Last Sunday I attended the JLP conference with the intention of spending only about an hour. My 'hour' lasted from 11:30 am to 4:30 pm.

Party conferences are carnival events and are perfect examples of the extent to which political parties have become trapped by our destructive political culture. To me, the spending of money to bus party diehards from 'bush mouth' to the Arena is a colossal waste, but I am no politician.

The first politician (caretaker) who I encountered even before I was forced to fight my way inside the sardine-packed Arena was at pains in explaining to me how many buses he was able to pack and dispatch to the conference. The point he was trying to get across to me was the ease in which he was able to corral these persons from a PNP constituency into green bush, green-shirted buses.

The highlight of the evening was the speech by Bruce Golding's son. It was most fitting for the circus-like atmosphere of the JLP conference. The young man is bright and, unlike his father, charisma oozes out of him. For his own sake and, based on what we know of our most recent experience with charisma, I hope he steers clear from politics.

The younger Golding had the captive audience eating out of his hands but as he spoke I drew my eyes away from him, walked to the rear section of the comfort of the press box and carefully watched the reaction of the journalists present. To a man and woman, they were just as electrified as the huge crowd inside and the greater mass of humanity outside the Arena viewing the youngster on big screen.

Later on that same evening, there was a programme on TVJ either covering the conference or discussing it. One of the panelists was Dr Orville Taylor, a university lecturer who also writes a regular column for the Gleaner. As I listened to Taylor pouring cold water on Stephen Golding's speech, I was forced to ask myself if it was the same Golding he was speaking of.

Any politician, JLP or PNP, would be proud to have the input of someone like a Stephen Golding at party conference. He came out to bat for his father, and in doing that he gave us some hope for the future while allowing us to laugh at ourselves. For the opposition leader, who spoke immediately after, it made us like him a little bit as we couldn't help but admit that a man who can produce such a bright and useful citizen must have even a smidgen of goodness in him.

Not good enough Logic One, Paymaster

Audrey Marks is one of those Jamaicans for whom I have the greatest respect. She is fairly young, educated, intelligent and she has done wonders in forming and running the very successful Paymaster.

But I am also annoyed with her because I believe that, like most Jamaicans who use the Paymaster outlet to pay their bills, I am being ripped off by being asked to pay an extra $30 for some administrative fee per bill. If at the outset Paymaster collected fees on behalf of all our main utilities, plus those from the many cable and internet providers and made money on the deal, an integral part of that arrangement had to be (to the public) a special arrangement between Paymaster and the various companies.

Now, it matters little to me what those arrangements are just so long as I can walk into any Paymaster outlet and pay my bills without a clerk telling me that I have to fork out an additional $30. And I cannot refuse to pay that $30 because all that clerk will do is extract it from the bill, which means that Ms Mark's company will be assured of its 'fees' while my bill will have a $30 shortage to be carried over until next month.

This bait-and-switch ruse has also caught me with Logic One, one of the cable providers in the Havendale community. I pay Logic One $1800 per month in addition to one-time charges of $3000 for two cable boxes. The service includes the Sports Max channel, the one which carries Test match cricket.

Months ago, Logic One withdrew Sports Max and ran ads which stated that Sports Max and itself were involved in some legal matters. It directed its viewers to contact Sports Max directly instead of calling Logic One. Then in the last two weeks or so, it began to advertise that Sports Max was available again, but this time there was a catch. It would cost $466 PER CABLE BOX per month. In the recent Test match in Pakistan while Lara was in explosive form I was forced to listen to the match on radio.

To me, this goes way beyond bait- and-switch.
Like an increasing number of viewers, I have a home theatre system in my living room. Logic One provides a cable into my house but the audio signal does not support surround sound. Close to two months ago, I sought from the cable provider reasons for this. 'Do you want the answer now Mr Wignall,' the person asked. I told her that it wasn't really a pressing matter, but she could give me the answer 'as soon as possible.'

The questions are: Paymaster, if the business operated profitably before the introduction of the $30 surcharge, must I now assume that if it is withdrawn, the company would fold?
Logic One: Although I have no intentions of subscribing to Sports Max based on the costs, why is the charge per cable box? In the 21st century when the world is into home theatre and Dolby surround sound, why am I getting a plain mono audio signal for $1800 per month?

Leave the cockpit country alone

I spent a great part of my childhood living with a wonderful family (the Wallaces) in a sleepy district near Moneague called Clapham. In the 1950s, there was no electric power and piped water in Clapham and although I was this little 'town boy' making valiant attempts to 'countrify' myself, walk barefooted and speak Jamaican, to me all I saw was adventure.

The soles of my feet were too tender for the hard granite stones which were liberally spread on the pathways called roads. Waking up at five in the mornings to accompany those who were moving goats or travelling to a 'grung' to dig for yams and then to eat in the field off quailed banana fronds were the closest thing to heaven for me.

At the time, there was no tank and the normal water supply came via rain water from the roof and channeled into 55 gallon drums which were tarred inside. In times of drought a donkey was used as we travelled to Bluehole/Riverhead about halfway between Moneague and Clapham for water.
The water at Riverhead was the source of the famed Moneague Lake, a place I was always afraid of. In a typical day, we would make about four trips, riding the donkey to Riverhead then walking alongside on the return trip.

I left Clapham sometime around 1959 and returned for a visit as a grown man in 1976. Then I wanted to retrace all the steps I used to make as a youngster. To my horror, I was told by one resident of Riverhead that "some fish start to come back in Bluehole, but the water still too bitter to drink."
For years in the 1960s and 1970s, the water which came out of the hills underground and formed the 'head' at Bluehole had been poisoned by the caustic leaching into the underground water supply from the red mud lake at Mount Rosser.

In the 1950s and 1960s, poor, country people in Riverhead and Clapham were not priority items to successive governments and those who controlled the mining of bauxite in St Ann. So for many years, the 'march of progress' took away the water supplies of people, too many of whom were illiterate and unaware of their roles as citizens.

Today, we are on the verge of another unbridled rape of our country. The plans to allow for bauxite exploration in, of all places, the Cockpit Country, can only mean that government has gone stark, raving mad.

The Cockpit Country represents something sacred and special to our hearts in addition to the fact that it is a vast (in our terms) and, in areas, unexplored rain forest region. Surely, there must be something in this country worth saving.
Does the JLP have a position on this considering that many have been seeing that party as having more than a winning chance of forming the next government?

Matters cerebral have not been flowing too freely in the PNP in recent months. All too often, environmental matters are cast aside when the multinationals sit with government representatives and skillfully pull the wool over their eyes. Even worse when other 'considerations' are involved, our representatives are all too willing to sell us down a poisoned river.

More voices must be raised in protest against this 'exploration' which, based on our past knowledge and experiences, has the capacity for despoiling this last vestige of nature in harmony with itself.

Portia as victim- again

In the months leading up to the February 25 date in the PNP presidential race, there were many who criticised me when I defended Portia. In December 2005 when Portia was predicting the coming of the 'Portia revolution', she said at a PNP gathering in Mandeville: "They beat up on me every day and the more they beat up on me is the more the Jamaican people say 'Portia.'"

At that time, the Jamaicans who were head over heels in love with her were not yet in a position to 'feel her hand' and give reason for saying 'Portia' again. Eight months later, my comrade friends no longer call me and whenever I come across them, they are contrite and short on words. Those who speak do so with their heads bowed, not in reverence but out of shame and especially an inability to explain just what has descended on the party.

Recently the prime minister decided to step it up another notch in her convenient discovery that persons are treating her with disdain because she is a woman. Dead wrong prime minister, and dishonest too.

For many years in this country, the electorate doted on Portia because she was, well, Portia. If she performed, they loved her. If she did absolutely nothing, as she did most time, they loved her. What was no secret was the silent treatment given her by her colleagues in the years when Stone polls were showing her as the most popular and most loved person in the country.

In all of those years, there was hardly any criticism of her. Indeed (in hindsight), if she was real honest with herself and as bright as some of us thought she was, she would have questioned the reason for the public adoration and move to provide the electorate with 'real' reasons for the constant endorsement.

Come March 30, she had her shot. Here was the chance she was waiting on for all of these years. In the last eight months, what signal has she sent to us that she has created real reasons for this public adoration? Few, if any, to my way of seeing it.

For her to now 'discover' that it is because she is a woman comes a little late. Of course, the society has not yet grown to the level of consciousness which will allow us to view women in equal light to men. But, in the case of Portia, this nation was prepared to bend over backwards for her and view her sex in a much more positive vein than with any other woman.

To me, it is cowardice on the part of the prime minister to be drawing for this card. I gather that on a radio programme last week, two female university professors supported Portia's observation that, (my own words) 'dem a fight 'gainst mi because mi a woman.'

I have no problem with Professors Bailey and Cooper going to bat for another woman, but it seemed to me that, in similar fashion to me months ago, they are in denial as they realise that the filly who they thought was a champion racer, continues to limp near to the two furlong post. Cheering will not make her gallop.

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