Commentary

One week into the new year and 2013 is starting to feel old - very old, indeed.The stench of rotting garbage is everywhere, highway carnage, traffic-ticket amnesty fiasco, creeping confusion over negotiations with the International Monetary Fund ...

It's as if Paul Newman and Jane Fonda had fled the United States in protest at something or other - they were always protesting - and sought Russian citizenship instead...

In a broadcast Sunday evening, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller provided her account of the stewardship of the Government in the year since its election. She followed up yesterday with newspaper advertisements in her role as president of the People's National Party....

Ambassador Derick Heaven is a man for whom this newspaper has the utmost respect and whose grasp of the intricacies of the global sugar industry is undoubted. Importantly, he has been a champion of the cause of reforming the industry, promoting the concept of a sugar cane...

OUR GOVERNMENT, the local business community, and even the Church, have all been praying for the nation. They have been praying with great fervency for the nation to pass 'the test'; to get a deal!

The story goes that a legal secretary was about to go on a two-week vacation.She wanted to make certain that she was sorely missed during her time off, so she wilfully misfiled the dockets of several important clients...

IN MY efforts to get statistics on the rate of arrests and convictions relating to praedial larceny cases, a very senior police officer informed me that because it is not considered a serious crime, statistics might not be readily available.

PRIME MINISTER Portia Simpson Miller will take her Government into retreat this week to strategise on the many weighty issues facing Jamaica. The economy, we believe, is foremost of the matters that will be under consideration.

Do you think the OCG's referral to the DPP for the prosecution of the Cabinet will be taken seriously?

The twelfth of December 2012 (12/12/12) or combinations like 1/1/1 up to twelve are not going to happen for another century. In this context, 2013 is already different. Adding to its uniqueness is that it is an interesting combination of 20 (a "score" as in Lincoln's Gettysburg address "Four score and seven years ago") and 13, deemed an unlucky number.

JAMAICANS MAY be treating the issue as a farce, but Wednesday's call by Craig Beresford, the acting contractor general, for criminal charges to be preferred against the entire Cabinet is a development...

I HAVE dealt with the topic on radio before, quite regularly in fact, and somebody suggested that I put the whole thing into writing to reach a reading, rather than a listening audience.