There at it again

The sprint twins dominate in London

The sprint twins Asafa Powell and Usain Bolt each put in two very impressive performances over the weekend at the Aviva London Grand Prix - IAAF World Athletics Tour. Powell easily won the 100m in 9.88, while Bolt simply just destroyed the entire field in the 200m with a time of 19.76. While many still question the temperament of Asafa Powell following his melt down at the 2006 World Championships, Powell seems to be easing into his best form of the season.





Usain Bolt continues to amaze

Usain Bolt’s performances over the 200m in 2008 has been truly amazing, with the young Jamaican basically turning one of the Olympic Games show piece events, the men’s 200m final into a non-event. How good is Usain Bolt? Well take a look at the video below of the men’s 200m final at the US Olympic Trials. The event was won by Walter Dix, who narrowly beat Shawn Crawford and the fast finishing Wallace Spearmon. Now, look at Bolt’s race again above, and see how far back Wallace Spearmon is from Bolt, who started to slow down at the 150m mark. Yeah, I know he is that good. By the way, Tyson Gay did not qualify for the 200m.



Mrs. Campbell-Brown stakes her claim

Not to be outdone by the boys, Veronica Campbell-Brown had a very impressive victory in the women’s 100m over a very strong field, at the same meet. I know the Jamaican selectors will have a hard time selecting the three women that will represent Jamaica in Beijing, but you have to say the Campbell-Browns performance in the 100m at the National trials was her worst performance of season, in terms of placing, as her fourth place time of 10.89, is still very god by any standard. But apart from that, based on her performances this season, she is the number one female athlete in the world over 100m.

I still got Portia on my mind

Every time you hear Portia Simpson-Miller speak, you have to wonder how she became the leader of the Peoples National Party and by extension, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, and if you do not believe me, take a look at the clip below. She was making her opening remarks at the election debates, just before the 2007 general election. Just look at how commanding Bruce Golding is, and then look how unsure Mrs. Simpson-Miller appears, as she constantly glances at her notes. In most debates, the speakers opening statements are well rehearsed and memorized, so that eye contact is consistently maintained with the audience.



It seems Mrs. Simpson-Miller is at her best when she is either smiling, hugging or just being old Sista P.

Some random stuff

Sista P

Opposition Leader and President of the Peoples National Party (PNP), Portia Simpson-Miller has described Peter Phillips challenge to her presidency of the party as a threat to democracy. For a minute I thought Sista P sounded a little like Robert Mugabe.

The sprint twins

I am getting fed up with the bullshit that is going on between Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell. If you look at the Youtube video, you can clearly see Powell looking at the video screen to his left, checking to see where Bolt was, while slowly shutting down, and Bolt realizing that Asafa had a good lead, did the same. I am extremely happy that Jamaica has these two great athletes, but they need to stop this non-sense of shutting down near the end of the race, which they also did at the National Trials. Usain and Asafa are surely becoming the Serena and Venus of Track and Field. I wonder who is going to win the coin toss for the Olympic Games 100m final.

Another Digicel Ad

Digicel’s latest attempt for a television ad is seriously getting on my flipping nerves. I really can’t see how watching Usain Bolt run around a track, with some flipping morons jumping up and down in the background is going to make me buy more of their phones, make more calls, or develop any type of brand loyalty towards Digicel’s products. All their ads seem to follow the same script, and if you think about it, Cable and Wireless and Flow have similar ads as well. Asafa is the poster boy for C&W internet services, which happens to cost two times more that what Flow charges, who by the way has Bridgette Foster-Hylton in their ads. I guess they probably share the same advertising agency.

Out with the old media, in with the new

Radio Jamaica (RJR) recently announced the appointment of Yvonne Wilks as the head of its new Cable Division, which comprises of TVJ sports, Jamaica News Network (JNN) and Reggae Entertainment Television (RE TV). Mrs. Wilks will spearhead the consolidation of the media group’s cable properties.

I was a bit taken aback by a comment that Yvonne Wilks made when she was commenting on the future prospects of the cable business. She was lamenting that if television is now, then cable is the future. Now, that would have been a very solid argument in 1994, but she seems to be few paces behind some of the latest trends in the media industry. Technological advancements in mobile and internet technologies has drastically changed how ad revenue will be generated by companies in future, with Google the most glaring example of the shift from the old electronic and print media business to online communities and mobile handsets.

I strongly believe that the local media companies are reacting very slowly to the vast changes in the media industry. No longer can these companies claim to offer value to advertisers, when so many people are interfacing with non-traditional types of media, like mobile phones and the various social networking websites like Hi5 and Facebook.

Media houses will have to get serious with developing a business strategy that is based on a mobile and internet platform, if they hope to be relevant in the future. A business strategy that will include encouraging the creation of user generated content from in the form of videos, blogs and forums. This type of content would appeal to people who want see different types of programming or stories that would have been too costly to put on air, or in print. This would allow media companies to develop and fine tune different types of programming while giving viewers the opportunity to give feedback, which is certainly cheaper than any forms of market research available. Additionally, this strategy will allow media houses to create a buzz about any program, as viewers could download any content and email it to their friends. If there is still any doubts about the benefits of user generated content (videos) and viral marketing (free advertising) just ask Milk, Johnny and Donisha, and Candy. Wink, wink.

Is Jamaica really open for business?

If you ever tried to start a business in Jamaica the right way, and by that I mean setting up your business to comply with the various local statutory laws, you would quickly find out how complex and tedious the entire process is. You may even come to the conclusion that registering your business is just a waste of valuable time. Well, that’s the conclusion I came to, having gone through the same process myself.

It does appear that the system of setting up your business is unnecessarily complicated when you consider the number of registration documents that one would need to submit to all the relevant institutions. Now, this being Jamaica, I guess it would be too optimistic to think that this will change anytime soon. Yes, you can ignore my pessimism, but I have little hope that our Politian’s have the desire to create an efficient system which allows people to get things done quickly.

You may be surprised that the bureaucracy does not stop with the government agencies, but the commercial banks seem to be the most problematic. To open a savings account for your business, you would think that submitting your business registration certificate, National ID, and Tax Registration Number (TRN) would be sufficient. Well, I guess that would be the scenario in an ideal world, but Jamaica seems not to be the ideal place to do business.

Based on my personal experience, I found that each bank had very specific requirements to open a bank account; like Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) wanted to visit my place of business, the National Commercial Bank wanted me to provide a Tax Compliance Certificate (TCC) and audited financial statements, and First Caribbean (FCIB) required me to have a cash flow projection, Business TRN and a credit report.

Now, for the ordinary person who “jus waan do a ting”, I find that these requirements are unfair as well as discriminatory to a number of Jamaicans. Let me make it clear, when I say discriminatory, I mean there is a bias towards persons who have access to money, and a certain level of education. For the average person like myself, these requirements are difficult to understand, and very tedious to comply with, and the banks seem not apply any type of common sense when creating these policies.

SME (Small and Medium Size Enterprises) is the new buzz word in the banking sector, but how can they claim to provide services that are tailored for small businesses, when they have not put the necessary systems in place to accommodate that sector.

I am here to tell the banks that we are entrepreneurs, not criminals, so if the Jamaican economy expects the micro business sector to provide the robust growth that this country needs, as well as limiting the size of the informal economy, we need to take a serious look at the framework in which our small businesses have to operate.