Morris Cargill

I HAVE never heard of Mr. Galba Bright. Obviously I should have, for Mr Galba Bright is a very important man. He has been appointed as a consultant to the Minister of Industry and Investment as a cutter of Red Tape.

How to deal with bureaucrats is a matter of great importance. One recalls, for example, the institution known as JAMPRO which was going to clear the way of all obstacles to investment, and which became instead a well known bureaucracy in its own right. Minister Paul Robertson, defending the situation, has pointed out that such an event can act as an impediment for "if you don't carefully look at what you do, you pull one thing and everything comes down like a house of cards".

I understand his difficulty. Many years ago when I was a temporary civil servant in England during the war, I experienced two examples of this; one trivial and one serious. On one occasion an electric light bulb in my department blew. I bought another one, stood on my desk and replaced it. The consequence of this apparently simple act was disturbing. Two men descended upon me angrily pointing out that I had broken union rules for only the trade union was entitled to replace bulbs, and that it was exclusively the job of the Minister of Works to do so.

I told them both to go to hell, but not before I had been subjected to a serious reprimand. The second occasion was much more serious. The War Office had informed me at a high level that Germany was planning a poison gas attack against England. As a result of this report I became involved in an enormously expensive plan, the details of which I will not bore you with. I was instructed that a huge amount of money would have to be spent immediately without waiting for the inevitable weeks or months of Treasury approval. So I spent unauthorised money and all hell broke loose from their Lordships of the Treasury.

As it turned out there was no gas attack, which left me in severe trouble with their Lordships. Terrible things could have happened to me had I not been a temporary civil servant during the war. I learned, however to live dangerously.

If Mr. Galba Bright is determined to cut red tape, and to defy bureaucracy, he will have to learn to live dangerously. I would not like to take the responsibility of advising him to do so. After all he can live quite happily without doing so. He and the bureaucrats can live in safety by doing nothing to upset anyone. In Jamaica, why should one bother to live dangerously? It doesn't really matter.

The horrors of ilk

Vernal Bankersingh has written that Mr. P.J. Patterson can be analysed as "a man of high ilk". I am absolutely stunned by such an assertion, for even though I am no great admirer of the Prime Minister, I can hardly bring myself to try to estimate the nature of his ilk.

I have noticed that on many occasions various writers have used the word 'ilk' as if it means "the same kind of thing". In fact the word 'ilk' denotes merely that a man and his property have the same. For example, "the Knockwinnocks of that ilk" means the Knockwinnocks of Knockwinnock. To try to translate Scottish into English or Jamaican is simply to commit an enormous example of illiteracy. If Mr. P.J. Patterson "can be analysed as a man of high ilk" by Mr. Vernal Bankersingh, he is a very illiterate kind of ilk.

Too fat

A number of doctors from different parts of the world have recently been concluding that obesity has become a global problem. The World Watch Institute in Washington reports that there are now 1.2 billion adults who are too fat. Even in poor countries like Brazil and Colombia, far too many people are overweight. Too many people are clearly eating themselves into ill health. Fifty per cent of the population in Britain are regarded as obese.

I don't know the figures in the West Indies in general or for Jamaica in particular, but in the case of Jamaica, judging by observation alone, I would guess that we have a considerable obesity problem. We know that high blood pressure is a problem amongst Jamaicans and one of the major causes of high blood pressure is to get too fat. Just looking around amongst higglers and market women, it is impossible not to notice how overweight many of them are.

When it comes to men I can't help observing a curious situation. There is little appearance of overweight in men until you start looking at their waistlines. It's odd how many men, otherwise fairly slim, develop fatty deposits like small footballs which rest on top of trousers belts which they seem to keep at half-mast around their hips. I cannot help feeling that this particular form of Jamaican obesity must arise from a faulty diet. Too much starch.

Exercise in stubborness

Everybody complains that our interest rates are too high. I agree. However, it seems that one reason for this is that our good Minister of Finance is stubbornly refusing to understand that you can't take two contradictory measures at the same time. Given the present condition of our finances, we cannot hold down the rate of exchange and reduce interest rates at the same time. We have got to do one or the other.

If we hold down the rate of exchange by the extravagant and rather dangerous process of high expenditure on foreign reserves, we will have to pay for this by high interest rates. If we start significantly to push down interest rates, our rate of exchange will start meandering upwards and could hit $50 to US$1 if we are not careful. So I am afraid that our Minister of Finance will have to make a choice. He cannot have it both ways.