Rasta Government

Infrastructure, including roadworks, water supply, sewerage, and road drainage has historically been the 'feeding tree' of Jamaican politics. What the taxpayer sees on the physical surface of a project is typically a fraction of the total work done. Most is underground. This allows shoddy work to be done quickly and covered up, away from prying eyes. The road foundation layer that should be 12 inches thick, is laid 4 inches thick, only to be discovered when it fails. A building is very different. It has a superstructure and a substructure. The part you see above ground is typically a significant portion, if not most of the work done (especially for buildings of a few storeys). It's easier to measure and test after the fact.  The truth is that Jamaican construction industry is in a 'goldie-locks sweet-spot' for corruption and overpricing. It is not small enough for one or two local contractors to be shamed by repeated failed projects, eventually getting forced...

Creativity is the ability to come up with something that doesn't currently exist. Discovering new ground where a treasure may have been 'hiding in plain sight'.  Like any expedition I suppose, at its core, this is an exercise in positivity, and as with anything new, there is the risk of failure. There is little time for blame or negative thinking, and those people must be left along the way. It also involves finding new, effective and sometimes unconventional ways to clear your head. Sometimes it's brainstorming with like minded people, meditating, changing your surroundings or simply getting some rest. Meditation can be any enjoyable or repetitive activity that occupies the front of your mind, so that the back of your mind can escape and ruminate on an idea, or land on an insight. No two people achieve this in exactly the same way. Jogging, sketching, playing an instrument, or playing a thought provoking TV series  (that you've already seen) in the back...

When racism was at its peak in football, Arsene Wenger called one of his scouts with an assignment. He was told to begin a special search that might not be easy. Wenger had made a personal decision to "look around for a black boy a to give a chance". After that, whenever they would talk there was a discussion on how the search was going and what progress, if any, had been made. Out of that process a candidate emerged, but Wenger was not fully convinced. The young attacker seemed "fat and clumsy". Not to be deterred however, Wenger, who was a "good runner back then", would run with his young charge after work until gradually his speed and consistency improved. W atching from the sidelines, Wenger started noticing something else. In plays where defenders seemed to have the upper hand, and would win the ball easily; suddenly there was his 'little' guy, ahead of him with the ball, closing in on the keeper. The goals didn't take long to come after ...

Grennan was an unheralded genius, with an uncommon talent for improvisation throughout the song without distracting from the vocals or arrangement. Some even credit him with creating the 'one drop' as well as precursors to the 'disco' beat. Paul Simon flew here at the height of his fame to record Mother and Child Reunion with Grennan at Torrington Bridge. I can listen to Mother and Child or The Harder They Come ten times straight just for the drum track. He incorporates a dozen improvisations in the first few bars alone, so essentially i t's a different song every time. It's counterintuitive, since drumming, or any rhythm track, is basically there for it's predictability. I wonder how many millions have heard those songs, but never heard his genius. -RG 'Teach the youths'

No matter how wicked the criminals are, yo u can't drop them in a hole and forget them. As night follows day, when the cover is eventually removed, there will be people in that hole that shouldn't be there. Those people will never forgive you, and many have learned some dangerous things in there. The St. James murder level was something closer to a war zone overseas than a parish in Jamaica. I heard them say that the communities are finally breathing again. They can hold a little birthday or christmas party. Who's rights are we talking about? Why can't they convene a judicial panel to address the issue of the murder suspects. Explain to the judges that you have reason to believe these people are producing most of the violence. Neither the police, the government, the opposition, or the community wants to let them out. The only thing for us to decide is the method and time needed to build a case and charge them. Our criminal justice system has been starved of investme...

The first unaccompanied American pilots to fly into Russia during WWII didn’t know what to expect. They were sheepishly pulled aside by briefing officers, who told them that the flight maps they had would be of little use, and asked them to note any landmarks they saw on the way so that the mapping could be improved. After entering Russian territory, the pilots drifted off their course to gawk at the ruins of towns as they came over the horizon. They had never seen such devastation. Entire cities hammered to dust by the Germans, as well as Russia’s own ‘scorched earth’ policy. They had flown thousands of kilometers, deep into the country’s heartland, realizing something else. They had not seen a single road. The railroad and the Manych canal were there, but little else in the way of transportation infrastructure, save for horse trails and paths for agricultural vehicles. Russia would now have to recover from a brutal war with a stunted economy. The lack of a modern road network to...