derrickmckoy.net

I am your worst nightmare!

ALLEGATIONS by a woman that she was finger-raped by an immigration officer before being thrown out of Barbados, have brought the spotlight on poor treatment of visitors to that eastern Caribbean island. The victim complained bitterly to the Observer yesterday that when she attempted to enter Barbados on March 14, 2011, she was subjected to two demeaning cavity searches by a female immigration officer who continuously spewed venom about other Caribbean Islanders. It was her first trip out of the island.

This story was corroborated by former Jamaican honorary consul to Barbados, Marlon Gordon. Gordon, an attorney, said that there was no excuse for wholesale discrimination against Jamaica nationals. "This arbitrary kind of behaviour that is being exhibited by the Government in Barbados has to be looked at. You can't penalise an entire nation," Gordon said.

Jaydene Thomas, a former journalist and now a practising attorney in Barbados, said the foreign ministry had for too long ignored the cries of Jamaicans who suffered at the hands of Barbadians when they visited that island. "Every time that a flight arrives from Jamaica, the nothing-to-declare line is automatically closed, she said. "We are treated like criminals by the authorities."

If you have been coming to this site before you will notice that I have changed everything. In the first place, it is much simpler.There are no banners shouting that "ethics matters" or "anti-corruption matters" with links that direct you to other sites. Neither are there any references or links to clients, partners or services. Quite simply, I have decided to confine the website to my teaching and research at the University of the West Indies.

Bringing a website down and putting a new one up is something of a big deal. My previous site was a content management system set powered by Joomla! 1.O.  The one is powered by Joomla! 1.5. These CMS are quite different one from the other. I believe that Joomla 1.5 is a great improvement on 1.0, but transferring your data from the older to the newer version while possible, at least for me, is not very easy. After a lot of thought, I just decided abandon the earlier content. So we are starting here with a clean slate.

As much as anyone would like to think that he is self-created, no one is ever really his own man. We are very much creations our families, schools, communities and even our friends.  Some of us have had our personalities beaten into shape, or perhaps even misshaped, by our colleges and universities.  Mine has been a long and sometimes tedious process. It includes The University of the West Indies, Norman Manley Law School, University College London, University of Leicester, Barry University and Nova South Eastern University.

Long before I arrived at University my character was shaped, in part, by Munro College. I really believe that my experiences at Munro have been the defining part of my character and fear that type of education is increasing denied to young men. I suspect that too many believe that a boarding school education is just too expensive for developing countries.