WITH the largest warehouse of its kind (100,000 sq ft) anywhere in the Caribbean, Wisynco is one of Jamaica’s largest manufacturing entities.

In the days when manufacturing ‘died’ in Jamaica, that company stood its ground, continued to expand, to increase its staff and break into new product areas.

I hold no brief for energy drinks but the fact is, there is a market for the product. In many bars and night clubs, the dangerous practice of mixing energy drinks (uppers) with alcoholic beverages (downers) continues as I exhort young people to indulge in it as a last resort only when partying or dancing vigorously throughout the night.

Strapped as it is for the tax dollar, I empathise with the government in its attempts to fill the gaping hole in its budget. Recognising that energy drinks are sold just as fast as alcoholic beverages, the government has pounced on drinks like Red Bull, Boom, Monster, etc simply because they exist.

Were there any meetings held or did the Government just hijack Wisynco in the dark of night by imposing an ad valorem tax on sales of energy drinks? According to William Mahfood, his company controls 75 per cent of the energy drink market, therefore the new tax is almost a sole tax on his company.

Damn fool him for expanding, for employing people when others have laid off, for maintaining a state-of-the-art operation (I have visited and seen it) at his factory on the outskirts of Spanish Town.

According to Minister Shaw, the drinks are being taxed on their caffeine content. Do Pepsi and Coke not contain caffeine? Will they too fall inside of this tax net?

Governments around the world have so far avoided a carnal tax because our bedrooms are unmetered. One suspects that were such a tax to be imposed, government ministers in Jamaica would pay little, if any. And of course it is known that healthy and vigorous bedroom activity leads to a general sense of contentment, and on leaving such a bedchamber, the mind tends to get a better sense of focus.

There are times when I find that I have to sympathise with Finance Minister Shaw over trying to fill the gaping hole in the budget. By its nature, the imposition of taxes is always unpopular because in truth it is not really the manufacturers who pay, it is the consumer in rising prices. What tends to happen, though, is an initial falling off in sales of newly taxed products, so to some extent manufacturing companies may feel it in their bottom line.

As service providers governments are highly unpopular. To call 119, to get service in a government hospital, to drive around the craters on our road network — we all see the gaps. Maybe we are just too poor to expect better.

I wish I had known John Maxwell more

NEARLY two weeks ago I was in a seedy little two-stooler on Red Hills Road with my friend Karyl Walker, ace journalist at the Observer.

The bright young man with his dreadlocks and myself were discussing many matters and the argument shifted to newspaper columnists. Walker buttered me up by saying that generally he immediately went to the pages of the Agenda to read me and Maxwell, but, said he, “With all due respect, I read Maxwell first.”

The ‘due respect’ part was never needed as Maxwell stood head and shoulders above the rest of us. His were the type of columns one read then knew that one was ‘in the presence’ of greatness. Maxwell’s columns were such that one would read them and say, “I wish I could write like that, use words like that, analyse the whole like that.” At the end I would usually sigh and be charged not really to write like Maxwell but simply to do a better job next time out.

I only met him in the flesh to speak at length once, although I would glimpse him in the pharmacy at Manor Park and exchange a few brief words.

Years ago when KD Knight was security minister in the previous PNP administration, I had reason to criticise the minister. Maxwell wrote a column in defence of the minister and suggested in his column that the minister take out suit against me.

I found that quite odd that one ‘colleague’ would take that stance against another until I re-read what I had written. While I did not agree that I should have been sued I got the drift of what Maxwell meant. It was not what I had said but how I had worded it.

Another time I wrote about an encounter I had in a bank in New Kingston with some male homosexuals. I was in the line as about four very obvious homosexual males entered the bank. They were extremely animated and loud, talking about ‘manicures, pedicures and back rubs’. Even for heterosexuals (an estimated 92 per cent of the world’s population) that behaviour would have been odd, but in the Jamaican culture I found it off-putting and hilarious.

One had recognised me, walked across to me and asked, ‘Are you Mark Wignall?’ I was on my phone and I answered in a deeper voice than usual, ‘Yes’, on which he said, ‘You are my favourite writer.’

Somehow in relating that in one of the sections of my Sunday column, Maxwell had seen it differently and described what I wrote as ‘pure hate’. I was most puzzled, but such was Maxwell, always taking a position that he considered principled and correct. In that specific regard, he was probably years ahead of us. In hindsight Maxwell believed that people like us who were privileged to write in newspapers had a greater responsibility in portraying controversial matters, especially those which cut across the social norms. He would probably have thought that I should not have taken a light-hearted stance on a matter to which some others would react violently.

With those criticisms, he still had the grace to telephone me one day after I had written about a police shooting that had taken place in Grants Pen and which I had investigated and written about. The piece resulted in the release of the wrongfully arrested man who had been wounded and shackled to a bed at the KPH.

“Your article was excellent,” he said. “That is what I try to teach the young journalists. Good job, keep it up.”

He is gone, but the good thing is that he has left us with a better view of ourselves. That one day, if we put in all the effort and apply all the needed research, we can approach the skill level he had and which we all took for granted.

His family will have long known by now that he was no ordinary Jamaican. They have my sincere condolence.

observemark@gmail.com