Is death really the ultimate?

Some years ago I stopped speak to a pair of young men who were soliciting funds on Trafalgar Road in Kingston. 

The younger one had no hands, arms, feet, or legs and he was in a wheelchair being pushed by the other. 

My heart went out to the wheelchair bound gentleman. I tried to imagine how one survives when you find yourself in a situation like that. 

That's really when I started to appreciate the little things we take for granted,  like feet and fingers!

When I inquired how he had received such severe injury, he told me he was in a car accident.

 The car he was in, went over a gully.

I guess that's one reason why when I hear the Road Safety Council always harping only on the death rate from road accidents, I find it so annoying!

For in all their ads that I have heard, they never seem to take serious injuries (which I suspect are far more prevalent than death in car accidents,) into consideration when warning about the need to drive carefully!

Can you believe too that while there is a horde of statistics on road accidents and the death rate, they have no facts or figures on serious injuries! (At least I couldn't find any!)

 It is because I just heard another radio ad advising drivers how to avoid death on the roads, why I am back on this topic. 

For death has always been their mantra over the decades I have been hearing their ads.

Could it be because I am one of the weird people in the world who doesn't think death is worse than serious incapacitating injury, why no ad warning me of possible death could influence me one bit to take my foot off the accelerator? 

Really how many of you would rather be totally incapacitated than dead? (This is my idea of an informal poll on the issue!)

In my book, if the Road Safety Council wants to encourage safer driving, they should be widening the scope of their ads instead of forever harping only about death.

 Or is it that they don't know death is inevitable? 

 Why don't they encourage motorists to think seriously about the possibility of having to spend the rest of their long lives totally dependent on others to do the most basic things?

Worse yet, if one is not born a millionaire, how well or long can you survive without being able to support oneself if one is seriously injured in an accident?

Interestingly, I wrote the above on the 10^th June. When I took up my Sunday Observer, (16/6) I noticed an article entitled “I’ve never been the same, Survivors share long-lasting impacts of road crashes” written by Kelsey Thomas.

Big up Kelsey as I have also often wondered why no working journalist has ever investigated and highlighted the terrible situation in which the injured are left.

For this particular article, Thomas interviewed only two persons, but I think if more drivers and road users in general read it, it would give them an idea of the physical and mental repercussions that remain when one is the injured for life.

I hope someone who coordinates advertising programs for the Road Safety Council reads it and gets the point that while death is final and inevitable for all, a life of suffering isn’t!

It’s time the Road Safety Council starts thinking outside of the box!

 

 

 

Action, not a bagga mout!

Neither Bruce Golding nor Andrew Holness seemed to have learnt much from the mantra of their late mentor, Edward Phillip George Seaga.

His catchy but important mantra was “Action not a bagga mout".

Every time I hear the JLP squealing like petulant teenagers over the dual citizenship issue, this comes to mind. 

Let me state unequivocally up and front, I personally don’t believe any member of the legislature should be allowed to have one foot in one foot out. For they make the laws that affect us all and when they make bad decisions, dual citizenship allows them the out when things go awry.

So, when leader of the Opposition Mark Golding who has British citizenship, says those who have dual citizenship should be allowed to sit in parliament, I disagree with him vehemently.

The constitutional anomaly allowing some legislators to have dual citizenship and be in parliament while barring others, is found in sections 39 and 40. It allows anyone who is a citizen of a Commonwealth country and is a resident in Jamaica for the immediately preceding twelve months, to be appointed to the Senate or elected to the House of Representatives.

But, guess what, in our constitution, dual only means American!

(I am wondering what we get from being members of the commonwealth anyway, apart from occasionally eating, drinking and making merry with the leaders of other former British colonies! Is it that we can’t stomach the thought of not celebrating British imperialism which oppressed our ancestors for centuries?)

Now considering how our love of foreign shifted radically from England to the United States since 1962, one would have thought our brilliant politicians would have sought to clarify the issue by now.

No sir, this nonesense had remained conveniently tucked away for 46 years, until January 2008, when attorney Abe Dabdoud who was a PNP candidate, thought he could get into parliament via a back door, by having the courts remove West Portland MP Daryl Vaz because he held a US citizenship.

Vaz had beat him at the polls.

Dabdoud failed but the country received a rude awakening as quite a few other JLP MP’s had to renounce their US citizenship, while those PNP MP's who held Commonwealth citizenship at that very time (I know of two at that time) watched in amusement.

This is where the bagga mout comes in.

For despite the grief it caused at the time, Bruce Golding, the then Prime Minister, did not think it important enough to try and undo the anomaly and chaos in the country as a result of that quirk in our constitution.

So, no action was taken following the weeping and wailing in the JLP and the bagga mout that prevailed for months on end!

(Oh, I forget, Golding must have been too taken up with Dudus to pay too much attention to parliamentary matters!)

Then came October 2017, when we had another bout of weeping and wailing over the same issue, as the PNP put up former Medical Association of Jamaica president, Dr. Shane Alexis to be their candidate in a by-election in St. Mary.

Alexis was legally nominated as although he was born in Canada, he had lived in Jamaica for decades but had never applied for Jamaican citizenship.

 Canada is a commonwealth country.

By then, young Andrew Holness had become prime minister, but he too took no action, once the bagga mout subsided.

Now here we are again in 2024, and the bagga mout from the JLP and its surrogates over the same issue, is once again becoming overwhelming.

You see, Mark Golding, leader of the Opposition, though born in Jamaica, has British citizenship. 

Oh mercy me!

Because some noise makers are belatedly realizing that they have no legal grounds to demand Golding’s withdrawal from parliament, they are now using words like morality and hypocrisy, in the argument.

Would someone like to tell me who are the moral and non-hypocritical politicians in our parliament?

Those who give themselves 200% and 300% salary increases while giving deserving people 40%? Those whose financial accounts can’t be verified for 3 years or have illegally enriched themselves off the backs of taxpayers?

After Barbados (little England) got rid of the British monarchy as head of their government, our government, having been shamed by their bold action, established a Constitutional Reform Committee to do the same.

But they don’t seem to want to reform thoroughly, for if we get rid of the British monarch as our head of state, why aren’t we getting out of this expensive and useless Commonwealth club, (also headed by the British monarch), replacing the Privy council as our final court, (wouldn't it be justice to resume hanging, if only for those who murder children!) and get rid of all those British titles bestowed on our citizens?

And why are we seeking to replace the overpaid and useless ribbon-cutting  Governor General with an equally useless ceremonial president?

Does any Jamaican think we will ever achieve effective constitutional reform under a bunch of bureaucratic tinkerers?

I certainly don’t think the ongoing fiasco will be anything but another total waste of money and energy.