"I'm really surprised. I did not expect the OD, but I'm delighted to be awarded." "Some of us seem to see 'Yard' as a place where we go and have a good party and walk away to return to our centrally heated houses in other lands. Why, I don't know, but what I do know is that there is a growing number of Jamaicans in the diaspora who are swinging toward my way of thinking." 'And that is in the first year after the start of the fund." [PHILIP MASCOLL] added: "This would free the tax base to raise the salaries of teachers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers and civil servants."
[Carolyn Cooper] said there is a dissonance between "the brand" and the "representation of the brand" and that "until in Jamaica we come to acknowledge Jamaica is not an "out of many, one people" country but it is really a country of black people with small numbers of ethnic minorities, we're not going to get the brand right." 'At Independence, Emancipation Day just disappeared. Because if you have Emancipation Day, then you have to ask yourself what you were emancipated from. And then certain people would have to say, well, we were mixed up in it. Slavery, that is. So Emancipation Day was just erased,"she said. "But Garveyites and Rastafari kept the tradition of celebrating Emancipation Day. And it's now back on the national calendar. We even have an Emancipation Park!" "This book is a celebration of Brand Jamaica, the authentic Brand Jamaica and I hope that as you read it, you'll understand why I'm so passionate about the subject," said Cooper as she ended her remarks.