Kindly allow me the opportunity to respond to the 'noteworthy' letter that was written by Petrina Francis, senior public relations officer at the Ministry of Justice. I would like to apologise for the inaccuracy of naming Carol Palmer as the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Justice, instead of Robert Rainford, who is her replacement.
Over the years, I have called for the abolition of all guns in Jamaica. I admit that this is a radical and, some may think, unrealistic strategy, but given the seriousness of Jamaica's gun-murder rate, I honestly believe that sooner or later Jamaicans will come to understand that such radical strategies may actually represent a more viable alternative than continuing with the more traditional ones.
The Reverend Franklyn Jackson, a priest in the Anglican communion and rector of the Church of the Transfiguration in Havendale, St Andrew, unfortunately reflects the schizophrenia that is all too common in Jamaica with respect to the matter of crime.
In the context of the high incidence of corruption in Jamaica, the call by Assistant Commissioner of Police Justin Felice and endorsed by representatives of civic organisations at one of this newspaper's Editors' Forums last Friday for a specialist corruption court makes sense and should be supported.
The Port Royal development proposed by Minister Mike Henry, in conjunction with a cruise-shipping entity, is indeed a wonderful and far-reaching idea to once and for all synchronise the tourism product into a unique and exclusive Jamaican product, unable to be copied elsewhere.
Rome is burning while Nero fiddles. The prime minister, as well as the Opposition leader, seem painfully incapable of bringing any true leadership to spurn the decadence and sense of civil unrest in Jamaica.
The rain clouds that broke the drought a little over a week ago made everyone elated when they drifted in and released the deluge that cooled, quenched and restored our parched land. However, it occurred to me that the drought of ideas from our leaders has persisted for many years now.
Four hundred thousand dollars is not a large sum of money in Washington, DC. It is not a lot of money to pay a DC lobbying firm, even if it is one as prestigious as Manatt, Phelps and Phillips. On any other day, and from any other source, US$400,000 would mean very little.
We are glad that Mr Owen Ellington has finally been able to resolve his contractual issues, allowing for his formal appointment as Jamaica's commissioner of police, the post in which he has acted for nearly five months.
The eruption of the tongue-twisting Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokull - which translated into English means 'island-mountain glacier' - severely disrupted a large chunk of the world's aviation system for over a week. In Europe, air travel was brought to a virtual standstill for several days.
I recently got an unexpected invitation from Ms Huiping Song, director of the Political Section of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Jamaica. The ambassador, H.E. Jinghua Chen, was requesting the pleasure of my company at dinner, along with five of my guests. My first reaction was, "Yeah, right."
It is not very often that one gets the opportunity to make a fresh start. The Jamaican Government's return to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last year presented such an opportunity. The foundations of world capitalism were shaken by the global financial crisis.
We view Dr Omar Davies' support for the proposed flat tax on members of the informal sector as a hopeful departure from the usual contentious politics which has manifested itself in the opposition of ideas put forward by either side of the political...
Our friend Tricia, with whom we had left our dog 'Crix' when we went away for a few days, dropped the bombshell on my wife Indranie, "Congratulations, you are now a grandmother!" Then Tricia looked at me, "What do you have to say to that, Grandpa?"...
The Golding administration in recent times has indeed weakened Jamaica's authority to engage the United States (US) firmly on the issue, but that does not lessen the essential truth of the prime minister's argument of the need for the Americans to do more to lessen the flow of guns into our country.
The Budget debates of the 1970s echoed the wide ideological differences between the two parties, and the kareba outfits worn by Government members in contrast to the conservative suits of the Opposition mirrored this disparity more eloquently than any speech could do in Gordon House.
The Earth can take so much and no more. Did we think that we could continue to cut down our natural forests without ultimately facing the consequences? At one time, little Jamaica was declared to have the highest rate of defores-tation in the world.
Following on eight years of case management in civil matters brought before our courts, the criminal bar was this year introduced to, and has adopted, the new system of case management in criminal cases. This is a most welcomed move. It has come at a time when the delivery of justice in our courts was bursting at the seams from the weight of a large backlog of cases.
My initial reaction to your daily front-page publication of the country's murder toll was to agree with the contributor who criticised the practice; but when I compared the figure in Sunday's edition - April 18 (482) with the previous Sunday's (April 11) of 436 - which meant that 46 persons were murdered last week, I appreciated the reason.
The National Housing Trust (NHT) and potential mortgagors of the trust will be happy that its ailment - previous scary prognoses notwithstanding - has turned out to be fleeting.
At the recent Sam Sharpe International Conference held at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford, I polled some people on the age of Sam Sharpe at the time of the 1831 resistance, based on the popular image of Sharpe found on our money bills and the one displayed at this historic conference.
According to the annual Horizon Report released recently by the New Media Consortium in collaboration with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), The 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition focuses on the key technology areas that researchers identify as likely to have a major impact on educational institutions and other learning-focused organisations within the next five years.
It's graduation season once again and despite all the ashes in the air over the United Kingdom, adoring relatives and doting parents are currently in the process of planning for graduations here, there and everywhere.I have been...
What are our dominant social values as Jamaicans? Oddly, we are a decade into the 21st century, and yet we have only recently begun to answer that basic question in an objective, defensible way.Although impressionistic...
