IT was not shocking to learn last weekend that the minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sport had moved to lock down a football camp scheduled for the Horace Burrell Football Academy, which was not approved.

What in blazes was the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) thinking? How could the JFF even contemplate such a move without getting the necessary approval from State agencies? Oh, I remember… the organisation is filled with mostly brainless individuals.

Sometimes I wonder what a bright man like finance committee head Dennis Chung is doing among so many people who only know about the shape of a football. He must find it incredibly difficult to have to deal with Dalton Wint or Raymond Anderson, for example, because for all the years that they have been in football, they have nothing to show…no legacies whatsoever, and cannot bring novel ideas to the table that would go on the platform for football’s grand take-off.

It has been said already, but needs to be repeated: There are too many unintelligent people involved in the running of football in Jamaica. This is a new era, new age, therefore a new approach is needed to keep the game in line with progress made in other nations.

It is also time to revamp the structure of football in Jamaica and allow for officials to be elected, not directly through parish associations — which is where much of the foolishness takes place. You can’t have a sport like football having only 13 votes deciding who governs it every four years.

What Chris Williams has been able to do at Professional Football Jamaica Ltd shows what people with their brains clicking can achieve. The sport needs thinkers of the ilk of Williams, Kimani Robinson, Chris Dehring, Gary Peart and others to rescue it from the potential dungeon of destruction that this sorry lot is pushing it towards.

Enough of the foolishness! It’s time to get rid of this disgusting JFF administration.

New leadership of Health Ministry needed now

(Dr Chris Tufton)

IT doesn’t seem to me that reducing the hours of the ‘curfew’ will result in any beneficial change as Jamaica grapples with rising COVID-19 cases.

What seems to be quite lacking is the will to enforce laws that are made so often — like insisting on the wearing of masks in public, and, as best as possible, though more difficult, maintaining physical distance.

As I go around Jamaica I find it quite strange that the numbers are not higher, for so many people take the stipulations lightly, show no regard to their health and that of their fellowmen, and insist on some of the old folks’ tales that they cannot contract the disease.

Well, eventually, I believe that at least 90 per cent of Jamaicans will contract the virus as long as behavioural patterns continue, even with the introduction of stringent measures on paper. Jamaicans are hugely stubborn, and only if you make an example of a few will there be greater compliance.

On the other hand, in light of the importance of the COVID-19 situation, Prime Minister Holness might have tightened the policy screws on the Ministry of Health and Wellness by sending a signal that the Government is more serious about managing the pandemic.

Instead, there was a continuation of the appointment of Dr Chris Tufton, a bright man who has done his best, but he is not a medical doctor who could, at the snap of his fingers, respond to medical-based issues, instead of having to rely on doctors under his column to guide him.

By continuing the action, Holness even added a minister of state to the important ministry but, again, instead of choosing someone with a medical background he went for one whose main priority seems to be to push a pro-abortion agenda. Not good enough!

Both Dr Tufton and Mrs Cuthbert Flynn can serve in other areas of Government, but for health, it seems that there are misplaced priorities here, and common sense – though uncommon – is not something that people not qualified in health management can turn to for solace.

Dr Morais Guy, a trained medical practitioner, has been having a field day in highlighting the medical deficiencies that Dr Tufton cannot handle directly, without having to look left or right for a comment from either Dr Jacquiline Bisasor McKenzie or another of his high officials in the ministry. It is not supposed to be so difficult.

Look at the US President Biden-nominated transgender Dr Rachel Levine, a paediatrician, as assistant secretary of health – she having served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of health – in a bid to further fight the pandemic.

Her boss will be lawyer Xavier Becerra, pending approval, but at least there is a medical mind in a high place at the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Canada’s Minister of Health, Patty Hajdu, has a long history of serving in public health.

Nearer to home, Cuba’s Minister of Public Health is Roberto Tomas Morales Ojeda, a physician who also serves as a vice-president of that country, and there are many more to highlight.

So what are we waiting for? It is not too late for Holness to make that much-needed adjustment. That’s where Dr Horace Chang, the deputy prime minister, outstanding physician and surgeon, should come in.

Les Laing – giant of a short man

(Les Laing)

LESLIE “Les” Laing, a member of the famed quartet that won relay gold in the 4×400-metre event at the Olympic Games in the Finnish capital of Helsinki almost 69 years ago, was one of the most humble stars that you could ever meet.

Several years after he and three other Jamaicans, all legendary — Arthur Win and George Rhoden, who both went on to become medical doctors, and Herb McKenley — broke the world record in the event, Laing and Dr Rhoden sat with Maurice Foster and myself in 2003 at the studios of KLAS Sports Radio to talk about life, the Olympic Games, and happenings after. They also linked up with McKenley, who died four years later. Wint had predeceased all.

For Laing, who insisted that his surname should be pronounced “Lang”, one of his disappointments was not to have won an individual gold medal in the event in which he competed at the Olympics — the 200 metres — at London in 1948, and Helsinki four years later. He made both finals, though.

He was the shortest of the quartet — around five feet four inches — and a true, orthodox sprinter. Here was a man who was told by a certain doctor in his hometown of Linstead, St Catherine, when he was a youth at Dinthill Technical High School during the 1940s, that he should not exert himself nor allow his body to be jerked up too much, for it could be life-threatening. In other words, he should quit sprinting and keep himself quiet. What would have happened had he listened to that doctor?

Laing amused us when he said that he had lived in Puerto Rico for many years raising chickens outside of the capital San Juan, and refused to even learn how to speak Spanish, the US colony’s native language. According to him, he was old-fashioned and saw no need to change and acquire a new tongue.

Ruel Reid, Pinnock et al playing around

(Ruel Reid, Dr Fritz Pinnock)

SOMETIME ago, this column advised former Education Minister Ruel Reid, his wife Sharen, daughter Sharelle, president of Caribbean Maritime University Dr Fritz Pinnock, and councillor for the Brown’s Town Division in the St Ann Municipal Corporation, Kim Brown Lawrence to re-examine all options as far as the legal approach to their cases before the courts was concerned.

Now, I am not fully aware of what their instructions are to their legal representatives, but it seems now that the same approach that has been tried, that of questioning the manner in which they were arrested, and by whom, has become redundant.

It appears like an unwise, never-ending mission to nowhere, and if the defendants want to show that they are innocent, they need to do it differently. Questioning the legality of members of the Financial Investigations Division to make arrests has not gained any traction, whatsoever, is not cutting it.

The latest attempt to seek to ram home the point flopped at the Kingston & St Andrew Parish Court over a week ago. I would wager a ‘smalls’, subject to Betting, Gaming, and Lotteries Commission approval, that the Court of Appeal, to which a request for leave to appeal to the United Kingdom Privy Council has been made to hear the matter, will deny that request.

Any layman can see that the matter, as it is being pushed by the legal team of the accused, is an exercise in time-wasting, which leads one to wonder how long the Reids, Dr Pinnock and company will continue to play around with their collective future, which looks bleak at this time but can be bright again if someone can demonstrate that the evidence does not support the allegations.

Maybe they do not know, but prison life isn’t sweet.

Wanted: New approach to football management

(Kimani Robinson)

IT was not shocking to learn last weekend that the minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sport had moved to lock down a football camp scheduled for the Horace Burrell Football Academy, which was not approved.

What in blazes was the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) thinking? How could the JFF even contemplate such a move without getting the necessary approval from State agencies? Oh, I remember… the organisation is filled with mostly brainless individuals.

Sometimes I wonder what a bright man like finance committee head Dennis Chung is doing among so many people who only know about the shape of a football. He must find it incredibly difficult to have to deal with Dalton Wint or Raymond Anderson, for example, because for all the years that they have been in football, they have nothing to show…no legacies whatsoever, and cannot bring novel ideas to the table that would go on the platform for football’s grand take-off.

It has been said already, but needs to be repeated: There are too many unintelligent people involved in the running of football in Jamaica. This is a new era, new age, therefore a new approach is needed to keep the game in line with progress made in other nations.

It is also time to revamp the structure of football in Jamaica and allow for officials to be elected, not directly through parish associations — which is where much of the foolishness takes place. You can’t have a sport like football having only 13 votes deciding who governs it every four years.

What Chris Williams has been able to do at Professional Football Jamaica Ltd shows what people with their brains clicking can achieve. The sport needs thinkers of the ilk of Williams, Kimani Robinson, Chris Dehring, Gary Peart and others to rescue it from the potential dungeon of destruction that this sorry lot is pushing it towards.

Enough of the foolishness! It’s time to get rid of this disgusting JFF administration.