*sigh*

It seems that time and time again we have a case where our government somehow seems to find money that it can spend on something that could be deemed as unnecessary, instead of finding money when it is really necessary. This is something that I've been realizing time and time again, and though it wouldn't be fair to say that this is something that was unique to the current JLP government, it has been happening quite frequently since the current government has taken reign.

It all stems firstly from this whole recession word that gets thrown around so frequently, essentially everything is blamed on the recession, the new tax regime, the fact that the public sector workers have to suffer, every failure, every bad judgement call made by the government, all these things are blamed on the recession. I can imagine the recession is a very angry person right now, who wouldnt be if they were blamed for everything.

Now while I am a fan of the Jamaica Jazz Festival and all the artists that it carries in, it is still really just a luxury. That is, it's something we can do without, Jamaica wont die without the Jazz festival anymore than it will be better with it. However the government has spent US$450,000(Roughly $40,000,000) to have this event hosted in Jamaica. The argument put forward by most people will of course be that $40 million is chump change and wont have any great effect on the public purse, but that argument is forgetting just how much $40 million can do. I'm sure there are a few people who are on pension plans (who have been told that their pension will be put on hold as well). The other argument is that the tourism dollars brought in by the Jazz festival far exceeds the money that is going to be spent... So an event that is this popular cant find a sponsor that isn't the Jamaican government? I do remember BET hosting a few Jazz festivals in the past, who ever thought about proposing this to them?

We can add more money into the equation when we think about things which were held such as the post olympics gala, the post world championships gala, random flights to conferences around the world with a 40 person entourage, the money spent on an MP's office renovation, or the house that another MP has to live in because "He cannot be allowed to live in squalor"(I guess his residence before becoming an MP can be likened to the residence of the poor people living in Jamaica's numerous ghettos) etc.

I could go on for quite some time listing the places where money suddenly appears out of the blue where it wasn't before, while public sector workers will suffer through a 2 year wage freeze, while worrying that they will probably in the near future go through wage cuts and also job cuts, while the new tax regime forces all prices to be raised so that things will become more or less unaffordable, and are told to simply ban our bellies as its a necessary evil... its really funny the things we Jamaicans go through.