To avoid mishaps, the London Underground has long provided “Mind the Gap” visual and auditory warnings to passengers to be careful when crossing the gap between the station platforms and the trains. Is this relevant to The Bahamas? It should be. We would do well to identify and mind the gap or gaps that can […]
Definitions of “national interest” appear to be as numerous and varied as grains of sand on a beach. In the fast-paced, heavily contested, climate, terrorist, arms-race, greed-challenged 21st century, the “national interest” is a political and personal football that is being kicked about to the point of irreversible deflation. In the national interest game, the […]
I read recently with delight that the Bahamas’ Public Hospitals Board (PHB) had invited the renowned Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM), a formidable name in health care, to explore the possibility of partnership, which would bring to bear JHM’s “wherewithal, experience, talent and resources to elevate the operations, infrastructure and environment of the public hospital institutions […]
My family on both sides were out island people—Long Island, Eleuthera and Cat Island. The island I got to know best was the latter. My maternal grandfather, George T. Smith, an Eleuthera man and a headmaster, was posted at Port Howe, Cat Island for 17 years. Over time, my elder sister and I would be […]
In The Bahamas, for the first time since the global financial meltdown of 2008, we are beginning to see the first buds of real forward movement in development programmes, particularly in areas where it has been lacking in crucial areas of our economy and society. None but the most giddily optimistic could have said that […]
I was honoured to be a guest on a new radio show on 2019’s International Women’s Day (IWD). I was even more gratified to be in the fine company of the woman host and the two other guests—another woman and a man, all of whom were highly knowledgeable and engaged. Better still, it was clear […]
Did you ever play the board game “Snakes & Ladders”? I did. What I remember best about it is feeling exhilarated at one moment and teeth-grinding frustration the next. You see, the object of the play, as with all board games, is to get from the start to the destination before all other players and […]
Evolution, transition, conversion, transformation, revision, alteration, adaptation, modification—all these are words that speak of change—changing from one situation, form, state, system, method to another. We do so by an infinite variety of ways—making new laws, amending existing ones, effecting a revolution in mindset for the most part. If we break it down to bare bones, […]
Just last week Japanese Olympics minister, Yoshitaka Sakurada, was forced to apologize for being three minutes late to a parliamentary meeting. According to news sources, the minister’s lateness was not well received by his colleague ministers, who considered the act “disrespectful.” While Sakurada is no stranger to controversy, the public nature of what seems to […]
Failed state—Lately, this has been a widely held view of the Republic of Haiti, whether overtly expressed or slightly sugar-coated to mitigate the harshness of the bitter pill. I had long been mourning the ever-increasing decompensation of our sister state, but on 12 January 2010, I wept openly. I wept again at the devastation of […]
If history, heritage and culture are food for the nourishment of the intellect and definition of identity, I would say that these assets of The Bahamas are suffering grave malnutrition. This essay is intended to be a call for a capital campaign to preserve, enhance and bring to deserving prominence a treasure of Bahamian heritage—The […]
Last week the government debated a new resolution to convey 1.2 acres of land for the purpose of its Access to Affordable Housing program. These new lots in the Fox Hill area are a new addition to the program which has shifted the government away from building turnkey homes to selling affordable service lots and […]
Is it better in The Bahamas? Although Bahamians can produce remarkable creativity and generosity when you least expect it, that is a question that burned deep in my consciousness in view of the 2019 cinematographic black eye that Netflix delivered to our corporate face, which was already swelling from Europe’s recent sucker punches designed to […]
Change is both the generous benefactor and the implacable tyrant of the 21st century, enthroned by the technological revolution that took an unshakeable hold in the 1980s and has infiltrated every aspect of our personal lives, whether we have given permission or not. The burning question every country, every people, every enterprise and individual must […]
In the last week, two television streaming platforms have released documentaries claiming to detail the real true (crime) story behind the failed Fyre Festival. In case you are unfamiliar, Fyre Festival was the brainchild of millennial entrepreneur Billy McFarland in partnership with well-known rapper JaRule. The 2017 festival was originally supposed to be held on […]
Reading the newspapers and listening to the occasional radio talk show in the weeks since 2019 boldly emerged from the womb of time has made me think that it might have been better if New Year had remained where it was and ossified. We mortals in many parts of the world, including The Bahamas had […]
When giving interviews, there are few things politicians relish more than talking about things that we should all agree are bad—things like mass genocide, oil spills, and rape, for example. But because we live in a place that, from time-to-time, struggles to make sense of itself that is not the case in The Bahamas. On […]
In the heat of the 2017 general election campaign allegations of corruption and mismanagement by Cabinet Ministers in the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) were ubiquitous. Among these allegations were rumors of a lingering menace in Grand Bahama. A PLP operative had taken hold of a well-known government program by the neck and singlehandedly choked off […]
