Sometimes, just sometimes, I am ashamed to be Jamaican. I feel especially ashamed when I read stories like the one I read yesterday about the Mayor of Trelawny Jonathan Bartley, who, along with his colleagues in the parish council, are threatening to deny the hoisting of ICC Cricket World Cup banners between Falmouth and the Trelawny Multi-Purpose Stadium because they are not getting free tickets!

Now, before I go on, I have to ask - did Mayor Bartley or anyone from the Trelawny Parish Council give the ICC World Cup people tickets 'fi puddung'?

What he and his colleagues were doing in getting the town and its surroundings ready for the tournament was their civic duty. They're already getting paid for that, just in case he forgot. Sure, the World Cup people could have put aside a few tickets for him and the members of the parish council but they didn't. So what? Suck it up and pay like the rest of us. And if you can't afford it, don't go, simple.

The bigger picture

The behaviour of Mayor Bartley is what has become common-place in the civil service right across the island. Everybody wants to get paid above and under the table for the same job; one that they were elected to do but never once seeing the bigger picture about what it is to be in the service of one's country.

Former United States President John. F. Kennedy once said that it was not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. In Jamaica, the phrase has been reworded to say, to hell with what I can do for my country, what has my country done for me lately?

And that is why we can't move forward. We go into every situation with our palms upturned, looking to get something. Our public officials, every chance they get, are looking for pay outs from potential investors, our civil servants are looking to get bribed for providing us with services that they were hired to provide, and our people, following suit, are looking to get 'paid' by tourists and as a result have driven them to the relative safety of all-inclusive resorts. Those people must feel like how most of us feel whenever a beggar comes up to our windows whenever we stop at a traffic light. After a while it becomes downright irritating.

And, I tell you what, one day the bottom is going to fall out of that barrel and then what? The investors are going to stop coming and the tourists are going to find friendlier places to visit. Then what, Mayor Bartley?

Tarnished reputation

Tell me there is something else besides the free tickets why you would tarnish the reputation of the people of the parish that you represent; tell me the ICC officials reneged on promised con-tributions to the Falmouth Hospital; tell me that they were going to make your girlfriend or wife less of a nag, anything but what you and your people are griping about.

Free tickets!?! My God, soon you'll be taking licences away from restaurants because they never sent you lunch, or from bars because they never sent you complimentary beers. Where does it stop?

Think about this Mr. Mayor; had it not been for the ICC World Cup of Cricket, Trelawny, the parish where I am from by the way, would not even have been a contender for a stadium that if managed right can bring the parish some much needed money, money that could be used to create opportunities for the people living there. And let me not even mention the jobs that were created while the stadium was being built.

You know Mayor Bartley, now that I have come to think of it, instead of bitching over not getting free tickets, you should be grateful that the ICC World Cup officials are not demanding that you buy them tickets. You owe them. So guess what, put up the damned banners, stop being an ass, and let's all go watch some cricket.

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