The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 8,100 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 7 trips to carry that many people.
~Desert Rose~
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A CEO has committed suicide by shooting himself multiple times with a nail gun, a coroner reported on Friday.
Richard Talley, 57, founder of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, was found dead in…
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Although defence ministers have reported several times in the House of Commons on weapons launched by British Reaper drones in Afghanistan, the strikes by RAF pilots using USAF drones have gone completely unreported. For example on 12 November 2012 Labour MP David Anderson asked the MoD to give details of “how many unmanned aerial vehicle strikes have been conducted by the UK since operations commenced in Afghanistan.” Replying on behalf of the MoD, Defence Minister Andrew Robathan stated:
Convicted Australian drug trafficker Schapelle Corby released on parole after 9 years in prison in Indonesia – @BBCBreakingContinue reading…
Feb 7, 2014 11:01 AM CT
Customers use automated teller machines (ATM) outside a Danske Bank A/S branch in Copenhagen.
Danske Bank A/S (DANSKE) suspended six employees after Danish prosecutors started a probe into price manipulation on mortgage bond trades conducted in 2009.
The Danish Public Prosecutor for Serious Economic and International Crime has today “brought accusations against Danske Bank of price manipulation under particularly aggravated circumstances,” the Copenhagen-based bank said.
Danske said an internal investigation found that its rules had been violated in transactions between its home-loan arm, Realkredit Danmark A/S, and Danske Bank in the mortgage bond market. The bank said it notified the Financial Supervisory Authority, prompting the police investigation against Realkredit Danmark, Danske Bank and six employees.
“Usually we say that price manipulation will, as a minimum, lead to jail…
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AT 110 years, Ethlyn Samuels is still motivated to work, a trait she has held since childhood.
The woman, who worked on at least two sugar plantations in her early years, said had it not been for her poor eyesight, she would be out working now at her current age.
“If mi eyes did bright, mi go look work because mi have mi strength in mi body and mi no lazy,” Samuels told the Jamaica Observer during a recent visit to her home in Edgehill, St Ann’s Bay.
Many marvel at the strength of the centenarian who still has a sense of independence at her age. Although she did not have a birth certificate to prove it, Samuels said that she was born in 1903.
“Mi a nuh trouble to them,” Samuels said, adding that although she has caregivers, she is not a burden to them.
At 110, she still manages to take a bath by herself, and if she is allowed to, she would wash and clean.
“Mi love work. You have to work to come out to something. You can’t sit and achieve something,” she said.
Samuels said that she was always a hard-working person and never had a problem working.
“Mi a hard-working idiot,” she joked.
She added: “Mi no depend on no back-door deal. Mi never depend on no man. Most times a mi mine dem.”
The mother of 12, seven of whom have predeceased her, believes that the hard work she did in her youth may have helped to keep her healthy all these years.
She also believes that her long life is a result of the lifestyle she practised.
“Mi believe in the Father. Mi have a Christian mind to do everything to please Jehovah God. I live a clean life,” she stated.
Samuels also believes that the food she consumes has also contributed to her good health and long life.
“Mi eat nuff food, plenty fish, yam, and drink porridge,” she said.
She said that food was affordable in former years, and so she enjoyed having it in large quantities.
“Not fertiliser food eno, good food,” she pointed out.
“Ethlyn care herself, feed her body and when night come Ethlyn go a her bed,” the jovial woman said.
Reflecting on some of the meals she had then, Samuels said that “the old time days were nice and beautiful.”
She recalled having chocolate tea and coffee with cow’s milk.
“I was well fed,” she stated.
Samuels said that as a child, her mother took care of her and her siblings, ensuring that they had a healthy diet.
Although life was not easy for her family, Samuels said her mother ensured that her children were well fed and believed in God.
“If you gone to sleep and don’t pray, my mother wake you up to pray,” she said.
It is therefore no wonder that whatever Samuels does, she prays; this includes receiving visitors in her home and seeing them off.
When she became a mother, Samuels ensured that her children received the same teachings that her mother gave her.
She also worked hard, doing various jobs to support their needs.
She said that her earliest employment was on the Seville Estate in St Ann’s Bay, where she cleaned the banana walks, the canefields, carried coconuts and picked limes and tomatoes.
While many considered working on estates a major challenge even in post slavery, for Samuels, she was working to accomplish what she wanted and work was never a bother.
Her father left for Cuba while she was a young child and she never shied away from working to help her mother, she said.
Samuels also worked at the Richmond Estate in Priory before moving on to become a household helper. She then went on to work with a laundry establishment before deciding to do business on her own, buying and peddling ground provisions and fruits throughout St Ann’s Bay.
Samuels also recalled her time working on the construction of the original St Ann’s Bay Hospital, which she said is now a tax office. She said that she also worked at the present St Ann’s Bay Hospital during its construction.
“Mi work up a hospital till it done,” she said.
Although Samuels raised 12 children of her own, her love and care for children did not stop there. She recalled that as an elderly woman, her home was always filled with children, as many parents chose to leave their child with “Miss Ethlyn” whenever they went out.
“They use to call here crèche,” her youngest child, Sylvester Ogle, recalled.
Ogle said that his mother got along with community members and was well loved and did not refuse to care for the children of the younger women while many of them went out to work.
The member of the St Ann’s Bay Seventh-day Adventist Church still enjoys the company of children, many of whom from her church visit her at her home. She also enjoys her over 30 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.
Samuels admires hardworking young people. Her most common word of advice to young people is “work”.
“Try your best to get a good work to help yourself,” she advised during the Sunday Observer visit.
“Put yourself in your church; don’t put the world on your head too soon. Make sure you work to help yourself,” was her advice to young women.
Samuels believes that many young women and teenage girls are not putting value on their lives, as many parents are not as strict as in the past.
She explained that dating and marrying took on a different format in the past.
“If dem love the girl and want talk to them, dem have to go see the mother and father. Dem have to know the family before dem go in a it,” she said.
Samuels said that family life in Jamaica has changed.
“Family was number one … them no notice family nowadays”, she said, explaining that as a child and young adult, the value placed on family life was much higher than it is now.
“If you sick, dem a come look fi you. Old time people, even walk with walking stick,” she said.
“Dem share. If dem kill a goat dem send piece go give the other person. Dem live loving,” she added.
Samuels believes in serving and so she joined several charitable groups and clubs, like the burial scheme.
“It’s good to live good with people,” she said.
“Every little thing mi push myself in,” she said, insisting that she often leads from the front. She said also that she ensured that her children were involved in things which helped in their development.
The hardworking woman also admires some of the great Jamaicans whom she believed helped to uplift the country. Marcus Garvey and Sir Alexander Bustamante were two persons whom she spoke highly about.
“He was a good man,” she said of Garvey.
For Bustamante, “A him mek we know ’bout pension. If you want vex, you vex. A the truth me a talk,” she added.
As Samuels looks towards her 111th birthday, she said that her life is in God’s hand. Not even when she is feeling pain, which she thinks is as a result of her age, does she worry about it.
While not concerned as to how long she will live, Samuels wants what is best for her country.
“The black race (is) strong. We (are) strong but we need to live good with each other. Rise and give God the glory and live good,” she stated.
“You have to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove,” were her words of wisdom.
IF Portia Simpson had reflected more on it, she might have not gone ahead with the idea of challenging P J Patterson for the presidency of the People’s National Party (PNP), after Michael Manley stepped down due to ill health in 1992.
But like driven people, backing down is hardly ever an option. Her life’s trajectory had been in this direction and she probably could not have stopped, even if she wanted to. Even before she knew that the vacancy would arise or that Patterson would seek the presidency, Simpson had hoped for new opportunities to serve her people and for personal development. She believed she could make a difference in a position of greater authority in the party and the country. This could have been it, she thought.
Contesting the position against Patterson was somewhat out of the ordinary. She recalls campaigning for him when he ran for vice-president of the party. But she was spurred on by admirers inside and outside of the PNP, among them Hugh Small, a former finance minister, and Dr D K Duncan, the former minister of mobilisation who had thrown their invaluable support behind her.
Not long after deciding to give it a shot, she could see that the writing was on the wall. Patterson had the clear majority of the MPs and delegates. He went on to win and become prime minister, never losing another local or general election until he retired in 2006.
“I know it was never going to be easy to defeat Mr Patterson. He had contributed so much to this great party and was there long before me, as a young lawyer,” she acknowledges. In fact, Patterson had campaigned for Norman Manley, the PNP co-founder and National Hero.
“But he (Patterson) never held any malice towards me for challenging him and we have remained good friends. It’s the hallmark of a great leader,” Simpson Miller explains.
Of course, it didn’t dawn on her that she, too, would get her chance to emulate this quality she had admired in Patterson.
Demonstrating that he really had no ill will towards Simpson, Patterson invited her to his Cabinet as minister of labour and welfare after securing his own mandate in the general elections of 1993. When Patterson reshuffled his Cabinet in 1995, he promoted her to a bigger Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Sports. In February 2000, he appointed her minister of tourism and sports and after the 2002 elections minister of local government and sport where she remained until 2006.
“I enjoyed all the ministries in which I served, although I have to admit that I resisted leaving labour and social security for tourism,” she says. “I was very comfortable there and I had learnt so much about our country and people. I felt a sense of accomplishment when I got critical changes to cause more people to benefit from the Programme of Advancement through Health and Education (PATH).
“But I came to enjoy tourism as well, working with people like Fay Pickersgill and Carole Guntley,” she says.
The high points for her stint at tourism included development of the Tourism Master Plan for Sustainable Development and working with the Jamaica Tourist Board, the hotel industry and people in the United States to restore Jamaica’s image after the big fallout from the upsurge of violence in West Kingston when Reneto Adams-led police went after alleged criminals in Tivoli Gardens in 2001.
A municipality for Portmore
Her stint in the Ministry of Local Government and Sports brought opportunities for much all-island travel and working among the people, which is the essential Portia Simpson. She especially cherishes the work with the late George Lee to gain municipality status for Portmore, which is steadily rising from a dormitory community to the English-speaking Caribbean’s largest city.
She put much effort behind local government reform and in improving farm roads to give farmers better access to markets, noting that she encouraged the parish councillors that the more money they earned, the more roads she could get fixed or constructed.
Local government also reminded her of her rural upbringing and the invaluable lessons she had learnt. She recalls one occasion when she had shown a tendency to be scornful around other children. There was a boy with a runny nose who came to sit beside her and she chased him away saying “get away from beside me with your cold”.
“My mother remonstrated with me immediately. She sent me for a rag and instructed me to wipe the little boy’s nose. Afterwards, she told me that the only time I should look down on anyone is to lift them up and that when I am going up I should always take someone up with me. Those lessons I have never forgotten.”
Portia’s time come
And so now at last, Portia Simpson Miller’s time had come. When Patterson announced he was stepping away from representational politics and set internal elections in motion for PNP president and subsequently prime minister, Simpson Miller was ready. All the events before — the painful losses, the soaring triumphs, the missed opportunities, the glorious accomplishments, the tears and the joys — had been a prelude to this one moment in time.
Simpson Miller faced three outstanding Comrades — Dr Peter Phillips, Dr Omar Davies, and Dr Karl Blythe. The campaign was at times bitter and divisive. Harsh things were said about her and her lack of intellect. It was hard to bear but “I collected all the venom that was spewed and created a potion of peace and love”.
She lost the MP count, but was solidly backed by the delegates on February 26, 2006. Portia Simpson Miller was now PNP president. And history would welcome Jamaica’s first woman prime minister and the country’s seventh on March 30, 2006.
But the internal divisions in the party were not settled and healing was taking a long time. It was in that state that Simpson Miller called general elections — delayed briefly by a hurricane— for September 3, 2007. The PNP narrowly lost, but importantly she had not yet gained her own mandate.
By July 2008 the tensions within the PNP had reached a crescendo, worsened by the electoral defeat. This time it was Peter Phillips who would face Simpson Miller alone in a bid for the presidency. She again won the delegates’ vote by a wider margin and set about the healing process.
Cauterising party wounds
She would remain in opposition until December 29, 2011 when young Andrew Holness summoned Jamaica to the polls and lost badly to the rejuvenated PNP. Simpson Miller had, at long last, received her own mandate, with a two to one margin of victory.
When she appointed Phillips as her finance minister and virtual number two, she had effectively cauterised the wounds and emulated Patterson’s treatment of her after she had challenged him in 1992.
She ascribes her rise to the country’s top job to great support from many inside and outside the party, a solid upbringing and an appointment with destiny. She speaks with pride and love of her husband, Errald Miller of Cable and Wireless fame, and talks shyly about how they met.
“I had met him at several functions before, but we did not speak to each other. Then one day he asked if we could meet. When we did, he asked me out to dinner and it began there,” she says, confessing: “He loves me and I love him very much.”
She describes her husband as “firm, fair, bright and professional”. He is a Jack of all trades around the house and he acts as a news taster for her, sifting out constructive items that he thinks he should bring to her attention, because she doesn’t like to start her day with negative thoughts and criticisms.
Portia’s legacy
The question now is: What will be Portia Simpson Miller’s legacy? Her critics have found much to fault her on, but mainly complaints from some journalists that she avoids the local media and is not forthcoming, and that she travels too frequently without reporting on the value of those trips.
Simpson Miller counters that some journalists push microphones in her face, set up traps and don’t show her the respect a leader of government deserves. Moreover, she prefers to work and leave the talking to others. She travels when it is necessary because Jamaica has to remain in the thick of things to not be left behind. Plus, the benefits have been substantial, such as a J$1.6-billion grant coming from the Chinese after her visit there.
She attests that Jamaica’s name is good abroad and everywhere she goes she is treated with great respect. She notes that she is always answering questions about Usain Bolt, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the world’s fastest man and woman, and latterly Tessanne Chin.
There is personal pride in being selected among Time magazine’s 100 most influential leaders in 2012.
In her own account, Simpson Miller says she will be remembered for her unstinting service to the poorest and most vulnerable Jamaicans, but also for embracing everyone. She has remained true to Norman Manley’s charge to the party to bring about economic revolution and to look out especially for the welfare of the masses, believing that after the current International Monetary Fund programme, Jamaica will see great progress and development.
“We have to stick with the programme, while seeing to it that the poor are protected as best we can. We have to keep the bigger picture in front of us that is captured in Vision 2030. We will keep going after growth, going after investments to create jobs for our people, a better standard of living for our people,” she says.
She points to the removal of sugar workers from barracks to decent housing, with help from the European Union. “The sons and daughters of slaves whose blood has watered the soil of this land can now say ‘I own a piece of this Rock’. The spirit of their ancestors must be smiling.”
But Simpson Miller is not smiling about crime, saying that no one in her Cabinet was happy with the level of crime and violence in the country. She urges all Jamaicans to band together to defeat the criminals, insisting that if the communities do not work together and unite around the issue, crime would not be solved.
If nothing else, Portia Simpson Miller is certain that if she had to do it all over again, she would. “I am obviously more mature and have learnt so much more over time. So I would do some things differently. I would certainly fight more for my people,” she says.
Ultimately, it is time that will determine what the Simpson Miller legacy is. It is too soon to be conclusive, for the script is not yet finished. There are a few more chapters yet to be written. It might not be for us, mere mortals that we are, to be the writers of that epitaph.
Surely, there must be a working-class Jamaican woman somewhere in the remotest nook and cranny who can look at her growing daughter and think she could be the next woman prime minister of Jamaica.
But if nothing else, and we could be afforded a peek into the vastness of time, we can be assured that history will testify that Portia Simpson Miller, an ordinary girl from rural Wood Hall, became an extraordinary woman and remained steadfast in a noble mission: to serve those who could not serve themselves.
And history, we know, does not err.
ERRATA
In the second instalment of Portia Simpson Miller – the 40th anniversary interview published on Friday, February 7, 2014, Simpson Miller was erroneously located in certain events of the 1970s. She was appointed minister of labour, social security and sports in 1989 and not 1976. The events related to that appointment therefore unfolded after 1989. After the 1976 elections, she was appointed parliamentary secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister in 1977. In the first instalment published on Wednesday, February 5, 2014, the devil’s imp rendered the word ‘fiends’ as ‘friends’, doing grave damage to the meaning of the sentence. Also, Simpson Miller’s parents did not operate a shop as the piece said. The errors are sorely regretted.
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