A new policy paper issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last Wednesday has highlighted public-sector wage growth and high public-sector employment as major contributing factors to the Caribbean's debt crisis.
I am indeed grateful to the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) for taking the trouble to respond to the suggestion made by my article in The Sunday Gleaner ('Jamaica's energy conundrum', November 4, 2012) that the OUR has been less than diligent in approving that the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) build a 360MW plant for electricity generation. I note, by contrast, that the JPS itself has not found it necessary to respond.
Lance Armstrong won seven consecutive Tour de France cycling titles - a most remarkable feat for which he was lauded and compensated. However, recently he was stripped of all his titles for taking performance-enhancing drugs.
I continue to have a deep, abiding faith in God and personal reliance on Christ's Word.However, I've lost all respect for, and trust in, the Church, a man-made organisation whose sole purpose is mind control using fear based on centuries-old random collections of articles by a motley crew of authors, some anonymous, in a book called The Old Testament.
There is only one way to spell right, but many different ways to spell it and be wrong. A minor distraction from the real imperatives of a struggling nation came over the past week, when the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) found itself in a pickle after the intractable member of parliament for South West St Catherine, Everald Warmington, stirred up an ants' nest.
Andrew Holness delivered what the base wanted last Sunday at his annual party conference: toughness, testosterone and tendentiousness. He was resolute, resounding and resilient in the face of fears that the perennial factiousness of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) was to make its abode in the party yet again.
Dr Gladstone Hutchinson, director general of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), will be heading back to the United States within a couple of months of delivering his last no-growth quarterly report and releasing in print A Growth-Inducement Strategy for Jamaica in the Short and Medium Term.
In the early days after Independence, there was a firm belief in the high quality of civil servants. This resulted from more than a decade of training of civil servants aimed at creating an accomplished team to take over the administration of the country.
Track and field is currently the jewel in Jamaica's sport crown. That is why the upcoming Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association's (JAAA) elections, which will take place on November 29, are of such importance.
Were St Paul of Tarsus alive today and giving advice to Jamaicans at this point in our history, I suggest he would have modified his famous letter to the Corinthians to read:
"If I articulate my plans in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not execute, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal..."
The recent census revealed that the non-traditional groups of Christians have been increasing in droves, with evangelicals such as the various Church of God denominations giving the Seventh-day Adventists a run for their (collection) money.
This past week, former prime minister and president of the People's National Party, P.J. Patterson, was showered with accolades in Parliament from both sides of the political divide.
The Sunday Gleaner of November 4, 2012 carried an article from guest columnist the Rev Garnett Roper, in which he made reference to aspects of the role of the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) in the procurement of new electricity generation for the national grid.
The 2011 Population and Housing Census indicates that Jamaica's population growth rate is at a new low of 0.36 per cent, compared to 0.87 per cent in 2001. This low growth rate is the second lowest since census-taking began in the late 19th century.
He will have a reduced audience before him today when he speaks at his annual conference, but not a diminished sense of responsibility to address burning, contentious issues.
I may have the dubious distinction of having initiated what has become an undue focus on the rate of reversals of Court of Appeal decisions by the United Kingdom Privy Council.
Black lightning struck twice in the same place in the same country almost exactly four years to the date. One can be forgiven for now calling him the Barack-to-Barack winner.
The statement on the perimeter wall demarcating the zoned area for a proposed science and technology park south of Beijing was consistent with the message being transmitted by Chinese technocrats and business leaders. It read, "Transition from made in China to created in China."
Barack Obama has been asked by the Electoral College, as directed by voters, to continue in the White House for another four years. This is his second and final term. Term limits for the presidency were only imposed by Congress after Franklin Delano Roosevelt had won four consecutive terms and died in office in 1945.
Basking in the resplendent glory of Obama's political victory last Tuesday, it is easy to lose sight of the reality that the United States is still a country sharply divided between two opposed visions of itself, a nation in the throes of an identity crisis.
Most Jamaicans, including those in the intelligentsia, have missed the real significance of the Obama victory, blinded by sentiment, symbolism and our ubiquitous parochialism ("What will this mean for Jamaica?" "Mi haffi support the black man!").
Once can be accident. Twice is purpose. On November 6, the United States, with eyes wide open, deliberately re-elected a black man as its president. In my opinion, for two reasons, this is even more historic than the 2008 election.
It is widely accepted that information and communications technologies (ICT) are an ever-important enabler of sustained economic growth. Within this context, the second goal of the ICT Sector Plan of Vision 2030 is that Jamaica's national development will be advanced by widespread adoption and application of ICT.
