In Focus

This is the comment made by attorney-at-law and columnist Gordon Robinson writing in The Sunday Gleaner of September 10. He then launched a tirade against Peter Bunting of the People's National Party (PNP), who dared to suggest that Jamaica should, and a PNP administration would, go after the Dudus co-conspirators.

LIME Jamaica Chairman Christopher Dehring and Managing Director Garry Sinclair have the unenviable task of trying to turn around a company which flourished in a monopoly market but has floundered miserably in a competitive environment.

If small firms are to fulfil their mandate as creators of jobs and wealth for the masses, Government, as well as multilateral institutions, and stronger private-sector institutions, must adopt a coherent set of policies, including managerial training and creative ways to provide collateral for loans. These will ensure increased lending to small firms while reducing risks to the banks.

It's 10 years after those fateful September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America which claimed just under 3,000 lives and which traumatised and horrified Americans and outraged the civilised world. Ten years on, the US Congressional Research Service estimates that the subsequent Afghanistan and Iraq wars have cost the US$1.3 trillion.

As necessary as they are, nobody wants the cemetery, the garbage dump, the sewage-treatment plant, or the abattoir, in their community. Nobody should want a failing school there either. And, unlike the other NIMBY (not in my backyard) items, the failing school is no necessity.

Ian Boyne, in his In Focus column of August 20, agonised openly about the cavalier treatment the People's National Party (PNP) gave to the idea of a Progressive Agenda. He thinks there is nothing progressive about the agenda as the ideas put forward are devoid of the epistemological and philosophical underpinnings of progressive politics as an ideological movement.

The Gleaner headline of August 31 proclaimed 'Shaw's shocker', and the article, with other elements of the press, expressed concern that the Supplementary Estimates added $2.1 billion to the Budget, reflecting a net increase of $4.4 billion in recurrent expenditure and a net reduction of $2.3 billion in capital expenditure.

As the complaints about power company, the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) crescendo and pressure mounts on the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), it's like a case of déjà vu. Just a few years ago, Belize went through a very similar experience - a series of events that began with a flood of complaints about the monopoly power company, Belize Electricity Limited (BEL), and ended with the nationalisation of the company...

Egbert Ethelred Brown was essentially an evangelist. A righteous man from the days of his youth, he was first an Episcopalian; then feeling unfulfilled by that doctrine, he embraced the America-based Unitarian Association although it had no church here. He built that organisation in Jamaica, and, in 1912, became the first black man to be ordained a Unitarian minister.

Dudus was saying nothing we in Jamaica never knew when he pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the United States (US) last week. In fact, we know those were relatively petty crimes compared to the atrocities and barbarism which characterised his ruthless rule over that incredibly monstrous and murderous Shower Posse.

The economy is slipping again just when some growth was reported for the first two quarters of the year. That growth followed 13 consecutive quarters without growth. Now, we hear that the next quarter might report flat performance, at best. Jamaica's team had secretly hurried off to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in August.

Jamaica has, within the past year or two, asserted a renewed commitment to prudence, discipline and accountability in its fiscal affairs. The specific vehicle of this renewed commitment is the February 2010 standby borrowing agreement (SBA) with the Inter-national Monetary Fund (IMF).