Commentary
The short-term political and economic impulses for the Government’s steep reduction in fares charged by the state-owned bus company are obvious. And the move is likely to be popular. Already, the cuts have been embraced by the political...
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What do we do when we live in a constitutional democracy and those we have elected and employed to act on our behalf operate in a manner that opposes the very tenets of the constitution and the principles of our democracy? What do we do when our...
It’s time for another visit to favourite fantasyland, Apocrypha, where all politicians are friends and Oma D’unn solves political dilemmas by parable. Regular readers remember Oma, a former finance minister, who, like a moon, is bright only in the...
Recently, I posted a question on my Facebook page, “Why are so many people who express pro-Palestinian sentiments being censored?” In a conversation with one of my Facebook friends about the post, I mentioned that you can get in trouble for flying...
It is Lord Reed’s right, if he so pleases, to inject himself into the debate over the future of the Privy Council as Jamaica’s final court, and to impugn the arguments of former brothers of the Bench. But in throwing old colleagues under the bus,...
Mention was made in a previous writing about the low appreciation of the value of moral capital in Jamaica. In fact, many question the existence of such a thing. After all, “money talks, s--- walks”. For others, when you have political power, or...
Phillip Williams, in a letter to the editor dated October 27 titled, ‘Ban on recruitment will hurt students the most’, declares that, if schools were prevented from bringing in children based on their sports ability (in other words, if schools were...
Having temporarily paused its campaign in Gaza, Israel’s main allies, especially the United States, must insist this ceasefire morphs into a real truce and the revival of serious negotiations towards a viable Palestinian state. There is,...
John Godfrey Saxe wrote in 1872 a very telling poem based on a Indian fable about six blind men examining an elephant they could not see. “... It was six men of Indostan (another name given to India – a variant of Hindustan – land where River...
Last Tuesday, The Gleaner published a news story on the visit of Prime Minister Andrew Holness to communities severely affected by recent flooding. He made a rather provocative statement: “Coming from the tour, by air especially, it is clear that...
Hungry men cannot work in kitchens. Some 20-plus years ago, I began a body of work focussing on decent work. You see, the problem with ‘bright people’ with myriad degrees like thermometers is that we spend too much time theorising or trying to...
One of my father’s favourite quotes was from Sir William Hamilton (December 13, 1730 - April 6, 1803), British diplomat, archaeologist, and the son of Lord Archibald Hamilton, governor of Jamaica from 1711 to 1716) – “On earth there is nothing...
Westmoreland has been rocked to its core by the horrific taxi wreck in Bluefields last week which claimed five lives. This and other tragic events in the West reminded us that a total of 488 lives were lost last year in various accidents and up to...
An English professor wrote on the blackboard, “Woman without her man is nothing.” And told his students to punctuate it. The males in the class wrote, “Woman, without her man, is nothing.” The females wrote, “Woman! Without her, man is nothing.” I...
“The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is nothing less than a club of the world’s wealthiest countries which is determined to bend powerless countries to its will.” I wrote that statement in 2002 after four years of...
It is hard to fathom why nearly three years after being key architect of the new agreement to guide relations between the European Union (EU) and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), Jamaica scrabbled to reassure...
