Commentary

Last Friday, as Jamaicans here at home and an almost equal number living abroad paused to recognise the 48th anniversary of Independence, it may have dawned on them that we are just two years from the landmark 50th anniversary. I am sure there will be no shortage of commentary on our failures and the apportioning of blame as we approach this milestone, and that is to be expected in our rambunctious political culture.

Last Sunday, this newspaper committed its front page, its editorial column and fully five other pages of its publication to a project it called a 'state of emergency for agriculture'. While I found most of the contributions very interesting and constructive, I nonetheless find the basic idea extremely strange.

'Do you love Jamaica?' was the question asked by the online poll in an obvious bid to measure the pride and love that Jamaicans have for their country in this the 48th year of nationhood. This is a valid question and, although the results have not yet been posted, it is bound to get many people counting the ways in which they love or despise this country.

With eager enthusiasm, I took the journey to Denbigh and there were great directional signs from the major road to the venue. My enthusiasm began to wane when three minutes after leaving the last sign which said straight ahead to major entrances, we were faced with standstill traffic for 10 minutes and not knowing which way to proceed.

In 1978, a young policeman told me that when he and colleagues went out on patrol, an extra gun is usually taken.

People like Betty Ann Blaine are irritatingly good for democracies.They ignore, or are oblivious to the jeers and tend not to be constrained by conventional wisdom, and sometimes cause even those of us who initially snicker...

To be fair, the Golding administration has never outrightly repudiated its salary contract with public-sector employees.Instead, it declared its inability to pay, then unilaterally placed the agreement into abeyance and froze salaries at their 2008-2009...

THE OLDER teacher in the third-form class circa 1977 looked away from the blackboard, saw one of his younger colleagues in an advanced state of pregnancy - her third in as many academic years - ambling across...

No fear of giving fingerprints - I know absolutely nothing about the law, but in response to attorney-at-law Mr Bert Samuels' concern about individuals who were being fingerprinted during the recent state of emergency...

THE PREDICAMENTS in which we constantly find ourselves - the slippery slope of crime and violence, our levels of poverty, the poor state of our economy (which is showing signs of improvement), the decadence, the indiscipline...

We always had our doubts about Investment and Commerce Minister Karl Samuda's ambitious project for the development, with Chinese money, of 1,000 acres of land in the St Catherine plains into a kind of import/export business district, which he branded...