The informal economy: killing me softly with its love

Tags

Human relationships, Informal economy, Jamaica

I’ve often thought how many Jamaicans survive because of the informal economy. Working with little or no capital; little or no real costs; income that is not often visible to be taxed; operations without rules and regulations, etc. For many, especially those who have few marketable skills (including a good level of education), it’s the only route to survival. So, whether it’s a vendor stall, or selling steering wheel covers, or just hustling with whatever and wherever, it’s what puts bread on the table and food in the mouth for many. Without stereotyping all that is done informally, we know that such an environment has allowed those in a weak economy to do better than would otherwise be the case. So, for instance, the domestic worker who gets a few days work for cash and manages to see children through school and on to university poses a huge conundrum. Should we seek to curb her options and get her into the formal sector and all its constraints, knowing that doing so may be a hinderance to the good that her practices permit for her family?

Measuring economic activity is not just an exercise in getting things right, it’s also about making sure that policies can be directed at the best characterization of the realities of life.

Why am I thinking of this?

I’ve just made some batches of mango jam, that’s why!

One large mango tree is shedding about 20 mangoes a day and as much as I love eating them, it’s hard to keep up with that flow. Bring in the family to help eat. Still behind. Add mangoes donated. Solution? Preserve and protect. In my case, put them into a blend with water and lime juice and make jam. So, pots got boiling and I managed to make four batches, and turned out 15 jars (of different size). 

The benefit of production are that the volume of mangoes goes down dramatically: 15 jars take up barely one shelf in a fridge, while the equivalent of 4 large mangoes per jar would take up much more space.

Now, I have made the jam for fun, but friends soon got word and fun turned into gifts. Two friends have begged me to sell them some. I had not thought about becoming a mango vendor; maybe, next year.

But, my generosity has done what for Jamaica?

Well, nothing, apparently. GDP will not measure my activity at home, unless by some quirk I get caught in a household survey. My mangoes were free inputs, so no sales show up. I give away the output, so no payments are made, no revenue is generated and no income flows to me. I bought limes. I was given ginger. My use of water and gas will show up, as will the extra work of the fridge, so my utility bill will be a bit higher and STATIN may wonder about the utility consumption spike in June. Hi, guys! 🙂

Friends will send bearers to collect their gifts, so we may see some increase in GDP through service activities. I may exchange some jam for chutney, or other fruit, or some other item I want or need and someone has in abundance. Barter is alive and well. But, the big picture of all this is nowhere to be seen.

Jamaica is better off, if I can be so bold. My jam tastes good! Friends are having better breakfasts and lunches, as far as I can see.

Mango Jam made by @dennisgjones 💜
This is lunch today. Thanks Dennis👍 pic.twitter.com/DiLFnnpoEU

— Carlene Sinclair (@iamcarlenes) June 22, 2017

But, our economy looks stagnant, as ever.

This scene is one that has been repeated for decades and is why Jamaica is a conundrum. Things may be booming in some clear social and economic senses, but never seen in any significant macroeconomic statistics.

Thoughts on Minister of Tourism’s comments about media reporting of crime

I did not hear Mr. Bartlett’s comments about media reporting of crime and its potential impact on Jamaica’s tourism, but read reports in The Gleaner and The Observer. The Gleaner reported: ‘”No one wants to wake up and see a front-page story in our newspapers stating, ‘Jamaica bleeds’,” Bartlett told delegates attending the 56th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston yesterday.’  The Minister argued that there needs to be a partnership between media and tourism, Bartlett warned that the news being put out has the potential to influence the choices of consumers. (As truisms, this one has little need for thought.) Clearly, the tourism sector is, and should be, concerned: “The threat of crime has the ability to erode ‘Destination Jamaica’ and cut off the tourism sector at the knees. We cannot allow this plague to continue to grow – new approaches must be explored with urgency,” JHTA President Omar Robinson told members during the AGM.

But, the Minister chiding the media for putting crime on the front page, ignores more than a few realities about crime as we see it unfolding in Jamaica. While we may not want to see the ‘Jamaica bleeds’ headlines, the truth is Jamaica is bleeding badly, and currently with little sign that this will be curbed. That’s the reality of those who live here, and if tourists get a sense of that, I see no problem. Realistically, many tourists do not get swayed by the news they see (if at all) plastered on local media. If anything, they get their impressions from friends and relatives who have visited previously, from their diplomatic representatives (jaundiced views and all) and from the reporting of their national media, which tend to focus on negative news, in part fed by what local media report, but also fed by their interests and other sources. Whether any of that sways tourist travel choices is a matter of guess-work. Many who travel to Jamaica, including to work rather than play, do so in blissful ignorance.

But, let me put the Minister’s concerns into perspective, because I happened to be in our tourism Mecca over the weekend.

I was in Montego Bay over the weekend, watching a marquee new event, with the PGA Latino America hosting a professional golf tournament in Jamaica for the first time in decades. The 144 players in the field were mainly from the USA, but represented 21 countries, including Jamaica. Let’s assume that each would have been affected by their brief experiences in Jamaica, and represented at least another tourist visit in the near future.

They stayed in hotels near to Cinnamon Hill/Rose Hall and enjoyed the hospitality in and around there, and the ‘face’ shown by the many Jamaicans who helped make the event a success–school children as volunteers, caddies, workers at the golf course and hotel, mainly.

Tourists, of all walks, deal with the realities they face

Young Jamaican school children gave many positive impressions of the island

However, even though they could not venture far from their hotels, they got a good taste of Jamaica, warts and all. They travelled from the airport, at the very least and saw real Jamaica for 10 km.

Of note, my oldest daughter was in Jamaica at the same time. Unlike the golfers, she’s been to Jamaica many times before, and has more than a little idea of what the island is like and has been like over several decades. She barely read a newspaper or watched or listened to local news stations. In that regard, she is like many a foreign visitor: local media isn’t the main source of news. But, her eyes and theirs saw much of Jamaica in a short time. What did they see?

They saw road blocks with policemen carrying semi-automatic rifles along the north coast highway and dressed in bullet-proof vests, looking into the trunks of stopped cars. It was not clear what they were searching for, but I suggested to my daughter that it was likely guns and drugs.  We presumed it was not to take selfies with the passing motorists. They saw tourists being ‘propositioned’ by locals at local eateries, not a crime, but an often unpleasant experience. They saw ‘kamikaze’ taxi drivers weaving at speed along the road, past the police station at Coral Gardens. They saw motorcyclists, often in sleeveless vests and without helmets racing along the road, some doing wheelies.

Now, is Mr. Bartlett going to suggest to the police that they should stop their crime fighting efforts on the highway near the airport, because tourists’ might get a bad message about local crime and their concerns trump our needs to address gun-running and drug trafficking? We can keep crime off the front page, but can it be kept off the streets? Maybe, the press put the emphasis on the wrong issue, but most should know that it’s the reality that needs to change not the reporting of it.

Is Mr. Bartlett going to discuss with taxi operators around Montego Bay that they should act like more-responsible road users, not least because they may kill a tourist? My wife drove up from Kingston on Saturday and her one comment was how she was terrified of the driving she encountered once she left the N-S highway. Guess what? Many tourists have to put up with this same careless approach to other people’s lives every time they set foot in Jamaica! We know our roads can be the scene of much mayhem, and we have recent cases of JUTA buses crashing and tourists being killed. (Tourists were suing Royal Caribbean Cruises earlier this year or not providing a safe excursion.)

Is Mr. Bartlett going to enter communities on the north coast and discuss with them the need to treat people they think are foreigners as nothing more than cash pots? Why should anyone visit a local eatery like Scotchies and have to deal with ‘You can leave a little something with me?’ from one of the counter servers?

Strangely, over the weekend, no one had consulted the weather, which tried to spoil things several times with lighting and heavy rain. Those natural events were as much reality as the crime that affects much of Jamaica, especially the Montego Bay Area. Is Mr. Bartlett going exhort a higher power to think about not spoiling the tourist experience in Jamaica?

I drove through downtown Montego Bay on Sunday morning to visit an aunt, and was again astonished how this potential gem of a city could have been made into somewhere to attract tourists, rather than the sort of place were locals and of course foreigners are less likely to tread. Illegal vendors lined the sidewalk, even under the signs say ‘No vending’.

An incidental photograph, in downtown Montego Bay, as I waited in traffic. Tourists don’t need headlines to make assessments.

No one could easily navigate the pathway. Who would want to come to Jamaica to have a taste of that, even on a quiet Sunday? We know the madness is multiplied many times during the workdays. If we want to massage the image of the country for the benefit of visitors, we can start with places daily encounters may occur.

When we lived in Barbados, we got the impression that the authorities there tried to massage crime reporting to lessen the negative impressions for tourists. However, crime was escalating and while tourists were often not the targets, when they were–as in the case of a Canadian woman attacked on a beach, who later died–it was foreign reporting of incidents that local media tried to play lightly that got the attention of foreign visitors. The matter quickly became a diplomatic incident and cost the Barbadian taxpayer as local police had to travel abroad to deal with the investigation.

If Mr. Bartlett wants to really see a partnership involving tourism, then I would suggest that he address many things in his direct portfolio that may give tourists cause for concern. I think he has plenty to focus on, rather than thinking that the local media is the source of things that may cast Jamaica in a bad light.

Admitted, we are not a large, mature country, but looking at them we can see that the reporting of realities is what gives them part of their strength. UK and French papers are not going to keep from their front pages the horrendous terrorist attacks that have occurred in their capitals, or news of escalating local crime. Both countries depend massively on foreign visitors. The reality is that tourists want to know how you deal with incidents, not that you try to suppress their reporting. That’s what keeps people calm and confident enough to want to visit, stay, and come again.

Literally speaking: some glaring examples

Just to put my literacy concerns into context, just glance at how many of our informal businesses struggle (pictures taken this mooring, while waiting in traffic in Grants (or is it Grant’s?) Pen, and also how it seems to permeate higher levels. Don’t die laughing! 🙂 

What does ‘Egg’s’ mean, and who is he or she?

What unspecified part of Fry has been seasoned?

This infamous picture of the then ‘Primister’ and its other howlers has been immortalized

Literally, speaking–Redux: media professionals and teachers don’t help

Tags

Economic issues, Education, Literacy, Media, Productivity

When I wrote yesterday, I had in my mind the unacceptably high number of Jamaicans who had not benefitted from learning the fundamentals of the official language. My compassion was driven by what I see in play, daily. Many Jamaicans may not feel burdened, but are at a severe disadvantage within Jamaica and also compared with many abroad when it comes to bidding for jobs. That drag on employment prospects is at the front of my mind. Our high illiteracy is a major impediment to our raising labour productivity.

But, the problem of the general population is worsened by failings in places where we would not expect to see illiteracy or poor grammar on a regular basis–in the education sector and in the mainstream media. We expect teachers to know, and even if not majoring in English, we often assume skills in that area are higher than average; that may be an unfair assumption, however. Likewise, we expect the wordsmiths of our society to be also high on the pole of those who have mastered the official language. But, I find in Jamaica that those are wrong assumptions more often than I think is acceptable. Just look at what hit me at random today:

‘That, essentially, was what was expected to happen in Tivoli Gardens after to 2010 operation to route strongman and gang leader, Christopher Coke.’

That sentence is from today’s Editorial in The Gleaner. Can you spot the errors?

Let me help: ‘after to’ should read ‘after the’; ‘route’ (a course taken) should read ‘rout’ (retreat of defeated unit). 

Is it reasonable that a national media publication produced by people trained in communications should make such mistakes? Who is responsible for quality control? If the quality oversight is poor in the main part of the publication that expresses the paper’s opinions can we expect it to be higher elsewhere in the routine reporting?

I often utter a huge guffaw when various mainstream media practitioners try to argue about the higher quality of mainstream media professionals (often demeaning many who are in the world of newer communications, like bloggers, like me). My reaction is not pure defensiveness–and I do not see pure self-service on their part–but based on the rigour that I had to go through daily in my written and oral communication, and which formed how I always approach what I do. I have no supervisor, so have to rely on a tough attitude towards my own mistakes. I am no saint, but I’m far from a sinner in this area. So, I take great pleasure is find and pointing out the kind of error I saw this morning.

But my pleasure is muted. Those who do not know what is wrong will inevitably repeat that error. Admitted, it’s not realistic for a newspaper to be reprinted. In the world of electronic media, the digital version can be corrected, so The Gleaner online version, which I read earlier this morning could realistically be expected to be corrected later today. I pointed out the errors in the online comments; let’s see what happens.

I got a communication from school yesterday that was full of grammatical howlers; I see them often. But, as the school year comes to an end, I thought it would helpful to gently point out that I thought it reflected poorly on the school. They accepted my point, and pointed out some slips in their quality control. But, I don’t want my child using such communications as their guide, which they will because ‘Teacher knows best’ in the school arena.

If I seem pedantic in these concerns, fine. I have the luxury of being able to spot what’s wrong and also enough sad memories of what it can mean if one lets them go uncorrected.

Literally speaking, language will break us

Tags

Creole languages, Education, Jamaica, Literacy, Patois, Productivity

Every day, in many ways, the same problem stares me in the face: Jamaican illiteracy. My concern with it isn’t just what it says about how poorly we have educated a huge portion of the population. It’s also what it implies for how well we can do things: call that efficiency, productivity, or some other term that tells you how we can be better than other people. Our inability to communicate well at a high level is a brake (not break) on our progress. When I see people sitting idly on street corners and think about how bad our unemployment levels and rates are, I also have to ask how will their situation change if the economy were to grow very fast and the demand for labour rise rapidly. More jobs are being created in the realm of information management than in the area of manual labour. These are not people who seem to be ready for training in new skills in the information sector; they can do merely simple tasks like ‘heavy lifting’ and ‘fetching and carrying’. If you cannot read and write, and process information and share it effectively, you are destined for a new scrap heap of long-term unemployment. (Our crime rates are one of the outcomes of people who CANNOT find work, even if they are WILLING to work.)

Funnily (as in oddly, not amusingly), technology has rendered more powerful many illiterate people because they can use keyboards to form letters and words they cannot form by hand and they can live in a world where the forms of expressions have become a bit elastic and less rigid. If I write IMHO, I do not need to know how to write ‘in my humble opinion’ and can cover my embarrassment of not know how to spell words like ‘humble’ and ‘opinion’.  They can communicate for and wide without encountering anyone who has to handle their communication. Such people can at least read, and have had writing made much less difficult. That’s a plus, but it cannot get through all situations.

I have been in enough situations where someone has asked me to fill out a form for them (often on a plane headed to the USA), or to read something (like tags on a key) so that they can proceed to do a simple task. When you have a bunch of keys but cannot distinguish the labels for which doors they open you are in deep trouble. But, these are common place problems. Expand that to people not being able to read and understand the labelling on almost every building. Scary!

Whatever official data may indicate, many Jamaicans cannot read and write English well. On the one hand, this is easy to understand: most Jamaicans don’t speak English; at best, it’s a second language. Patois, our national way of speaking, though based on English, is often not the same. In addition, it’s mainly oral and that’s where we start to have trouble, both orally and literally, if we try to write: our basic way of communicating isn’t well-codified. (I say well because in some other territories, where ‘creole languages’ like Patois is spoken, it is codified, as in the Seychelles, where it is taught in school and used in written form in formal communication.) So, we do not put a premium on spelling rules (even in Patois) or even writing.

There’s no point arguing about whether or not Patois is a language. The fact remains that it’s how most Jamaicans communicate. That’s well understood by business, who try to use it in basic marketing because it has much better chance of reaching a wider audience. The bottom line tun up!

But, let’s look at what we are facing, taking a simple example situation. A man is dealing with a bundle of things. A Jamaican may say “Is bungle him bungle it up.” (He bundled it up.) Now, a non-Jamaican would likely already be confused on hearing this, if he or she knew the two different words bungle (mess up) and bundle (collection of things). If an ordinary (non-literate) Jamaican had to write about the event, bungle would be written for bundle. Literate English speakers would read it and go down the wrong path, imagining a minor catastrophe instead of something uneventful. If a literate Jamaican saw the event and wrote about it, he/she would likely use the right word, bundle. (I say ‘likely’ because it’s well understood that people who are literate and well-educated may still mistake words, and English is full of words that either sound alike or nearly alike and sometimes trip people up. For example, the famous group of there, they’re, their.)

That was just an example to set the ball rolling. Amplify and multiply this situation across the country and you can get a real bundle of bungling as people try to describe what is going on and others try to understand what they are being told.

Though very much part of this whole problem, I am going to put to one side those many people who cannot read. They may be able to write, but have no real idea of the rules to apply so add confusion from the oral level to the written level that they cannot understand or fix. Just to give an example, I got a message about some work at my father’s house; it came with no punctuation. Problem one. It then used words wrongly, such as ‘fine’ for find. Thankfully, I know the context and can get past some of that. But, when I read ‘fix it is cheper so I tell him to fix cut out the bad part the part new…’ I stumbled and fell.

I leave out this group because, although they are important and help the country function, they need a special fix that may be too big a leap as it requires going all the way back to basic schooling, and seems less likely to happen than most other things. In this wonderous age of technology, I hope that an app can be developed that makes all of this inability to write correctly when you cannot read a problem of the distant past.

People like me make this language and communication problem worse. Why? I understand well and speak well, but I do not speak like most locals and use words in ways that are not familiar: I speak in standard English learned in England. My accent is flat. So, another simple example. I call someone and say “My name is Dennis Jones (pronounced ‘day-nis jon-es’).” I often get some reaction that suggests the name doesn’t register, and am asked to repeat. I do. Then the other person’s brain does its recomputation and comes back with you said ‘Den-ize Joe-nez?’ When I try to write the phonetic differences you get a sense of the differences between a Jamaican accent and a regular English accent. (So, I’m not even going into how my Patois renditions sound.) Again, extend this example into a day’s worth of communicating with people and you can see that patience will be running thin by day’s end, at least at my end. If I go on and start to talk about why I am calling, we get the problems multiplying and rippling far and wide. I try to make things easier by using simpler language, but that won’t matter if every syllable I use needs to be reformulated. My conversations in Jamaica, especially over the phone, can be amusing. 🙂

Now, I said that Patois was one part of the problem. The other is the simple fact that people did not learn or were not taught the right rules of English, and English is HARD. I am not going to give a course now, but warn that even the best-educated can get into fights about correct English and its usage. However, I will just trot out a few of the well-known trip wires from words that sound alike, but have completely different meanings (and I add a few where the Jamaican way of speaking makes for a similarity that may not exist elsewhere):

• fear, fair, fare (both fair and fare have several meanings, too)
• they’re, there, their
• three, tree
• hair, here
• know, no
• come, calm, comb
• have, half, halve, of, off (I often see ‘I would of (have)‘, ‘prices half of (off)’.)
• breath, breathe, breed

We have the problems that come from the use of punctuation, especially the apostrophe:

• its, it’s (not its’)
• theirs (not their’s), there’s, they’re his
• his, he’s, hes (as opposed to ‘shes’)

I wont go on, because I think you see where I want to go.

These trip wires take as victims even our revered media houses, who daily offer more insights into poor teaching than seems acceptable.

For Jamaica, this problem is not at the margins of our lives, but deeply embedded into all of its fabric. Because we have so many forms of informal activity, we take for granted that rules are not going to bind. So, in this context, we find that signs and other evidence of formal existence may be literally hand-made and not subject to any kind of review of regulation:

‘Tree cuting‘ states the sign, proudly, with the words in black and 8 inches high on a white background. There’s no spell-checker in play. The rules about doubling consonants never known.

Sadly, the answer is not in what we teach, but how. It’s too sweeping to say that many of the teachers are not much better than those whom they seek to teach, but it’s clear that many teachers are not effective. Teaching, as a profession, cannot blame the students for the low levels of achievement; different ways have to be found to get the material better understood. If it’s one-size-fits-all, then less success is baked into the cake. Rote learning is still popular in Jamaica; it doesn’t work for many, especially once a student disengages. If we could get by without words and just exist with pictures and images, many more Jamaicans would flourish. But, the world isn’t set up that way.

Jamaica is very good at hailing its students who excel, while paying little attention to the masses who do poorly in our education system. Those poor performers become the core of our workforce, and so must matter to how well we do as an economy, driven by its lowest common denominator. I thought yesterday that more and more Jamaicans do not know what a steady job is, other than to be a roadside vendor or to hope that someone gives them casual work. That can’t be a strong basis on which to build a faster growing economy.

Time to get government out of the way? Too many Jamaicans have become disabled citizens

Jamaica has an awkward dependency on public sector provisions, as evidenced by solutions offered for its myriad problems, most of which start ‘if the government’. Sadly, MPs foster this notion that government is all-powerful and the source of all things significant in people’s lives every step of the way. This is a disabling, not enabling, environment; the anathema of what government ought to be about. A clear result of this cloying presence is that the private sector in all its forms (corporate, individual, or as NGOs) has become residual not a main driver in transforming society.

In economics, policy advisors are often concerned about the over-bearing impact of the government on some areas, especially in financial markets. So, economists talk about how government ‘crowds out’ other kinds of financial operators, especially when its financing needs are large, and markets are hard-pressed to do more than the ‘bidding’ of government, eg by buying government debt instead of private sector debt instruments.

In many areas, we see the government ‘sucking the air out’ of many actions where citizens ought to take the lead, with government setting a framework for action. 

This could make sense to many people, who see paying taxes as leading to a role for government in using that revenue. (For those who do not pay taxes, then government may well be the best means of getting much achieved, when one does not have many financial resources to use.) However, many also see government as wasteful of tax revenue so can be justifiably resentful of government spending to ‘solve’ problems. 

Government sometimes advises citizens to ‘take responsiblity’, but this is often a clear admission that government have failed to do much to resolve a problem and now wants to ‘pass the buck’.

It’s a funny symbiotic relationship: citizens are unaccustomed to acting in significant ways to develop solutions for the issues that  affect their lives, beyond invoking the help of nationally elected officials. (In many respects, national elected representatives have usurped the roles of municipal level officials.) They revert to government, or do nothing at all, calling for ‘justice’ or ‘action’ that they can effect themselves. 

This suits MPs, whose egos can be fed by the constant ‘needs’ that they satisfy. 

Add to this the partisanship and one can see the toxicity of the situation, because ‘government’ helps its own, and often ignores its opponents. 

Sadly, those Jamaicans who have grown up with the ‘nannying’ of government, especially in places where government matters, such as ‘garrison’ communities, know little else (beyond when ‘government’ is replaced by the heavy hand of criminal gangs.) These people remain wedded to the usefulness of representative politics, and are likely to vote for ‘people who will do things for them’.

Other Jamaicans, who do not really need government beyond its usual provision of public goods, such as utilities and items like security, have solidified their lessened need for government by withdrawing from representative politics. These groups have shown increasing self-suffiency in many of these areas, by moving away from public utilities, if possible, and also being major consumers of private ‘protective services’, instead of the police.

Jamaica’s ‘haves’ seem happy to need government less, up to a point. It’s ‘have nots’ often see little alternative. Two Jamaicas, again?

The pure genius of Theresa May: an unnecessary election produces an obvious catastrophic result

Tags

Governance, Human relationships, Politics, Power, Theresa May, UK

I realise that some followers of my blog may not be on other forms of social media, or follow me there, for that matter. So, to close the communications circle, I’ll post here a Facebook live video that I made earlier today, that covered some of my thoughts on the UK General Election held on June 8. You can view it here:

In summary, the Conservative Party gave up an overall majority to ‘secure’ the largest number of seats, but no overall majority: the opposite outcome than intended when calling a snap election. The final seat count is shown in the two images from Associated Press:

Put differently, PM Theresa May’s Party won the election, but lost clear control of Parliament.

No wonder she looked shocked and dis-May-ed when accepting her own win in Maidenhead, Kent.

By contrast, Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn was elated. His party had lost, but its claim on public support soared, to around 40%, from some 24%. He has the mojo.

Britain’s Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn smiles after arriving for the declaration at his constituency in London, Friday, June 9, 2017. Britain voted Thursday in an election that started out as an attempt by Prime Minister Theresa May to increase her party’s majority in Parliament ahead of Brexit negotiations but was upended by terror attacks in Manchester and London during the campaign’s closing days. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

I think the outcome will go down as one of those unnecessary electoral disasters that sometimes befalls politicians who get taken up with the power that polls suggest may be there for the taking but who not had a real sounding of what is going through the minds of potential voters. It’s a simple disconnection that means polls will differ greatly from actual voting outcomes.

It also points out a simple weakness of polls: they are pictures of intentions, frozen at a moment in time, and do not have the power to catch the dynamism of people’s feelings. Polls also do not have the power of judging how voters will react when you actually put in front of them the option to express their sentiments in a voting booth.

The cloying pull of power is (of course) powerful. It’s greed personified, and those who seek it often miss obvious signs that they are well set already and need go searching for more.

For those who like it, the numerical analyses are fascinating, especially the surge in voter turnout, especially amongst young voters (around 70%). See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/09/general-election-sees-highest-turnout-25-years-nearly-70-britons/

The BBC has some fascinating interactive maps: http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40176349

Enjoy!

A hard road to travel: Jamaican sidewalks are a disgrace

Based on stale data, for 2010, Jamaicans have about 179 vehicles per 1000 people, and ranked 78th out of 193 countries. That compares with about 800/1000 in the USA, ranking it 3rd; 519 for the UK, ranking it 34th; 469 for Barbados, ranking it 41st. Barbados is known to have very high vehicle density. 

Jamaica is essentially a poor, rural country, with a few dense urban areas, especially its capital, Kingston. Most Jamaicans get around in public vehicles–buses and taxis–and walk a lot between the start and end of their journeys. That’s not so rare around the world. In fact, much of my life in England involved my using public transport and walking a lot to complete my journeys. That contrasts with the USA, where it’s very difficult to get good public transpor, as that society has given much greater preference to cars and access by motor vehicles.

In the UK, USA, and Barbados, most of the time if you are walking in urban areas, you are putting your feet on relatively stable and even ground. The sidewalks are also usually free of obstructions. That’s more important in times when many users of sidewalks are disabled and/or using wheel methods to negotiate their journeys.

In Jamaica, one can almost say that the situation is the exact opposite. I have unfortunately had to learn that fact from having to walk around Kingston in recent times. I was struck how poor the walking surfaces were, when I dropped off a car a few weeks ago and decided to walk home. ​You can refresh your memory by noting the state of the sidewalk in the video (taken on Constant Spring Road), and the sidewalks in the pictures, below.

​

Garbage or other things often obstruct the sidewalks

A sidewalk has been placed on one side of the road, but clearly, people want to walk on both sides, so have ‘created’ a path.

Just the other day, I was going to pick up a car, and got a ride into New Kingston and walked the relatively short distance from Trafalgar Road, through Worthington Avenue/Belmont Road to Oxford Road, to locate the journey. The map shows the 5 minute strolling route; not a bad walk at about 7.30am.

As I made that journey, I was again appalled at the state of the sidewalk, given that it’s in the commercial heart of the city, where a lot of people have to walk around as the simplest and quickest way of getting between the many businesses and organizations there. I was more appalled when I recalled that the offices of the now-ruling Jamaican Labour Party are located on Belmont Road.

I was so struck that I didn’t do what I would normally–take a picture–because the footing was so precarious, I was frightened I would really injure myself. So, let me just describe the worst of what is along the left side of that road, heading toward Oxford Road.

• A huge hole, about 2-3 feet across, where it seems the sidewalk was damaged by something heavy. Jagged edges. NO WARNING around the hole.
• Light/telephone pole set in the sidewalk, reducing the walking area to about one foot width.
• A drainage channel that is in place of the sidewalk, forcing the walker to negotiate an area about 6 inches-one foot for about  10 metres. NO WARNING. (The drainage channel could be covered, so that the walking area would be maintained.)
• The walking surface was so uneven that, even in simple flat shoes, the risk of turning an ankle or stumbling was high. It looked like concrete had been poured and not levelled.

In typical Jamaican fashion, we could get into a discussion about which agencies are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of areas such as this. Let’s save the energy and say that government, local or national, are failing to do something basic to maintain the safety and health of citizens.

As is often the way in Jamaica, also, one has to wonder whether:

• No one has noticed this set of awful situations
• Someone has noticed, but cannot be concerned enough to fix the problem
• Someone has noticed, but is in dispute with some other body about who will do the repair or correction

As may also be the Jamaican way, perhaps we need the current PM to take a walk from JAMPRO to his party headquarters and see if he thinks this situation is either acceptable or out of the ordinary.

Jamaicans know that many public agencies struggle to do the simple, daily things that make life tolerable because you know that care and attention to detail feature high in everyone’s consciousness. 

I pity anyone who has to negotiate areas like this who is not able-bodied, with good sight, and not using a wheelchair.

Life should not be this hard.

London Bridge and Borough Market

It’s not my fault that I spent many formative years growing up in London. So, it’s not my fault that I have a soft spot for the place. Whenever, I hear or see news of events in England, my mind wanders to London. When I hear the events are in London, my mind wanders to the many places I know well. I know London Bridge and Borough Market well: I was there on my last trip to England, and spent a great lunch time with a Bajan friend who works as an Editor for the Financial Times, which is located adjacent to London Bridge. We went for a pub lunch at a spot called ‘The Market Porter‘; it’s menu includes great ales (duh!), and I had a ‘Blue Moon’.

Dining room in The Market Porter

It does great pub grub: I love Cumberland sausage (though I don’t need the poncy marmalade 🙂 ), but the choice had to be the lamb rump. 🙂

I was raised in the west of London, and spent most of my time in London living north (‘norf’) of the river. Borough is on the south (‘sowuf’). My connection with it was through a close friend at school, who grew up in Borough (‘Burra’). I never went there as a boy, but got to know the place later, and it’s now gotten posh. A lot of places that were once the mainstay of ordinary working people, especially the markets and market traders, have had some serious gentrification laid on them (Covent Garden, Smithfield) and become yuppified. But, my urban planning background says that when you put life back into an old area that’s a real plus.

Before meeting my friend, Hal, I had a good wander around Borough Market, looking at the pies, meats and cheese on sale. I have my favourite London spots for getting those things, so was really only having an orgy of deep lust for the things to satisfy my eyes.

Something that many people with stereotyped notions of Britain may not understand is that it’s a place where a lot leisure time is spent outdoors. What? With that s****y weather? Yes! It’s one of life’s great pleasures to lean outside a pub with a pint in your hand and chat the time away. It’s a real pleasure to do that on a day when the sun is out and it’s not raining. Time was pubs were smoky places, so the outside was an escape. Then, with time, landlords made a virtue of that and started to make the outside nicer, and if the pub had a courtyard or garden, better still. Find me somewhere like that for a Sunday roast while I talk rubbish about the football on Saturday. “My round?”
If I’ve appreciated nothing else about my life, it’s embracing the pieces of it that have made me whole–who I am.

When people hear me speak they’re more likely to nickname me ‘Englishman’ than ‘Yardie’. I don’t have a problem with that, in the same way that I would not deny that I speak with a posher accent because I went to school in Westminster. I like tea, and scones, and fish and chips, and beer at room temperature. I’ve made sure my Caribbean wife and my children from all parts also appreciate these things, as much as the access to fine art culture that oozes all over a place like London. We’ve learned to enjoy afternoon tea off Oxford Street; to shop in Bond Street; to gawp at Buckingham Palace;  to love The Tube; to jump on a red bus; to marvel at The Thames.

London is in my soul, so when it and its people are attacked, I feel that to my core. I hurt deeply to think of the carnage on London Bridge and Borough Market. I know I will be there again soon to let my soul heal.

Jamaican story time: passing observations

Stories are always there to be told.

I spend a lot my time trying to figure out what is the story behind what I see; I call it connecting the dots.

I took Knutsford Express buses from Kingston to Ocho Rios on Friday morning and from Montego Bay to Kingston on Saturday afternoon. Along the way, I took the opportunity to look around at the Jamaican landscape, something I always enjoy. But, I also tried to see and understand some of the stories behind what I saw.

I’ll share my sights, randomly, mainly by words, but sometimes with pictures. I did not have in mind any graphic retelling of what I saw, it just came back to me that way during the night. So, bear with me. I will start at the end, because it was also a part of the beginning.

Dr. Damien King shared a graph from The Economist, on Twitter, the morning I set off from Kingston; it showed how Jamaica was poorly (sic) placed as a country with a high propotion of slum dwellings.

Here's the evidence that Ja has a housing problem & th NHT approach, despite usurping half th market, is not solving it. [Graph: Economist] pic.twitter.com/NGR2GlBIDe

— Damien King (@DamienWKing) June 3, 2017

Dr. King expanded on the chart by pointing out how the National Housing Trust had failed to provide low income housing as an alternative to slum dwellings.

On my way back into Kingston, I saw for the umpteenth time the shanty dwellings just by the bridge at Washington Boulevard. Everytime I see them from the elevated position of the bus I want to take a picture, but the moment goes by quickly. This time, I was ready.

Shanty community beside Washington Boulevard

I don’t know if the ‘community’ has a name; if it does, I’m sorry that I haven’t named it. [A friend tells me it’s called ‘New Haven’.]

I see people who live or have reason to be there coming and going, and often using what seems like a makeshift road crossing to get across the busy highway.

I often see people milling around the ‘entrance’ to the community, between two sections of corrugated iron (‘zinc fence’, as we call it in Jamaica). This time, I saw a lady and two men sitting on a large disused gas cylinder, in conversation.

All of that is that say what? Many things:

• Poverty is alive and ‘well’ in Jamaica.
• People have regularized irregular housing in Jamaica, where it is more the norm than the exception. (Dr. King’s point about NHT is well-taken, too, as it has not been a solver of housing needs for the poor.)
• What does it say that ‘seating’ outdoor is made up of things like disused gas cylinders? (I thought back to pictures of times in London during the 1940s when children played on the sites of places that had been bombed, recently.)
• Planning is not a word to use when describing our urban space. (That can have catastrophic results, as we’ve seen in recent flooding.)
• Elected government is noticeable in its absence as an agent of control over what happens in many parts of Jamaica. (I stress ‘elected’ because I suspect the area is ‘governed’.)

There’s much more to say, but you can fill out some of the story with your own observations.

As I headed north on Friday, I looked over at a community near Claremont, St. Ann. I’m often struck by what seems to be a neatly laid out area, with houses that are not made just of seemingly haphazard breeze blocks and sectioned off by zinc fencing. I know nothing of the community other than what I see from the highway, as I drive at speed. (Maybe, next time I will have Google Maps open to see what is shown and if it has a name.)

St. Ann community

Again, this time I had my phone camera ready to take a picture I have often wanted to capture. Again, I think of stories.

As it preceded in terms of my interest the scene on the Boulevard I was not thinking about the many and varied comparisons I could make:

• Rural life looks better than urban life, at least in terms of available space and sense of amenity.
• Housing quality looks good. (None of the new structures are yet painted, in contrast to other dwellings that can be seen in the background. So, it will be interesting to see the transformation.)
• Had the housing been located there because of proximity to the highway, much as the ‘shanty’ dwellings had sought closeness to the road into Kingston?
• Is this set of ‘quality’ housing planned and properly authorized? (Not everything in Jamaica happens just because people decide it’s their right to do what and where they please?)
• Does the better-looking housing signal the flowing through of ‘prosperity’ and, if so, from where? Who are the financiers and what are their sources? (We know the long history of cash coming from drug dealing and now from scamming. One cannot assume that the sources are illegal; they could be from many places, including remittances.)

I could see no people, so could draw no conclusions about their ‘state’ of life.

When I was being driven through Montego Bay on my way to catch the bus back to town, a window washer approached the car; my friend and I waved him away. He continued to wash the window, then just walked away. ‘That’s a first!’ I said. Back in Kingston yesterday, in Liguanea, a window washer approached my car; I waved him away. He put up a thumb and gestured to me to do the same and touch it, which I did and we bumped fists. “Blessed!” he said, and walked on to another car. I do not for one minute think that window washers have had some national meeting to agree to change their behaviour, but I was struck by the similarly ‘decent’ behaviour, which we know from anecdotes is not often present.

The stories have no beginnings or ends that I truly know; I merely see a snapshot. Perhaps, today, I will read of an ‘event’ in one of the places I have seen and know a little more.