canal. But Mr Trump’s remarks about the canal, as well as his reprise of his first-term...

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