Editorial

By the time most people reach this end of the year they don’t want to waste time thinking about our dysfunctional institutions or diabolical politicians; they just want to commit themselves to the pleasures of the season (presuming, of course, they have access to at least some wherewithal to enable them to do so).

At a glance, the UN vote to condemn the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel seemed to have almost as many interpretations as interpreters.

“Of 56.4 million global deaths in 2015, 39.5 million, or 70%, were due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

Move over cocaine, heroin, marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamine, the latest illegal drug activity is upwards of $200 billion, seemingly easier for the criminally-minded to navigate and more difficult to detect.

Last Saturday night a large crowd gathered at the Demerara Park, which is actually a parking lot during the day for the Banks DIH head office, located across the street.

Acting Police Commissioner David Ramnarine has issued a somewhat convoluted media release making reference to, among other things, the peculiarity of two plainclothes policemen, in turn, surreptitiously occupying positions at the media desk in the Parliament during a sitting of the National Assembly.

Nothing said by the government and its senior functionaries over the last week has succeeded in convincing the discerning public that there was good reason to keep secret the US$18m received as a signing bonus from ExxonMobil. 

Whoever thought in our lifetimes that we would live to see a dust-up in Parliament which was indistinguishable from a rum shop brawl?

Two years after a hard-fought campaign successfully ensured that the US government would treat the Internet as a utility, the US Federal Communications Commission has reversed its stance on net neutrality.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Tuesday launched its report on the State of the World’s Children (SOWC) with specific reference to the effect of the digital world and the internet on the children of the world.

Between Tuesday, November 7 and Monday, December 11, three young women were brutally murdered, and their bodies tossed aside, much like the trash that is mindlessly strewn all around.

Last year, on Thursday, December 8, a forty-three year-old fisherman left his residence to go “in search of a boat, hoping to catch a sail,” and make some money for the approaching holiday season.

These past three weeks have witnessed the opening of two of the largest supermarkets ever to be launched locally, and there is a sense in which the officially acknowledged slowdown in the economy notwithstanding, the two multi-million dollar investments point to evidence of an encouraging measure of local investor confidence, never mind the apprehension reflected in the post-budget responses by the country’s major business support organizations. 

President Granger must immediately accept responsibility for his government’s deceiving of the public on the signing bonus from ExxonMobil which was transmitted to the administration sometime in 2016.

Nothing illustrates the utter disorganization of the government more than the way the recent lay-offs in the sugar industry were handled.

In 1991 Anita Hill became a household name when she put forward several disturbing claims of workplace harassment by US Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Amidst the continuing distress being felt in the sugar industry, Guyana has still not yet developed any kind of comprehensive agricultural policy and strategy that can see this country making use of its considerable acreage of available arable land suitable for large-scale commercial ventures.

It is heartrending and perplexing that in 2017, people in their 70s and 80s still have to spend four hours and more at post offices around the country every month to encash pension vouchers.

The Kiwi bird is a real odd ball. It is classified as a member of the Apterygidae family and a member of the ratite group, a set of large flightless birds. 

A full year and more after the then Minister of Social Protection Volda Lawrence had announced that with effect from October 2016 workers employed by the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) the majority Russian-owned bauxite company would be exempt from taxes on overtime and premium hours worked, the management of the company has finally agreed to leave the monies where they belong, (with the workers’ wages) rather than disdainfully brush aside the directive of a Minister of Government and remit the deducted amounts to the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA).