It is a well-known truth that minority groups are often used as scapegoats when politicians need to leverage the support of the majority. After all, what better way to coerce action than to convince the privileged that a "vile, immoral and downright...
Sometimes cock mouth kill cock. Now the utterances of Leader of the Opposition Andrew Holness, about the impotence of the Government to handle crime, might have once again opened him up to more attacks and given to the People's National Party (PNP)...
As Jamaica prepares to vote in either late 2015 or early 2016, it is clear that the economy will be a big agenda item in deciding who wins the confidence of the people to govern.There is no doubt that Jamaica's current extended fund facility...
The Mission of Youth Upliftment Through Employment (YUTE) may seem an impossible one when we consider the challenges of youth unemployment in our underserved Jamaican communities. Yet we are making positive progress with determination, ingenuity and...
For nine months, she carried the load. Nose swelling up like a sweet pepper, ankles reshaping into chubby yam sticks, morning sickness, eating strange foods and even non-foods, fatigue, and general malaise.All of this is second-hand information...
My informal polling over the past two years has consistently shown Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) winning the next election by a landslide.By and large, Jamaicans, including the much-heralded People's National Party (PNP) base, are angry at this...
Hospitals and clinics can be very dangerous places. Particularly for the weakest and most critically ill patients like the 42 unhealthy premature babies who contracted Klebsiella or Serratia bacteria at the University and Cornwall Regional hospitals...
The political parties are simply holding on to their base and are not exciting the imagination of the Jamaican people. Political apathy and alienation are growing, with many in civil society bemoaning the threat this poses to democracy.What was...
I don't know about you, but one of the ways I set my goals and measure my achievements is against certain timelines. Most of them marked by certain people's, mainly close ones', death.For instance, when I was 10, one of my brothers died in a car...
For St Hilda's High School, the only decent, sensible and just thing to do was to reinstate the young lady - which the board finally did last Friday after creating a big mess. Jade Bascoe was vindicated and the school did the right thing after its...
Slowly, but surely, the truth is coming out regarding what happened in Tivoli Gardens five years ago. For me, the major issue was that more than 76 civilians were killed and we still don't know who killed them.Of course, with the distractions of the...
On Heroes Day, I watched with bemusement as Phillip Paulwell displayed what looked like his best Hercule Poirot impression (David Suchet's version, NOT Peter Ustinov's) mincing his way to the King's House platform to accept his Order of Distinction....
Man, I tell you, I’ll soon be down to my last quattie. "How so?""Everything crash. I was making a pile from the lottery in Westmoreland, but the Sav-la-Mar don moved in.""You were lucky to escape with your life.""My shrimp farm in Clarendon was coming along. I was about to sell my first batch, when...
Africa's role in slaveryThis is absolutely the best of times to talk about the African participation in slavery. This is absolutely the worst of times to talk about the African participation in slavery.There is strong preference for uncomfortable...
The latest public opinion poll conducted by Bill Johnson for The Gleaner Company raises the question as to whether Jamaica is going in the right direction. The strident answer from the public is that the direction is wrong. This is based on the...
There is no denying the egregious breakdown in the management and functioning of the public-health system under Dr Fenton Ferguson as minister. The spectre of crisis that is gripping the health sector, not the least of which is the reported deaths...
Heroes' Day: But where is the next champion of the working class?In the space of a week, we have lost two lions in the trade union movement. Literally, members of a dying breed of unflappable leaders, Clive Dobson, former president of the National...
Sometime in the year 2015 the traditional High School St Hilda's High School (for Girls) revoked the appointment of its head girl. No doubt causing hurt to her feelings. Under normal circumstances such a decision by a school principal would not be...
In an article entitled, "Toll Road and Rural Development" which appeared in the Sunday Gleaner of September 20, 2015, Dr. Chris Tufton, former Minister of Government, urged the current Government, through the Planning Institute of Jamaica , to do...
It is not coincidental that the best years of economic performance for Jamaica have coincided with periods of lower crime levels. Neither is it coincidental that those two factors have correlated with periods when the Jamaica Labour Party formed the...
The National People's Cooperative Bank of Jamaica's (NPCB) debacle is the latest source of a feeling of annoyance that this writer usually suffer when media houses report on questionable transactions of organisations when audits reveal unacceptable...
Dear Prime Minister Cameron,We, the members of the academic and administrative staff from the University of Technology, Jamaica listed below, who are mainly members of the University's Think Tank, write this open letter to express our...
We've come to another National Heritage Week with foreigners apparently more willing to invest in preserving Jamaica's cultural artefacts than we ourselves are.The massive debate over reparations and the prison gift from the visiting British Prime...
Caribbean leaders, according to the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI), cannot ignore issues of sustainability. Our leaders should, as part of policy priorities, move to embrace aspects of the to-be-launched Sustainable Development Goals,...
In the course of human history, actions and outcomes have favoured the bold, and initiatives and results are not necessarily planned beforehand, but often appear from the least likely sources. Such a time of opportunity arises now in 2015, some 53...
