Friday, November 20, 2009 6:47 PM
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Columns
Values, attitudes and our children
Franklin Johnston
A child is our most important gift. It arrives with no owners manual, service agreement, warranty or helpline to call.Yet humans survived the Ice Age without pampers or aspirin....more
We've got that drifting feeling
Friday, November 20, 2009
ARE WE DRIFTING? Someone asked me that question during this week. Asked to explain this "drifting concept", he said, in recent times he has got this feeling that Jamaica has become like a small boat which has broken from its moorings and is drifting, with no one at the helm. We're lacking leadership in almost every phase of public life, he claims....moreShould we declare Jamaica 'unfixable'?
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Some years ago when Bill Clarke was riding high as Scotiabank's boss in Jamaica he declared Jamaica a failed state....moreThursday, November 19, 2009
Former Director of the Jamaica School of Music Pamela O'Gorman died last month. Miss O'Gorman was an Australian. The late Edna Manley and Pamela O'Gorman were friends and indeed there were many similarities between the two although 33 years apart in age. These were two white women who were not born here but who loved Jamaican culture and did their best to promote the Jamaican culture in two disciplines, Edna Manley in art and Pamela O'Gorman in music....moreGet those crime-fighting bills passed
Thursday, November 19, 2009
In a recent address to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, ACP Les Green bemoaned the legislature's delay in drafting legislation governing DNA testing and fingerprinting of suspects, and the video recording of witnesses' statements for criminal trials. He cites the inadequacy of political will as the major factor in this delay and ostensibly in the fight against crime in Jamaica....moreWednesday, November 18, 2009
So goes the age-old saying, "New broom sweeps clean", applicable in this instance to the new Acting Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington, to whom we extend our best wishes for the future....morePolice can't fight crime if they don't know the law
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
In yesterday's front-page article, "Bail too easy - Police Officers Association appeals to courts, frowns on suspended sentences", members of the association lamented the fact that "almost everybody who goes before the courts comes out on bail". This cry from the police for more persons to be remanded by the courts is not new. A few years ago the Western Mirror carried a story about police officers in Montego Bay making a similar appeal to the Resident Magistrates in St James to limit the frequency with which persons are granted bail....moreTuesday, November 17, 2009
Jamaica is suffering from a crippling lack of patriotism seen in many of the 2.7 million residents plus 2.5 million diaspora members. Fifth-columnists and enemies of the island bad-mouth the country, undermine its progress, or do nothing about its development. Some rationalise their absence of love for Jamaica by saying the nation has failed its...moreSeaga and the Grenada intervention
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Edward Seaga was prime minister of Jamaica during the 1983 invasion of Grenada by forces of the United States of America. Jamaica sent a peacekeeping contingent. Seaga presents a graphic picture of the events leading up to, during and after the invasion in his book, The Grenada Intervention, the Inside Story. Seaga, who went to Grenada during the conflict and was an insider to the development, calls it "intervention", but this column prefers to call it invasion....moreTuesday, November 17, 2009
Dear Reader, In the midst of the proliferation of BlackBerry phones, SUVs and multi-million dollar contracts and consultancies, the suffering of Jamaica's children continues to worsen....moreMonday, November 16, 2009
"We are being programmed to be inferior," declares Barbara Blake Hannah. Unfortunately, the news of the day supports her. Barbara is very much the daughter of her nonconformist father, writer and publisher the late Evon Blake who famously challenged the racist status quo of the 50s by defiantly diving into the swimming pool of the exclusive Myrtle Bank Hotel on the Kingston Waterfront....moreMonday, November 16, 2009
The last 15 years or so have seen a virtual proliferation of higher education institutions in Jamaica. Some are indigenous while others have migrated from the north. They have come with a variety of programmes but also much duplication....moreSunday, November 15, 2009
One late afternoon recently on a street corner alive with vendors, taxicab operators, schoolchildren making their way home, vehicles zipping by and people moving slowly but steadily in all directions, I sat with a few men - some young, some not so young - and we spoke of many things....moreSunday, November 15, 2009
There are studies enough and statistics galore to prove to the most ignorant and obscurantist amongst us that retaliatory crime and violence is not a policy to defeat crime or criminality....moreDumped: A blueprint for Caribbean salvation
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Government representatives of all the countries that now form the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom), except the Bahamas and Haiti, were present at a meeting in Montego Bay, Jamaica, when "majority opinion was clearly in favour of a Federation"....moreWalk the 'talk' on good governance
Sunday, November 15, 2009
IN Barbados last week Roman Catholic Bishop Emeritus of Bridgetown, Anthony Dickson, made available for public consumption a document advocating "A More Humane Barbadian Economy and Society", based largely on "reflections" in Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical, "Love in Truth", issued last July. The document, released on behalf of "Concerned Lay Catholics", but clearly with the approval of the Roman Catholic Church, was crafted with wide consultation by two prominent lay Catholics - Dr Peter Laurie (a former ambassador to Washington and long-serving permanent secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, and business executive Peter Boos)....more
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