‘Dislike of an individual is material in politics. Someone with an unlikeable persona may be unelectable in a diverse national contest… by contrast, good governance requires honest treatment of the business issues…’ (Martin Daly, November 2020). This Daly quote is relevant when considering the recent cabinet reshuffle in the light …

Living in the pandemic required us all to rearrange our daily lives in both patient and clever ways. But it has been a long, tiring year.  As we look into the future, there is a growing realisation that Covid-19 will forever shadow us. Consequently, we must decide how much of …

The recent utterances of a UWI economist about our economy (‘dire straits’) had me scampering for a Lloyd Best quote: ‘Palpably, we lack the pegs on which to hang ongoing events, and which would allow us to convert arbitrary detail into a systematic pattern, arithmetic into algebra, the specific into …

In a week shortened by the long Easter weekend, we ended up exhausted and battered.  While our neighbours in St Vincent contend with a raging volcano, we wreck our society. They would lose their livelihoods, and some will need to be evacuated outside of the country. We are voluntarily destroying …

The Mark Twain quote ‘facts are stubborn, statistics are flexible’ seemed appropriate last week, as the news about New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s misclassification of 9,000 Covid-19 deaths broke, shattering the carefully groomed image of his pandemic achievements as a national leader.  Cuomo, ably assisted by his aides, sought to …

‘The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.’ — John Philpot Curran (1790). As a nation, we are sliding into a place of great sadness. The economy’s growth engines are shutting down, and there is a collapse of law and order. Daily, it becomes more …

Distressingly amid the national uproar over our women’s ill-treatment and murders, we gravitate to accepting a ‘macho’ solution that wreaks violence upon those who threaten us.  We should reflect on how likely this path would take us to our desired goal of safety for all, particularly our women. Will we …

‘Poor children are victims of circumstance/ In life they never really get a chance/Or have opportunities as privileged children do/ The road from the poor suburb to prison leads them/ From broken homes they are condemned to fail/ Their abusive and drug-addicted parents serving time in jail/ Their parents too …

‘When a country is in the grip of a collective passion, it becomes unanimous…the partisan spirit makes people blind, makes them deaf to justice. It dims perception of goodness, merely enables it to mistake this or that means for an absolute good. ‘One must, therefore, endeavour strenuously to protect one’s …

Over the last three decades, persons who either tell census enumerators that they have ‘no religion’ or refuse to identify with religion now represent the fastest-growing group based on faith.  As large as the Pentecostals, this group (13% of the population) draws from every other faith group. Why is this …

“The truth does not care about our governments, ideologies, religions. It will lie in wait… I once would fear the cost of truth. Now I only ask, what is the cost of lies? “[…] Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is …

Coming events cast their shadows before them. Pay attention to the news and you can generally foretell when something momentous is about to happen. Like the closing weeks of 2020.  The question, in the light of the impending outcomes, then is: what do we owe each other? Are we, who …