A spirited exchange in the Senate last Friday reignited debate around the Government’s £1-million (then over $150 million) promotional expenditure during the 2012 London Olympics under then Tourism Minister Dr Wykeham McNeill and his then state minister Damion Crawford, who posted on Twitter the infamous “me… a shell dung a club a London” comment.

The controversy resurfaced during the debate on the Appropriations Act 2025, when Opposition Senator Crawford, in a wide-ranging presentation, revisited the matter.

The tweet, posted on August 7, 2012, read, in part: “Me [and several artistes named] a shell dung a club a London,” and appeared to depict a party scene during the course of what was reported as an official Government trip.

The tweet, coupled with the scale of expenditure, drew significant public backlash at the time, with some questioning the absence of a clearly defined tourism marketing strategy to justify the expenditure.

In response to the criticisms Crawford said then, “We were only saying Jamaica took over London, not only on the track but in all spheres, in business and in entertainment.”

He argued that the then Opposition was also either misled due to a lack of research or was misleading because of a “lack of appreciation for the truth” because the ‘shell dung’ comment was not the only thing he tweeted.

“I also tweeted when I was about to speak at the Cariforum conference,” added Crawford, during Friday’s debate.

Crawford accused his “friend”, the current minister of state in the Ministry of Tourism Senator Delano Seiveright of fuelling the controversy at the time.

“And by the way, Senator Seiveright is the one who started the rumour about shelling down London with Jamaica money,” Crawford declared.

“I was in London presenting an academic paper…paid for by the conference, and a friend of mine started a rumour that I was in there ‘shelling down London’. But I forgave him because when his travel came across my desk in his early times I could have taken revenge, because the truth was worse than the lie,” Crawford told the Senate.

This prompted a response from Seiveright as he made his contribution to the debate.

“I need to ensure that it’s clear in Hansard that he did, in fact, send a tweet out about shelling down a club in London on August 7, 2012,” said Seiveright.

“I have the copy of the tweet here… The context at the time was the London Olympics, and the question was, if we’re spending over £1 million, was there a proper marketing plan to secure real tourism returns for Jamaica?” declared the Government senator.

Beyond addressing the tweet, Seiveright used his contribution to the debate to highlight what he said is the positive impact of the current Administration’s economic stewardship and the people-centred nature of the 2025/26 Budget.

According to Seiveright, consistent with recent years, the budget is designed to ease pressure on households, expand opportunity, and put more money into the hands of working Jamaicans.

Seiveright also delivered an academic rebuke of Crawford’s earlier contribution, which included strong criticisms of Prime Minister Andrew Holness’s budget presentation.

Seiveright accused Crawford of engaging in the manipulation and distortion of historical facts.

“There’s an issue called historical negationism… and your presentation was loaded with it,” Seiveright stated.

Crawford, who titled his nearly one hour and 45 minutes presentation ‘Truth and Democracy’, said he chose the topic “because the Government’s debate has been shrouded in lies and fake news”.

He accused the Government of lying about inflation, poverty, crime, and the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac), among other matters.

According to Crawford, the prime minister’s use of a graph in his budget presentation in the House of Representatives on March 20, which showed the People’s National Party (PNP) running up inflation to 2,249 per cent between 1989 and 2007 when it formed the Government, did not tell the full story.

He argued that Holness failed to acknowledge that no prior Administration had been in office for such a long period. He also said that to compare Jamaica with the United States — which averaged an inflation rate of 2.9 per cent during the same period when Jamaica averaged 18.5 per cent or 6.3 times higher than the United States — was disingenuous.

“He failed to have done sufficient analysis to recognise that in September 2007 to December 2011, which was the JLP [Jamaica Labour Party in Government], they averaged 12.3 per cent [inflation] relative to the United States’ 1.5 per cent. That’s 8.2 times what was in the United States,” said Crawford.