The poor will always be with us, so the Good Book says. However, poor people, like everyone else, must live somewhere, and have access to even basic education and health care like all else. The right of tenure is at the heart of all other...
A heartbroken Julia Hird, mother of slain 11-year-old Taysha Hughes, bawls in the arms of Inspector Jacqueline Ricketts, sub-officer in charge of the Gold Street Police Station, on June 23. Taysha was a victim of a crossfire near her home on Fleet...
One day during the summer holidays in 1968, three of my KC schoolmates and I walked into the Half-Way Tree Road front office of the Carlton Exchange of what was then the Jamaica Telephone Company (now FLOW).I cannot quite recall if jobs were...
It's dawning on some lawyers and parliamentarians that Jamaica is constructed and regulated by a written Constitution. For more than 50 years, we've pressed on regardless, assuming EVERY nook and cranny of English common law; EVERY nuance of English...
Experience, here in Jamaica and further afield, teaches the formula for positive change in combating corruption and in strengthening good governance. It is this TL + CD + IS = PC, where TL is transformational leadership (political, professional,...
Hundreds of persons have died since the Government introduced its potentially life-saving anti-crime zones of special operations bill. How many more will be allowed to be slaughtered while we wait to appease and kowtow to a small but powerful...
I don't know if there is any country in the world that has referred to its overseas migrants as a diaspora. The word originally applied to the dispersion of the Jewish people beyond Israel, but it has come to be used also in reference to the...
My older friends purchased a prostitute for me when I was a teenager. It turned out to be one of the worst experiences of my life.Now, I do not buy sex, in that I have never found the need to venture out on a search for, say, intimate contact with...
If ever a Johnny Nash song came to life, it was resurrected by Booklist Boyne's wanton waste of column space on Sunday, June 11.There are more questions than answersPictures in my mind that will not show.There are more questions than answersand, the...
Miss Ivy's son got up in the night and put clothes in the washing machine. Yes, they are almost all black, and some of them have to be hand-washed. The delicate setting on the machine still has to be monitored. It is hard work because I have to mop...
Dr Damian Graham, general manager of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), wrote an article published in The Gleaner on June 16, 2017, with the headline 'Gov't Oval - By Jamaicans, for Jamaicans'. In it, Dr Graham said, "Jamaican architects,...
Last week, this column journeyed to St Thomas, specifically its capital, Morant Bay, to take a critical look at the plan to turn the Goodyear factory lands on the edge of the town into a new town centre.The immediate reason for staying on, with a...
Prime Minister Andrew Holness indicated recently that he recognised the importance of intelligence-driven crime-fighting and more resources. He also hinted that this initiative could mean the shifting of resources from other critical areas to a...
Jamaica and the United States share a deep democratic tradition. I have been fortunate to serve during an election here in Jamaica and to have seen that democratic tradition in action.After a hard-fought campaign, there was a gracious and peaceful...
A man walked into a public place and, despite the security detail in place, no one could prevent Congressman Steve Scalise from being shot by wacko, James Hodgkinson, a man whose age of 66 might just need another six to show that we are facing a...
St Thomas has had many good reasons from state neglect to have rebelled again since 1865. From Montego Bay, where he was opening the first Jamaica International Exhibition, Prime Minister Holness announced big plans for the development of Morant Bay...
Recently, I had occasion to request more cable boxes from FLOW. They had initially installed some boxes. However, bearing in mind that my family is quite big by today's standard, and given the fact that the cost of each additional cable box works...
Here we go again!Four months after Government unveiled its sweeping new crime plan, including 'preventative detention' and zero tolerance for domestic disputes, the number of Jamaicans murdered in 2017 rose to 628 (19 per cent increase on 2016)....
Government's recent bailout of hundreds of local tertiary students represented a timely reminder of the imbalance between the potential demand by Jamaican students for the provision of tertiary education and the inability of these students to afford...
Should a person who lives in a $250-million house in Beverly Hills or Stony Hill and who has three BMW X6es and a Porsche be lionised for his success and glowingly featured on our social pages or feel ashamed of himself for displaying so much...
On June 1, President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the historic Paris climate agreement of December 2015. Candidate Trump had promised to do it, and the United States is notorious among developed countries for not...
In an article written by Dr Carolyn Gomes published on Sunday, May 28, 2017, she stated, in relation to the development of the Charter of Rights: "The Parliament, however, appears to be timid. It has not acted on the recommendation to ensure that...
Cawn't sey mi neva dida warn yu! On April 23, I wrote: "I see ... Theresa May called a 'snap election' for June 8. ... She's relying on polls that give Conservatives a comfortable lead. Polls, schmolls! Those same pollsters said that Britain would...
Let me begin with a declaration. I once served as a consultant in the Ministry of National Security and had special responsibility for strategic projects and modernisation. I was the Government's chief negotiator responsible for the now-infamous...
For years, my cry has been that our youth need much more credit than we have been giving them, and it's not just their need to scratch off phonecards for calls and data.In a society hell-bent on telling them that they are the worst of the worst, our...
