It is said that with age, comes wisdom. It’s true that this coincidence does often occur, but I assure you, the two are not related except regarding opportunity afforded by time. The thing is that as some of us age, we are fortunate to engage in a...
On February 3, shares in Facebook (now part of Meta) lost US$230 billion in value, which was the largest one-day fall in US stock market history. This happened for a number of reasons. First, Facebook reported that its number of daily active users...
As the world is recovering from the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we should build back better from this crisis. The green economy is a key pillar to achieving a sustainable and resilient recovery, taking into account the serious effects...
In mid-2021, it was determined that Minister Audley Shaw, minister of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture, and Fisheries, had requested some form of a probe in relation to the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) investigation into the termination of Agents...
In what appeared to be a split from some Cabinet colleagues, Health Minister Chris Tufton was quoted as saying: “After two years with the number of solutions available … it justifies … where we begin to discriminate in favour of persons who have...
Every one to two minutes, a woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth – a stunning statistic that calls to all of us to stand up and take action. Further, of the approximately 189 million women who become pregnant annually, 122 million have a live...
It was sometime in the 1950s and I was about eight years old. For about four years, I was in the care of the Wallaces in Clapham, Moneague and these total strangers treated me like royalty. A part of the daily routine was to collect milk in the...
A firestorm has erupted around the conundrum of the loss-of-locks trauma suffered by Nzinga King during her incarceration at the Four Paths Police Station. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Paula Llewellyn, released her report on the...
Crime has been our number one problem as a country since about 1980. Let me repeat, crime has been our number one problem as a country. Not all crimes; in fact, certain serious crimes have been on the decline. Our problem has been murders. I am...
On January 31, I had a most interesting conversation on his Bridge 99 FM programme with one of my former students, former Prime Minister Bruce Golding. The subject was ‘Governance in Jamaica’. Towards the end of our conversation, we agreed that...
Municipal corporations are bound by the 2018 Building Act as the procedural framework to handle development projects. There has been a spate of recent actions and pronouncements by the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) and the...
He loved his AK-47 assault rifle. At a particularly murderous time in our political history, that is, in the 1970s and well into the early days of the 1990s. I was in the yard at the back and he was talking about his AK. Occasionally he would...
Cawn’t sey mi neva dida warn yu! I started on this particular hobby horse five years ago while attending a General Legal Council (GLC) mandated continuing legal education seminar on the canons of “ethics” where I was forced to listen to a tone-deaf...
The film 13th is adapted from the book by Michelle Alexander entitled “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colourblindness.” which provides a sharp critique of the prison industrial complex in the United States (US), the leader of...
Britain’s King George II was so humiliated by the Maroons, in revolutionary guerilla warfare, that in 1739, he was forced to authorise Governor Edward Trelawney Cornwall to sign a treaty with the Maroons, recognising black people’s rights and...
In this edition of Reparation Conversations, a collaborative initiative between the Gleaner and the Centre for Reparation Research at The University of the West Indies, the place of Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery in the reparation...
Mark Golding is leader of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) and is one of those individuals called for greater service in honouring his country. But he knows that he plainly doesn’t have that personality to ‘move’ the mind and sway the...
Yet another report has shed light on the god-awful situation of the education system and we (myself included) are all behaving as if it hasn’t been plainly obvious. The recently launched report from Patterson-led commission on education revealed...
“Our greatest failure lies in the very success of placing the great majority of our children in schools, where, sadly, the hopes of over a half are dashed by the end of their primary education from which they emerge illiterate and innumerate” (...
PIONEERING BAHAMIAN-AMERICAN actor Sidney Poitier, who died this month at the age of 94, was Hollywood’s first black global megastar, appearing in over 40 films. His 2000 autobiography, The Measure of A Man, recalled how his success had been...
THE RECENT shuffling of an old deck of political cards ended up with yet another ‘new’ ministry. Cabinet now consists of the PM, 15 ministers with named portfolio titles, and seven ministers ‘without portfolio’. What a lot of ministers to run a...
A READER writes, “I read with interest your Gleaner column on January 9, 2022. I am not persuaded by PM Holness’ attempt at the dramatic. He has about a decade of leadership in the Jamaica Labour Party and had plenty of time to think about crime...
Skin colour, race, is a topic, like religion and politics, that evokes strong emotional feeling, passion. Many would prefer that it were not touched, discussed, or debated, treated as taboo, as if we suddenly became colour blind. However, we have...
In this edition of ‘Reparation Conversations’, a collaborative initiative between The Gleaner and the Centre for Reparation Research (CRR) at The University of the West Indies (UWI), we attempt to shed some light on the issue of the Maroons of...
In the best of times, a population under pressure finds its greatest strengths in its political leadership even if the trust deficit has always existed. Or if there is no strength to be found there, it will feed on the exposed weakness of the...
