New attire, new bishop, new power company New look in the House HOW MANY readers will recall the famous remark by the exuberant new Prime Minister Michael Manley with his statement in Parliament in the 1970s that: "Jacket and tie must go"? Those were the exciting days when the kareba became the new style of dress for all who wished to be 'with it' since apparently 'better had come'. So on one side of the House we had the PNP members in their karebas and on the other side the JLP Opposition in jacket and tie. Mr. Seaga's JLP brought back the jacket and tie with a vengeance and even the three-piece suits, with 'Deliverance' in the 1980s. More recently the kareba seems to have been abandoned with one or two exceptions. I see that Member of Parliament Miss Babsy Grange has come under some questioning by the Speaker of the House for wearing a pants suit. Do we have a dress code for the House? And just how silly can the debate about clothes get? The reports are that Miss Grange was elegantly attired. I thought that the pants suit was now quite acceptable for ladies. I hope we can move the business of the House forward and simply ask that the members be attired appropriately. After all what they say and do in the House is of far greater importance than the clothes they wear. The New Bishop of Jamaica The Rt. Rev. Dr. Alfred Charles Reid was enthroned on January 25, 2001 as the twelfth Anglican Lord Bishop of Jamaica. He succeeds the Rt. Rev. Dr. Neville DeSouza who recently retired. In an extensive interview with The Gleaner's Mark Dawes, the new bishop addressed a wide range of issues. The new Bishop came across as being humble and non-adversarial with a good grasp of many of the issues facing the Church today. There are however two issues which require comment. The first was his swipe at the National Prayer Breakfast and 'American Religion'. The chairman of the National Prayer Breakfast was disappointed by this judgement call as the prayer breakfast had its genesis at the time when our political leaders were at each other's throats and it was an important initiative by Christians to bring the two sides together in a positive way. The Victoria Mutual Building Society has been sponsoring this 'Church effort' from its inception and the event is certainly not patterned after the US Presidential Prayer Breakfasts. One is also not clear as to what is meant by 'American Religion'. Does that mean Billy Graham, the Boston Cardinal, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) or Anglican practice in the United States? The second issue has to be His Lordship's membership in the Masonic fraternity. While some persons have no problem with this membership, many Christians have a difficulty with it though there are several clergymen who belong to the Masonic Order. Concerns centre around the following: The Masonic restriction to men only. This gender specific membership of the Order will now seem strange, when at the same time the Anglican Church is breaking tradition and empowering women as priests and canons of the Church. While many service clubs have opened their ranks to women the Masons remain strictly a male preserve. The secrecy associated with Mason Rites is incompatible with the increasing move to transparency in human affairs. There is always the question as to what goes on? The history of the Masons has been replete with serious concerns about elements of corruption. Examples in England and Italy have been well documented. For some churches lodges are seen as having Satanic links. The Lord Bishop's reply can hardly be taken seriously when he states that "The Mason Order is not a secret society... but it has secrets in relation to members....". The Lord Bishop of Jamaica comes to his task at a critical stage in Jamaica's history. The nation faces the problems of crime, and challenges in the educational system, while the Church is under attack for either 'not speaking out' or because its 'value system is irrelevant'. The Anglican Church with its long history of association with 'The Establishment' needs to bring a fresh voice to the issues of the day and to reach out to the wider Christian community. The National Prayer Breakfast Committee is a part of that wider community which the Lord Bishop needs to embrace. We must wish him well in his new position but he needs to rethink some of his views. New owners of the JPSCo The new owners of the JPSCo came onto the scene 'at an interesting time' to quote the well known Chinese saying with the JPSCo's generating capacity down, Private Power Company outputs also down and output less than peak demand. We seem to be coming out of the major initial problems that faced the company, but we are yet to see the long-term stability and performance of the new owners. We must wish them well as a reliable power supply will be critical to many of the technological directions that are projected for the country's future development. A.W. Sangster is former president of the University of Technology.
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