Politics Anyone?

Supreme ven­tures recent­ly announced the clos­ing of their gam­ing facil­i­ty the Acropolis on the Hip-Strip in Montego Bay. According to report­ing in the Jamaican Media, Supreme Ventures said it would reduce its lev­el of spon­sor­ship and dona­tions in 2014.
President and CEO of the Supreme Ventures Group, Brian George, says the cur­rent eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and the sig­nif­i­cant increase in lot­tery-gam­ing tax­es have had an adverse effect on the Company’s profits.

However, before the ink was dry on the sto­ry ‚President of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce Nathan Robb dove head-first into the fray, stat­ing that Supreme Ventures should not blame high­er tax­es on the deci­sion it took to close the facil­i­ty. Robb argues “Supreme Ventures could have been more cre­ative in its mar­ket­ing of the prop­er­ty giv­en its prime loca­tion on Gloucester Avenue oth­er­wise known as the Hip Strip”. 

Nathan Robb

This is the first time that I can recall where a cham­ber of com­merce head or any­one in the pri­vate sec­tor has open­ly gone against one of their own, and with­out any evi­dence sup­port­ing the counter-claim of poor mar­ket­ing cre­ativ­i­ty. In fact Supreme Ventures has marked­ly stat­ed that they made the deci­sion to close the facil­i­ty, as it is the only part of their busi­ness con­glom­er­ate which is los­ing mon­ey. Smart com­pa­nies do that all the time, irre­spec­tive of loca­tion, some­times it is nec­es­sary to shed dead weight. Why would Supreme Ventures con­tin­ue to keep an enti­ty which is a drag on its oper­a­tions? That would be tan­ta­mount to keep­ing a gan­grene-infect­ed limb to the detri­ment of the whole body. What this has shown how­ev­er is how deeply and entrenched the PNP has plant­ed it’s oper­a­tives and func­tionar­ies, into every crevasse and cor­ner of nation­al life and kept them there. So much so that it is almost impos­si­ble to get an objec­tive per­spec­tive from any­one in the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tor or any oth­er part of nation­al life, includ­ing the Clergy, that is untaint­ed by orange influ­ence. Many com­pa­nies are clos­ing because of exor­bi­tant oper­a­tional costs. These costs includes, but are not con­fined to bur­den­some tax­a­tion. It is incon­ceiv­able that one appoint­ed to look out for the inter­est of busi­ness­es such as Supreme Ventures could be so polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed that he reneged on the pri­ma­cy of that function.

Those look­ing for a turn-around of the Jamaican econ­o­my or a decrease in mur­ders and oth­er crimes may con­tin­ue spit­ting in the wind, just cov­er you faces.