The sight of Alice Waugh, the woman who was convicted for breaching the Public Health Act, set off alarms of all sorts in recent days.

Alice, you see, carried out the unthinkable unsanitary act in 2023 while handling food at the Heroes Circle hit spot called ‘Crab Circle’, which has vendors primarily selling crabs, as well as roasted corn and coconut, soup and other niceties.

An alert colleague of Alice brought the folly of her ways to the globe by videotaping the nastiness, which led people to be saying ‘oh sh..’ and ending in a shutdown of the unsanitary facility by the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC), a barring of Alice, and then a refurbishing of the place, which included washroom facilities, that were lacking before.

Naturally, those in charge also had to take action against Alice, who, after paying her J$250,000 fine, managed to slip back onto the property in under two years of committing the act.

Now, what the hell is going on?

It was bad for Alice to want to serve up a meal with additives that people were ignorant about, but for her to return from the cold and start selling the same things again, new washroom now available or not, is an indictment of the KSAMC.

The municipal corporation must have total control in respect of who vend at the facility. It cannot be a case of ‘run in and out’ when you feel like.

Already, people are arguing foolishness like Alice should be given a chance, but given a chance to do what? The stigma is still very much there, and will remain at the spot as long as she sticks around.

If anyone wants to talk about redemption and rehabilitation, then such would have to be placed in context. Alice could not have gone back to Crab Circle on her own volition. She must have been given clearance by someone. The question is who.

Did someone expect her to just ‘screechy’ back into Crab Circle and not be noticed? I am all for giving people chances to make things right for themselves, but sending Alice back to the scene of the crime amounts to an act of buffoonery. The best that could have been done for Alice is to get her to another location to sell something else, maybe dry goods, and see if people would, over time, forgive and embrace her.

As an occasional patron of Crab Circle before Alice’s venture into the passage of the wicked, I have not gone back since her removal and conviction, and I will stay away from there as long as she remains active within the space.

It is a disgrace for something like that to have happened, and a blatant insult for people to be exposed to a stigmatised virus.

Better can come. Better must come.

Troubling drop in birth rate

Health officials have been getting jumpy, arising from the fall in Jamaica’s birth rate, and many potential causes are being foisted upon the people of our land.

So far, among the reasons given include the view that more women are focusing on their careers now than ever before; and that the said women do not want more than one child, citing the cost of raising children from birth to the legally recognised adult age of 18 or beyond.

Information from Jamaica’s leading maternity hospital last week was that there had been a 40 per cent fall in births at the institution over the past year. Now, I would challenge anyone that a majority of the births delivered by ‘career women’ at Victoria Jubilee is far less than 30 per cent of the overall number. So, what else could be responsible for the drop?

I believe that the quality of food being consumed by people generally has fallen off badly. People in Jamaica as a whole cannot afford to live healthily consistently. Some have to settle for a bellyful of junk because that is all they can afford. Consumption of junk food, too, must be brought into the mix. How often have you passed by some of the more pronounced fast-food establishments and seen the long queues of people gunning to devour stuff that is unhealthy? The number of households that have opted for the traditional Sunday dinner of rice and peas (beans) and chicken, or fish, or curry goat, has declined.

Apart from the lesbians and gays, whose activities do not realistically include any intent to reproduce, another key factor affecting men must be their overconsumption of energy drinks in unfriendly cocktails spiced with rum, vodka, brandy and other spirits.

They often think that they are preparing for war with their womenfolk, moving to sharpen up the front end for a more assertive rough ride, but in the end suffer a puncture and find out that even though they may eventually complete the journey, an oil leak developed somewhere and caused engine damage, as the slippery stuff was never going into the right channel. Sadly, it is the younger men who are indulging in that activity.

Getting to the point of readiness is one thing in men, even those serving on a production line. Being able to produce quality juices to supply the market is quite another matter.

I have played my role, and at this stage I do not expect to contribute anymore to population growth. But you just never know.

This, again, is something that must be examined with zip. Even at a maternity hospital like Victoria Jubilee, a consistent drop in births will result in fewer jobs for medical officials. And there are other implications. Just watch it.

 A low blow by Speid, Cavalier Soccer Club

What transpired in the leadup to the quarter-final round of the Wray and Nephew Premier League marked another low in Jamaica’s football.

Cavalier Soccer Club, headed by Rudolph Speid, forced an investigation by the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) into the conduct of St Ann-based club, Mount Pleasant Academy, which alleged that Mount Pleasant had fielded players who had not properly transferred from their previous clubs, and by extension had up to seven players without Jamaican nationality on at least one match card in an encounter with Premier League club Racing United in April.

If Speid and Cavalier had their way, Mount Pleasant would have been deducted 18 points from six matches that the club participated in.

Firstly, the objection from Cavalier came long after the alleged breach, which is something in this country that should be discouraged. If an individual or club has a problem, that should be dealt with pronto, not wait until everything seems okay and then trigger a disruption.

And how did Speid come to realise that Mount Pleasant had committed sinful acts against so many clubs? Does his position as head of the JFF’s technical committee give him the advantage of knowing all about the other clubs, and can act as he sees fit?

As things turned out, although Mount Pleasant had seven foreigners on the match card in the encounter with Racing, only five played. The club, thus, were fined $250,000 for exceeding the number of players on a match card in the league, which is six.

Leighton Duncan, the man who founded Cavalier in the early 1960s, must be spinning in his grave over the manner in which Speid has been directing the club in order to show up another. Some things are just not worth the negativity that their authors seek to achieve.

Kishane Thompson’s making of history

Kishane Thompson must be the only Jamaica final leg runner in the men’s 4×100-metre relay at any meet to not receive the baton on the final handover in consecutive races.

What happened between last Saturday and Sunday at Guangzhou, China, is a mixture of sloppy work, and distress.

Jamaica were well positioned to qualify for the final of the event, and an automatic spot to the World Athletics Championship in Tokyo this September, only for a penultimate baton change between Julian Forte and Yohan Blake to spoil the show on Saturday, leaving Thompson in bewilderment.

Just 24 hours later in the World Championship qualifying race, a suspected hamstring injury to Forte on the same leg, put the brakes on Jamaica…again, Thompson left dry.

An injury is something that can hit any athlete at any time, so no blame should be laid at the feet of Forte in this case. However, had Blake been thinking, having looked back and seen his teammate grimacing, he should never have run off. Maybe that one move could have pushed Jamaica forward, and you just never know what could have happened had Thompson received the baton even in fifth place on that last leg.

Deep down, though, the Jamaican athletes, in large measure, seemed underprepared for the World Relays.

A review by a committee with no direct contact with the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association would be in order. But in a JAAA that is so clannish, that will peter out into a Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

As a parting shot, though, check out how so-called false starts were handled at the meet. Oh! if only those who officiated at Champs could learn from it.