Roleli Speaks

I am very concerned about public health in Jamaica. In a recent article in the Sunday Gleaner entitled, Tests Prove Unsafe Tissue Here , revealed that tests on toilet paper imported into Jamaica should that they had higher than acceptable bacteria content.   This has resulted in some 3 container loads being returned or destroyed. However, this is not enough. The public needs need more information. I fully agree with the following quote from the article.  "The next stage is that the Customs should go on the shelves of the supermarkets and the hotels to test those products because the public is at great risk," suggested Prakash Vaswani, one of the country's leading manufacturers of toilet paper. In addition my biggest question is which brands are these? Why can’t we know the brands? Why the secrecy? We need to move to society where the importer /distributer -   Acknowledges there is a problem - Names the brands and the batch - States what corrective action is ...

When Buju Banton was arrested in December 2009 on cocaine related charges, thoughts of holding "Before the dawn concert" was probably the farthest thing on his mind. In fact he was already on tour of the United States at the time. His trial ended in deadlock in September 2010, a new trial was re-ordered. All this time Buju Banton, or Mark Myrie as his mother Olga Myrie named him, remained locked up in jail steadfast professing his innocence. Fast forward to late 2010 and with bail granted, thanks to the assistance of Stephen Marley, the idea of the "Before the Dawn" Concert is born. January 16, 2011 is the date and Gargamel Music clearly has made to effort the promote and make this concert a success. With tickets apparrently all sold out , and persons on twitter talking about lines at the gate before 4:00 p.m., persons that though have a ticket will have to find alternate means of watching the show. According to pictures taken by Jamaicans.com writers the lines h...

Prime Minister of Jamaica,Bruce Golding, should have asked Al Miller to step down as head of the the National Transformation Programme(NTP) which is operated out of his office. Bruce Golding after all that he has been through he should not have need any prompting. However this is not the only another misstep by Mr. Golding There is still the matter of whether Joseph Hibbert should be sitting in parliament. Mr. Joseph Hibbert was mention in a Mable and Johnson Court case where that company was charged in the UK for bribing officials in Jamaica and other countries in order to 'build bridges'. Investigations by the Contractor General has resulted in the matter being turned over to the DPP to determine if he is to be charged. However, there appears to be insufficient evidence to proceed in a court of law, at least at this time. Mr. Hibbert proclaims his innocence but was asked to resign as Minister of State. On the Opposition side there is still that matter of Kern Spencer. Charg...

The Jamaica Gleaner is reporting that Harold Crooks has been granted bail. I find this very interesting. It must be remembered that initially in March 2010, it was reported that this gentleman had said he had no intention of handing himself over to the Jamaican police. He was later captured by the police after he jumped into the waters of the Caribbean Sea after being seen aboard a cruise ship docked in Ocho Rios Jamaica. Amazingly, he has now been granted bail. I would love to hear the conditions of bail. Pity the story failed to provide the relevant information. Harold Crooks granted bail Update: The conditions of bail are he is to surrender his travel documents, report to the police station three(3) times per week and not to make any contact with the complainant.

Prominent Jamaican preacher Al Miller is now in apparent trouble with the law in Jamaica after he was 'caught' transporting Christopher 'Dudus' Coke. Al Miller claims he was carrying Dudus to the United States Embassy. According to the Gleaner he has now turned himself in to the police. While I will not swear for Al Miller, I believed he blundered but until proven otherwise, I believe his motives where clear; hand over Christopher 'Dudus' Coke to those that wanted him, safe and sound. I might be shown to be wrong and that is no problem. I am not the least troubled that Dudus was disguised , furthermore the disguise was useless as he was easily identified by the police when the car driven by Al Miller was allegedly stopped at Ferry St. Catherine. Interestingly, it is the United States that wants Christopher 'Dudus' Coke and the Jamaica has been asked to arrest him. As apart of the extradition treaty, a warrant has been executed for his a...

A message to be careful of deadly water is what greeted me this morning. I awoke and after my mediations turned to see what was in the news. Turning to the Gleaner, my number one source for Jamaican news, I found the message being sent out to be careful of the trucked water. Now Jamaica was called Xayamaca meaning land of wood and water. However parts of Jamaica has not been the land of water in recent times especially in the Kingston and St. Andrew area. The of lack of water in the piped system caused by a severe drought has seen an increase in 'trucked water'. The questions on my person's lips were where was this water coming from and what was the quality of the water. Not even bathing water standard? The Gleaner provided some answers to those questions by providing locations and testing the water quality. The results seem to point to high bacterial content at many of the sources. The bacteria content of potable water is suppose to be zero and bathable water, 100 MPN (mos...

Former prime minster of Jamaica, Edward Seaga is generally known to be a serious man. However this article in the Jamaica Gleaner today shed a little light on the other humorous side of the man. Here is a snippet It was Seaga, however, who, in theatrical terms, 'brought down both sides of the House' when in response to an announcement of a steep increase in import duties on motor vehicles in the early 1970s, he turned to the chair and asked: "Mr Speaker, is that what this government means when it says it is putting this country back on its feet?" For the younger readers, and those not Jamaican, to get some context as you read the rest of the article, Former Prime Minister of Jamaica Micheal Manley is Mike, and was the Prime Minister before and after Edward Seaga served in that office. Read the rest here... When Seaga Brought Down The House

Twitter has been down for at least 30 minutes. I was following updates on the situation in Haitiincluding an aftershock that struck Haiti at 6.03 a.m EST this morning. Before twitter went down users on Twitter.com were reporting a smaller tremor in Haiti Pingdom reports that twitter has been down for close to 40 minutes at the time of writing. Has a huge rush to see what happening in Haiti caused this or is there a bigger problem? At 7:20 a.m. Twitter remains down, uptime for today is now running at 86%, which is not good.

The tragic earthquake in Haiti has once again highlighted the usefulness of Twitter. In the minutes that followed the earthquake the first voice from Haiti was over the Twitter streams. It its not only Twitter that has stood out the ability to 'tweet', i.e. send messages, using the smartphones such as the IPhone, Blackberry, Nokia and others. What this has done is allowed not only text but images to be tweeted in seconds. The phone has become powerful too. Useful Twitter Users Going back to Haiti, there have have been a some twitter users whose updates have proven useful. These accounts I have found helpful in following events in Haiti http://twitter.com/firesideint http://twitter.com/Fonkoze http://twitter.com/Louisoxfam http://twitter.com/carelpedre http://twitter.com/troylivesay http://twitter.com/fredodupoux http://twitter.com/RAMhaiti A quick search of Haiti turned up users retweeting, i.e. repeating, updates provided by those users and in effect they quickly became the cr...

Since Sunday, since Jamaica's international reggae artiste Buju Banton's arrest by the DEA for involvement in a cocaine drug deal, speculation has been rife. Given his run in with the homosexual community, some wondered if it was a set up by members of the community. Other persons are simply in shocked that Banton could be mixed up with cocaine and not marijuana(weed). The interesting thing is, according to DEA someone tipped them off about the Buju's interest in purchasing the 'stuff'. According to the Gleaner they have the tape and another newspaper expounds on how Buju and his co-accused got caught. The interesting thing about this was a few years ago he did a song "Driva" that ironically seem to be about drug running and the Driver was told to deliver a package and not to stop at all. This time the 'Driva' got caught. For those who have read the affidavit related to another case in Jamaica there is a interesting similarity. In both case the...

Men 100M Gold and Bronze http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By1JQFxfLMM 200M Gold & 5th http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z3UEL2xCO8&feature=fvst 4x100 Gold http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znn7JfM7AKM Women 100M Gold Silver http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fbKeu44pk&feature=related 4x100 Gold http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZuFNS9ydI4 400m hurdles Gold and 4th http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_VIuH0RWX4 400M Silver and 4th http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksOwY4CvCBQ 200M Silver 6th and 7th http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGaIhRjTP6U 4x400 Silver http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i3RYKS1I1Q 100m hurdles Gold and Bronze http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dXsW7HjM_k

In last few weeks the Gleaner has been rolling out quite a number of blogs. One of the latest blogs was Science and Technology. The author's name give as 'parris' had an interesting topic last week, Old Media vs New Media. In he looked at how technology how technology , in this case twitter had change he coverage of events. He event comment that is despite his own views on blogs, here was he writing one. With Micheal Jackson's death, coverage again was an Issue. While the major TV stations BBC, CNN, Fox and news papers like NYTimes could not provide or confirm his death, a website TMZ. Com was on top of the situation from get go and never let up Referenced TV misses out as gossip website TMZ reports Michael Jackson's death first (LA TIMES) OldMedia vs New Media (Gleaner Blogs)

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, When the road you're trudging seems all up hill, When the funds are low and the debts are high, And you want to smile, but you have to sigh, When care is pressing you down a bit, Rest if you must, but don't you quit. Life is queer with its twists and turns, As everyone of us sometimes learns, And many a failure turns about When he might have won had he stuck it out; Don't give up, though the pace seems slow - You might succeed with another blow. Often the goal is nearer than It seems to a faint and faltering man, Often the struggler has given up When he might have captured the victor's cup. And he learned too late, when the night slipped down, How close he was to the golden crown. Success is failure turned inside out - The silver tint of the clouds of doubt - And you never can tell how close you are, It may be near when it seems afar; So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit - It's when things seem worst that yo...

Cable and Wiresless have re-branded and they now have a new name, LIME. All I can say it has already left a sour taste in my mouth.  We will now have to wait and see what sugar and water can be added and how that the mixture will be just right. If LIME fails then it will be a sour one at that.

I am stunned! I just cant beleive it. As at October 1, 2008 the Houston Chroncile on their website is reporting that at least 333 persons still appear to be missing after Hurricane IKE. Hurricane Ike hit Texas, USA on the morning of September 13, 2008 and over 2 weeks later Galveston and some of the worst hit areas at just about receiving electricity. As bad as that might be to have over 3oo persons still missing is real real sad. My sympathies go out the families and friends who are missing their loved ones. The next time a hurricane threaten, remember to look out for your neighbour head the warnings and help save a life.

If the allegation is true then things are bad in Jamaica. The fact that the cop was raped and raped while on duty is bad that is  one thing but it is the apparent response, or lack thereof,  from the supervisors that is proving shocking although given the Jamaican reality  we should not be surprised. News of this Police rape hit the new-stands, claiming that the apparent victim could not get a listening ear from her superiors and therefore had turned to the press. The systems to deal with complaints have fallen apart. Every one who as a road to fixed , faced with ridiculous JPS bills and now a cop, victim of alleged rape, has to turning to press bawling out, "We want Justice!". The is a real sad story.

With the prelimnaries and quarterfinals of the 100M out of the way, we now have a fair assesment of how things will look tomorrow. By the time the 100m winner is known, the finalists would have run 4 races in roughly a 36-hour span, Thursday night to Saturday Morning, Jamaican time, therefore conservation of energy will be key. We will keep that in mind in our analysis This is where Bolt looks just as awesome as lightning. Running in the quarter-finals in heat 4, with respected 100M runners such as Olympic Silver medalist (2004) Frances Obikwelu (Por) and Darvis Patton (USA), Bolt got a good start and looking to the left and looking to right after about 50-60 metres simply strolled to victory in 9.92 seconds. Reviewing the action on the big screen after the race, he flashed a simle applauded his effort and off he went, the sign of a confident and relaxed man on a mission. Athletes to watch include Richard Thompson (T&T), and the Churandy Martina (Netherland Antilles) as both stopp...

When I heard that Douglas Chambers, former chairman of the JUTC, had been shot, I hoped beyond hope that he would survived. When I heard that he was dead I was deeply hurt. Working for a dollar($1) because he believed in his country and believed that soon or later people would see that what he was doing was for the best, Douglas Chambers was cut down by cold hearted criminals.  To honour the hard work that he was doing to correct the problems at the JUTC, I believe that everything that was in the agreement that was to be signed should go ahead. There must be no turning back and redundancies should proceed as outlined. I am heartened by the report in the Jamaica Gleaner, No Halt to JUTC redundancy plans,  the Minister in charge and the board has expressed there commitment in carrying the process forward. Here is a good letter which I pretty much full endorse. Here is a quote  The chairman of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), Dougie Chambers, was trying his best to clean up the s...

 This morning the Jamaica Gleaner's headline points to a story where over 3,000 persons turned up in response to a Job Recruitment Drive put on by the Corrections Services Depart( CSD ). The CSD is seeking 200 persons and are having of recruiting over a 2 day period. Today I drove past the recruitment location and minutes to 7 the crows was already gather for day 2. Amazing, this is supposedly Jamaica a country where unemployment is very low, the lowest it has been in how many years, yet every time the Jamaica Defense force ( JDF) , CSD and any other body has a recruitment drive they are overrun by applications. All the best to the successful applicants and I hope something turns up for the others that will be denied.