Martin Luther King Jr once said, "It's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel just to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps." We, as responsible adults, should at least try to give our students a chance to improve their God-given talents.
Aren't you a little tired of hearing that we have no growth in this country? Crime is a major growth industry surely. Whether it's making illegal electricity connections that cost JPS (read: existing JPS customers) US$75 million last year or allegedly dismembering a gang member for losing two guns, there's no doubt that crime is booming.
The Church can flex its muscles all it like, it is going to lose its battle with the State on this flexi-week issue. Indeed, if the Church pushes too much on this issue, it is likely to incur increased criticism and cynicism, resulting in its further marginalisation.
A lot of focus has been placed in recent years on the size of the public service and of its wage bill. The Public Sector Transformation Project, which seems to have now run out of gas like JEEP, was widely regarded as a staff-cutting exercise.
So, another commission of enquiry is slated to take place. The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) is on record as expressing its willingness to participate in the impending Tivoli commission of enquiry as it wants to get to the truth of what happened during that fateful period in May 2010.
You probably think that I'm going to speak about the delayed assigning of the 'World Boss' to what could be more a chapter than a sentence. However, Justice Lennox Campbell is one of Jamaica's brightest and fairest legal minds.
Normally, curfews for children would be a parenting matter. While the recently announced community curfew strategy can give rise to some concern about its implications for the rights of children and parents, it could provide a golden opportunity for promoting and supporting healthy family life in the households of the selected communities.
I AM not always in agreement with much of what is generally expounded by The Gavel, but I must commend the column by Daraine Luton in The Gleaner of March 10 regarding the gender-neutral quota system proposed in Parliament by Senator Imani Duncan-Price.
People who control power concoct all kinds of clever arguments and rationalisations - and convince themselves, too - to hold on to that power. As Karl Marx said, "The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas."
The controversial policy recommendation made by Senator Ruel Reid has prompted further analysis of the demographic changes outlined in the 2011 Population and Housing Census and its implications for economic growth.
It was revered conservative US President Ronald Reagan who, in making the case for laissez-faire economics over government regulations, introduced the concept of 'the magic of the marketplace'.
It's an annual event which track and field fans across Jamaica anticipate. Student athletes are able to represent their schools and compete for bragging rights. Others revel in the excitement which they might be experiencing for the first time. Coaches anticipate the actualisation of their hard work.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, in which now National Hero Norman Manley distinguished himself as a young man and was wounded. It was a war which nobody wanted, but which happened nonetheless, as belligerence among European Great Powers and Alliances, after a critical tipping point, avalanched out of control and into conflict.
Professor Errol Morrison is in the battle of his life to complete his contract as president at the University of Technology (UTech). Having taken on the mantle in 2007, Morrison went with a stellar career in academics, peaking in one of the top three positions at the more recognised University of the West Indies (UWI).
Congratulations to the JLP and chief hatchet man, Desmond McKenzie. Velma Hylton has withdrawn from the Tivoli enquiry. Rumourmongering and rabble-rousing have again won the day. Yay!
We are so intoxicated about the prospects of escaping our perennial poverty through the booming US$140-billion global ganja business that we couldn't care less about any scientific evidence which might exist about its potential harm.
A Boeing 777 disappeared in plane sight, Russia seems on the verge of reversing history and colonising the Ukraine once again, and more than 41 missiles were fired from the Middle East's Gaza Strip into Israel.
Directives issued to legal draftsmen formulating legislation giving the prosecution the right to challenge the sentence of a judge, handed down in a criminal trial, represents yet another move by the executive, soon to be rubber-stamped by the legislature, in their lack of confidence in our judiciary.
What if ganja were to be made a legal product in Jamaica like sister drugs; tobacco and alcohol? Government could save around $5.54 billion per year in enforcement costs.
