Tax incentives to attract foreign investments have persisted for more than 50 years in Jamaica, without an adequate assessment of their benefits to the economy. In the absence of such analysis, the Government continues to hope for benefits with a new bill that will exempt non-residents of Jamaica who perform prescribed operations here from the payment of income tax.
What should a government do when it has little money to do anything, as has been the situation with the Government of Jamaica through most of the 50-year period of 'Independence'?
Perhaps the highest value of a rounded education is the ability to critically unmask assumptions and presuppositions commonly accepted as natural, commonsensical, unquestioned. It is the ability to grasp what others miss, to make connections between ideas, and to surgically analyse issues.
If you think any religious bigot, human-rights activist, children's advocate, or Ministry of Education official is going to get an apology from me for saying that the administration of Cornwall College punked out, you have me mistaken for the tailors who cut cloth.
As everybody knows, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is now here at the country's request to negotiate a new loan agreement after the P.J. Patterson administration told the Fund ta-ta in 1995.
The Olympics are now over, and the performance of Jamaica's athletes was tremendous. They brought glory to the nation once again. We must acknowledge that our athletes made it to the Olympics because of their work ethic and dedication. We must commend all of them for that - even those who did not live up to our high expectations.
The Islamic fanatics and extremists who murdered the United States ambassador to Libya as well as other embassy officials, and who carried out violent protests in several Arab countries recently, are not the only enemies of free speech in our world.
So, Jesus might've been 'married' or, at least, might've had a 'wife'. OMG! What a religious disaster! Can you imagine? This facilitates all sorts of blasphemy by irreverent mortals like me.
On behalf of the conscientious parents and socially concerned individuals in this country, I apologise to the nation for the gutlessness of the board of Cornwall College for the apology to I-am-not-sure-whom.
Early in the New Year, this newspaper reported that psychiatrist Frederick Hickling and research partner Vanessa Paisley had discovered that some 40 per cent of Jamaicans have some kind of personality disorder.
Below is the keynote address by Lt Col (Ret'd) Linton Gordon, attorney-at-law, to the Kiwanis Foundation of Jamaica at the Frank Melhado Awards on September 9.
We have all heard, proverbially, about Mr or Mrs Ten Per Cent (anecdotally, a politician or a bureaucrat), who takes 10 per cent off the top for any deal he/she is in a position to influence.
The United Nations General Assembly gets under way this week with renewed fears of a fresh war in the Middle East, and just a few days after violent anti-American protests in the Arab world over an incendiary YouTube video insulting the Prophet Muhammad.
The recent furore surrounding government Member of Parliament Damion Crawford and his allocation of resources in his East Rural St Andrew constituency has resurrected the debate over the use of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and the role of good political representatives.
My favourite laws of chemistry are those by Boyle and Charles regarding the interrelationships between pressure (P), temperature (T) and volume (V) for a unit mass of any gas, with the equation PV = RT indelibly written in my mind. The equation asserts that if the temperature of any gas is kept constant, volume will increase as pressure decreases and vice versa.
You might recall that I complained in a column last month of the "increasingly schizoid nature of American 'culture wars'" - that these days, supporters of the two major US parties "live on entirely different planets, fantasising to themselves in disconnected parallel universes" in which they "rarely actually communicate with each other...
Quite recently in this paper, Martin Henry engaged in a useful piece of legislative reflection and rightfully highlighted areas where, as a nation, we need to look seriously at aspects of our law that might be in need of reformation.
It's been nine months on. What will Mama P deliver to party faithful, the beloved poor, and the rest of the country at today's public session of the first annual conference of the People's National Party (PNP) after winning the December 2011 general election?
Is it just me that finds that our evangelical church services - and, in particular, funeral services - are the truest form of excellent Jamaican theatre? Where else does one find the drama and richness of our culture and what we are as a people? The colour, the rhythm, music and passion are all to be found on such occasions.
