Dear Editor,
I continue to be amazed at the level of hypocrisy displayed by some of us who live and work on this piece of rock we call Jamaica. Let's not get it twisted, contrary to our own perception of ourselves, we are not a kind and gentle people, nor do we practise the precepts which accompany the claim of being a Christian country.
We are loud, crass, ill-mannered and undisciplined. We seek to glorify what is clearly wrong, corrupt and evil because "ah so di ting set", or "ah nuh nutten"! We turn a blind eye to grown 'hard back' men who prey on our children, exploiting their vulnerabilities in the most heartless ways.
Too many of us have children we know we do not have the means to care for and then expect someone else to bear the responsibility. When we can't meet these needs we hand them over to the State. I could go on and on giving examples of the dysfunctional attitude which permeates the society.
Are we aware of this? Of course, we are! This is where the hypocrisy is paraded like a show pony at the circus, and every now and then, when it suits our agenda, we trot out the kind of drivel penned by Mark Christie in the Observer of Tuesday, March 10, 2015 aided and abetted by editors who coin emotionally charged and intellectually dishonest headlines such as "Hanna's failure is Ja's death knell" just to sell newspapers.
Now why should we chastise Lisa Hanna for not creating "the atmosphere in Jamaica that will deter certain acts against our youth" and lay the blame squarely at her feet because the "people have dropped their collective responsibility to protect the youth because they do not see leadership in Hanna"?
Have we lost our minds? The last time I checked, Hanna, as minister of youth, has the responsibility for the development of policies and programmes to address the societal ills and problems caused by our dereliction of duty to our children, which requires an annual budget of just over $2.3 billion for the Children's Development Agency (CDA) and the Office of the Children's Registry. That is a lot of resources which could be put to better use to really create better opportunities for our children. Listening to Hanna in her last sectoral presentation, and seeing the roll-out of programmes in the ministry in recent times, I get the feeling that the trajectory of the ministry lines up with this objective.
So may I suggest that Mark Christie and others like him need to get off their political horse and cease to proffer references to unsubstantiated deficiencies in Hanna's performance in her constituency and, instead, galvanise the wider society to take responsibility for our actions and lifestyle.
M Richards
mrichards2174@outlook.com
We need to own our hypocrisy and fix it!
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I continue to be amazed at the level of hypocrisy displayed by some of us who live and work on this piece of rock we call Jamaica. Let's not get it twisted, contrary to our own perception of ourselves, we are not a kind and gentle people, nor do we practise the precepts which accompany the claim of being a Christian country.
We are loud, crass, ill-mannered and undisciplined. We seek to glorify what is clearly wrong, corrupt and evil because "ah so di ting set", or "ah nuh nutten"! We turn a blind eye to grown 'hard back' men who prey on our children, exploiting their vulnerabilities in the most heartless ways.
Too many of us have children we know we do not have the means to care for and then expect someone else to bear the responsibility. When we can't meet these needs we hand them over to the State. I could go on and on giving examples of the dysfunctional attitude which permeates the society.
Are we aware of this? Of course, we are! This is where the hypocrisy is paraded like a show pony at the circus, and every now and then, when it suits our agenda, we trot out the kind of drivel penned by Mark Christie in the Observer of Tuesday, March 10, 2015 aided and abetted by editors who coin emotionally charged and intellectually dishonest headlines such as "Hanna's failure is Ja's death knell" just to sell newspapers.
Now why should we chastise Lisa Hanna for not creating "the atmosphere in Jamaica that will deter certain acts against our youth" and lay the blame squarely at her feet because the "people have dropped their collective responsibility to protect the youth because they do not see leadership in Hanna"?
Have we lost our minds? The last time I checked, Hanna, as minister of youth, has the responsibility for the development of policies and programmes to address the societal ills and problems caused by our dereliction of duty to our children, which requires an annual budget of just over $2.3 billion for the Children's Development Agency (CDA) and the Office of the Children's Registry. That is a lot of resources which could be put to better use to really create better opportunities for our children. Listening to Hanna in her last sectoral presentation, and seeing the roll-out of programmes in the ministry in recent times, I get the feeling that the trajectory of the ministry lines up with this objective.
So may I suggest that Mark Christie and others like him need to get off their political horse and cease to proffer references to unsubstantiated deficiencies in Hanna's performance in her constituency and, instead, galvanise the wider society to take responsibility for our actions and lifestyle.
M Richards
mrichards2174@outlook.com
We need to own our hypocrisy and fix it!
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