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Rage and an X6
Yes, we can transform a garrison
FRANKLIN JOHNSTON
Friday, July 15, 2011
There is no difference between Mr X6, Westmoreland machete men who made mincemeat of the security guard and good folk who wish they had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to destroy bad drivers on our roads! We are an angry society and rage consumes many. Entitlement fuels rage and so a man murders his woman because she is his! Dumb ass! The least culpable may be Mr X6 and the most may be those who took time to sharpen their "las" to kill. But the underbelly is sick politics! We don't need Mr X6's name to know he is a politician or connected to politicians - note the silence and how things play out. Truth is, they own plantation Jamaica - fudge a news embargo while they do damage control - they will tell us when they are good and ready. The hand is X6, but the brain is politics. What technical flaw will abort the case before elections? Was X6 not read his rights? He signed with his left hand? Really! What of the macheteros? Sadly, X6 debases us all but for many it's a way to send a message to politicians - people can't endure the arrogance they let loose on us. It's the "I love the Queen" thing - nothing to do with the queen, just yanking the chain to show how disgusted we are with their politics! We saw Strauss-Khan's picture in the hour, but X6 is a big beast, well protected - no photos! Don't cuss legal guns. FLA figures say less than 1 per cent of us have them. The blade is the weapon of choice for rage. So call an amnesty on the 1 million machetes out there! Turn them in - they are producing too well!
There are strong links between rage and politics. The entitlement of politicians, contempt for the poor translates to contractor, route taxi, street vendor and "eat a food" people. "Wen dem man deh talk, no dawg mus' bark!" Bad drivers boast of close shaves, but not the heart attacks and anguish they give others. We don't have the discipline to drive in two lanes around a bend. What is the rule on a roundabout or four-way stop? In left-hand drive countries any vehicle coming from your right has the right of way. Does this apply here? When a taxi or bus driver waves his hand like crazy after he cuts in front of you, you brake sharply and he calmly picks up his fare, don't you wish you had the "evil powers" our anthem speak of? Zap him! Do our rules for pedestrian crossings require motorists to screech to a halt inches from a person - "Guh tru, lady, a oodn lik yuh!" Is all size and colour pedestrian crossings legal? Can we make our own? Why is the car maker's VIN number not on tax office papers? Why is gross weight in old metrics? What is CWT? Why not print forms with spaces for engine and chassis numbers so the tax officer doesn't have to write all over the fitness slip? Last week few knew what X6 was. Now we know - better than wife. The fate of X6 rests on what works best for the coming elections, not a jury! Watch this space
Aaaahh, Jamaica, land we love!
BMW X6
BMW X6
TRANSFORMING A GARRISON is reverse engineering - go back to the start, map the process - Eureka! You ask for my take on garrisons, so here's a taste. Politicians like the poor, they don't respect them. The poor are lumpen - 73 are killed, 73 are born - what's the fuss? MPs fear mixed communities as it is hard to speak from both sides of one mouth at one time, so they stratify people. Go to the rich area and cuss the "lazy" poor, then to the poor area and cuss the "wicked" rich. Bruce's Tivoli fails as will all other garrisons. Money spent in garrisons is Band Aid! One-dimensional enclaves can't be viable communities! Segregation by belief is fine - I don't mind Rasta rich, poor, doctor, singer in enclaves, but segregation by income and politics is death. When Tivoli or Central Kingston has a problem we send in help. When Mona has a problem we send none, as problem solvers live there too. In my mom's days Mr James had his drug store and lived in the house at the back; Mr Chang lived upstairs his hardware and shop; the tailor and barber too. Rich and poor lived in the same area and used the same shops. Poor people were part of our community. People made food for them! We loved turn cornmeal with meat in it! Quiche? When regulars did not show, mom was concerned: "You see Miss Daisy this week? Wonder if she sick?"
Housing is now built along class and income lines and the poor are pariahs. The poor are lumped together but the poor can't save the poor.
Shortwood was not a garrison - rich and poor lived there; as in Cedar Valley and the lanes - Standpipe, Chambers, Birdsucker, Bundy. Minister Horace Chang should note that the National Housing Trust is a virulent segregator by my research! For decades its housing solutions undermine national unity. It is a polariser and a harbinger of dysfunction and disorder. I would like to study its social equity balance sheet. Is it a crime to entice better-offs from mixed communities into middle-class enclaves and condemn the poor who are left? They can't rise because the leaven left the community! After they remove the cream they build arid poor people housing which can never be a community. NHT takes away the salt; what remains is insipid and it rots! Once diverse communities are now segregated by income - there are houses for those earning $2 million, $5 million.
The poor get charity and are predators. To improve a garrison you must build mixed housing and make it easy for middle-class people to live there - difficult but doable! It is folly to build houses for poor people only. Why brand our capital as a ghetto? Downtown must include a few middle-class flats and townhouses. Segregated housing hurt our nation! Downtown is now for the poor but we need "name brand" people and MPs to live there. Build it, the middle class will come (many were born there), and the poor will feel part of the community and nation. Seed garrison areas with the middle class and all families rise. If we build 100 houses for the poor, allot 15 for the middle class. Good services and policing will follow and the harsh garrison mist will disappear - gradually. A few bankers, lawyers, businessmen must be incentivised to rent townhouses and go to their "Hamptons" country houses only on weekends.
Why shouldn't Thwaites broadcast from a studio in the city? Or Seaga have a flat there? All our national heroes had poor parents. No rich people settled in Jamaica - some visited. Everyone arrived poor, a slave, on some awful contract or running from something. They built families and fortunes by education and work. A nation is built the same way. Seaga's Tivoli failed - good try. He forgot Rule 1: never embed poverty in one location. Cabinet must say to donors, "We have an inclusive model which requires a cross-section of Jamaicans in every community. We will not accept money to build ghettos, only for mixed housing!" Our 15 garrisons do not need therapy. When a boy in Tivoli can go to a nearby townhouse pod and talk with a stockbroker about careers, it's working. When a girl from Rae Town can go to a Gold Street condo complex and tell a top nurse her problem, then we're cooking!
MPs must live in flats in the Gordon House beltway, not Norbrook. Offer cheap rent for 10 years to top civil servants, sportsmen, exemplary citizens (many were born there) to be a part of social change. See Asafa interviewed by ESPN on the steps of his King Street condo, with harbour backdrop, Bimmer at the curb, cheering masses behind the crowd control tape - he is their neighbour - no security is needed. Bruce, Portia and spouses will decant from their penthouses atop Bank of Jamaica tower to celebrate with their neighbours, as they live in the city during the week when Parliament is in session. Attract real people back to the city and you put life back in the city! Invest in the city. If Desmond agrees, I need $5 billion to bulldoze the market district - phase 1 development with all buildings in character. Call me a dreamer, but I want a room with a view on Port Royal St and to watch Usain run in Rio 2016 on a flat screen in the middle of this street with neighbours. A garrison is people; together we can win! Stay conscious!
Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants currently on assignment in the UK.
franklinjohnston@hotmail.com
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1SHgqgqFr
Yes, we can transform a garrison
FRANKLIN JOHNSTON
Friday, July 15, 2011
There is no difference between Mr X6, Westmoreland machete men who made mincemeat of the security guard and good folk who wish they had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to destroy bad drivers on our roads! We are an angry society and rage consumes many. Entitlement fuels rage and so a man murders his woman because she is his! Dumb ass! The least culpable may be Mr X6 and the most may be those who took time to sharpen their "las" to kill. But the underbelly is sick politics! We don't need Mr X6's name to know he is a politician or connected to politicians - note the silence and how things play out. Truth is, they own plantation Jamaica - fudge a news embargo while they do damage control - they will tell us when they are good and ready. The hand is X6, but the brain is politics. What technical flaw will abort the case before elections? Was X6 not read his rights? He signed with his left hand? Really! What of the macheteros? Sadly, X6 debases us all but for many it's a way to send a message to politicians - people can't endure the arrogance they let loose on us. It's the "I love the Queen" thing - nothing to do with the queen, just yanking the chain to show how disgusted we are with their politics! We saw Strauss-Khan's picture in the hour, but X6 is a big beast, well protected - no photos! Don't cuss legal guns. FLA figures say less than 1 per cent of us have them. The blade is the weapon of choice for rage. So call an amnesty on the 1 million machetes out there! Turn them in - they are producing too well!
There are strong links between rage and politics. The entitlement of politicians, contempt for the poor translates to contractor, route taxi, street vendor and "eat a food" people. "Wen dem man deh talk, no dawg mus' bark!" Bad drivers boast of close shaves, but not the heart attacks and anguish they give others. We don't have the discipline to drive in two lanes around a bend. What is the rule on a roundabout or four-way stop? In left-hand drive countries any vehicle coming from your right has the right of way. Does this apply here? When a taxi or bus driver waves his hand like crazy after he cuts in front of you, you brake sharply and he calmly picks up his fare, don't you wish you had the "evil powers" our anthem speak of? Zap him! Do our rules for pedestrian crossings require motorists to screech to a halt inches from a person - "Guh tru, lady, a oodn lik yuh!" Is all size and colour pedestrian crossings legal? Can we make our own? Why is the car maker's VIN number not on tax office papers? Why is gross weight in old metrics? What is CWT? Why not print forms with spaces for engine and chassis numbers so the tax officer doesn't have to write all over the fitness slip? Last week few knew what X6 was. Now we know - better than wife. The fate of X6 rests on what works best for the coming elections, not a jury! Watch this space
Aaaahh, Jamaica, land we love!
BMW X6
BMW X6
TRANSFORMING A GARRISON is reverse engineering - go back to the start, map the process - Eureka! You ask for my take on garrisons, so here's a taste. Politicians like the poor, they don't respect them. The poor are lumpen - 73 are killed, 73 are born - what's the fuss? MPs fear mixed communities as it is hard to speak from both sides of one mouth at one time, so they stratify people. Go to the rich area and cuss the "lazy" poor, then to the poor area and cuss the "wicked" rich. Bruce's Tivoli fails as will all other garrisons. Money spent in garrisons is Band Aid! One-dimensional enclaves can't be viable communities! Segregation by belief is fine - I don't mind Rasta rich, poor, doctor, singer in enclaves, but segregation by income and politics is death. When Tivoli or Central Kingston has a problem we send in help. When Mona has a problem we send none, as problem solvers live there too. In my mom's days Mr James had his drug store and lived in the house at the back; Mr Chang lived upstairs his hardware and shop; the tailor and barber too. Rich and poor lived in the same area and used the same shops. Poor people were part of our community. People made food for them! We loved turn cornmeal with meat in it! Quiche? When regulars did not show, mom was concerned: "You see Miss Daisy this week? Wonder if she sick?"
Housing is now built along class and income lines and the poor are pariahs. The poor are lumped together but the poor can't save the poor.
Shortwood was not a garrison - rich and poor lived there; as in Cedar Valley and the lanes - Standpipe, Chambers, Birdsucker, Bundy. Minister Horace Chang should note that the National Housing Trust is a virulent segregator by my research! For decades its housing solutions undermine national unity. It is a polariser and a harbinger of dysfunction and disorder. I would like to study its social equity balance sheet. Is it a crime to entice better-offs from mixed communities into middle-class enclaves and condemn the poor who are left? They can't rise because the leaven left the community! After they remove the cream they build arid poor people housing which can never be a community. NHT takes away the salt; what remains is insipid and it rots! Once diverse communities are now segregated by income - there are houses for those earning $2 million, $5 million.
The poor get charity and are predators. To improve a garrison you must build mixed housing and make it easy for middle-class people to live there - difficult but doable! It is folly to build houses for poor people only. Why brand our capital as a ghetto? Downtown must include a few middle-class flats and townhouses. Segregated housing hurt our nation! Downtown is now for the poor but we need "name brand" people and MPs to live there. Build it, the middle class will come (many were born there), and the poor will feel part of the community and nation. Seed garrison areas with the middle class and all families rise. If we build 100 houses for the poor, allot 15 for the middle class. Good services and policing will follow and the harsh garrison mist will disappear - gradually. A few bankers, lawyers, businessmen must be incentivised to rent townhouses and go to their "Hamptons" country houses only on weekends.
Why shouldn't Thwaites broadcast from a studio in the city? Or Seaga have a flat there? All our national heroes had poor parents. No rich people settled in Jamaica - some visited. Everyone arrived poor, a slave, on some awful contract or running from something. They built families and fortunes by education and work. A nation is built the same way. Seaga's Tivoli failed - good try. He forgot Rule 1: never embed poverty in one location. Cabinet must say to donors, "We have an inclusive model which requires a cross-section of Jamaicans in every community. We will not accept money to build ghettos, only for mixed housing!" Our 15 garrisons do not need therapy. When a boy in Tivoli can go to a nearby townhouse pod and talk with a stockbroker about careers, it's working. When a girl from Rae Town can go to a Gold Street condo complex and tell a top nurse her problem, then we're cooking!
MPs must live in flats in the Gordon House beltway, not Norbrook. Offer cheap rent for 10 years to top civil servants, sportsmen, exemplary citizens (many were born there) to be a part of social change. See Asafa interviewed by ESPN on the steps of his King Street condo, with harbour backdrop, Bimmer at the curb, cheering masses behind the crowd control tape - he is their neighbour - no security is needed. Bruce, Portia and spouses will decant from their penthouses atop Bank of Jamaica tower to celebrate with their neighbours, as they live in the city during the week when Parliament is in session. Attract real people back to the city and you put life back in the city! Invest in the city. If Desmond agrees, I need $5 billion to bulldoze the market district - phase 1 development with all buildings in character. Call me a dreamer, but I want a room with a view on Port Royal St and to watch Usain run in Rio 2016 on a flat screen in the middle of this street with neighbours. A garrison is people; together we can win! Stay conscious!
Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants currently on assignment in the UK.
franklinjohnston@hotmail.com
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1SHgqgqFr
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