Blame it on our wonderful weather and seductive scenery, but Jamaica has never had a strong work ethic. Our ‘miracle economy’ GDP growth between 1952 and 1972 was fuelled by bauxite and tourism. Our governments since then have simply borrowed and spent, with the electorate’s full approval. While we have produced a few world class businesses, many enterprises here have thrived not because they were run efficiently, but because they were well connected and protected from foreign competition.

Murder, bankruptcy, unemployment, debt, illiteracy  - the news in Jamaica is increasingly depressing. Some say this unending litany of gloom is creating a feeling of hopelessness, and the media should concentrate on the positive - talk about what’s right with the country and not what’s wrong. But journalists are only telling it like it is, and shooting the messenger never solved anything. Indeed perhaps the most heartening aspect of Jamaican life is the fact that the media is able to and willing to tell us all what we are doing wrong.

Jamaica faces a linguistic paradox. We realize that language is a vital part of our culture, and that Jamaican patois, or patwah, must not be stigmatized as inferior. Yet many students leave school unable to speak standard English, severely compromising their employment opportunities and social mobility. Language, like dress, has to vary with the occasion.

Over 200 years ago Samuel Johnson remarked that “Men know that women are an over-match for them… If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.” And time has certainly proved that women can do anything men can do. (The converse is of course not true. An old joke has a woman ask a man “What’s the difference between us?”  “I can’t conceive” he answers.)

(April 23, Shakespeare’s birthday, was World Book Day. It passed unnoticed in Jamaica.)

A recent poll on the BBC internet site chose Johannes Gutenberg, the creator of the printing press, as the greatest inventor of the millennium. Surely he was the right choice, for no invention of the past thousand years has so changed society. Before the development of  printing in about 1450, the number of manuscripts in Europe could be counted in thousands. Fifty years later there were more than 9,000,000 books. The printing press took knowledge from the province of a privileged few and made it available to all. If knowledge is power, this was the greatest empowerment of the people in history.

'I want to know and you tell me true, What the hell the police can do'

So charged a big dancehall hit of yesteryear. And a lot of people agree. They argue that our soaring crime rate is the direct result of a deeply flawed society - endemic poverty, poor education, massive income disparity, a vicious cycle of ghetto violence from parent to child, an 85% illegitimate birth rate and consequent lack of male role models. Until these are remedied, they say, nothing we do can improve matters.

According to famed anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, the principle of legitimacy is not a European or Christian prejudice but amounts to a universal sociological law. The general societal rule is that no child should be brought into the world without an acknowledging father  to act as the custodial male link between the child and the community. The crucial determinant of legitimacy is not legality, a widely varying concept, but the male’s public commitment to his child’s mother. Virtually every known culture favours children born of such unions.

Psychological studies show that attractive women are generally considered nicer, smarter and more honest than those who are not. But though life often seems easier for good-looking females, experience inclines one to the view that beauty can be a curse as well as a blessing. Pretty young girls who are constantly indulged can become willfully self-centered. They may not be inherently stupider than those less favoured, but most girls used to getting by on flirtatious smiles never fully develop their minds. (A cynical aphorism says beauty times brains is a constant.). Many businessmen reckon that pretty girls in general make poor employees as they tend to be spoilt and lazy. Attractiveness often means attitude.

Jamaica’s homicide rate of 36 per 100,000 is not as high as that of world leaders El Salvador, Colombia or South Africa, but it is over three times that of Trinidad, over five times that of the USA and over twenty times that of Britain.

It is only a game and, in the larger scheme of things, not very important. But mankind needs its diversions. And no other outdoor sport, and few endeavours of any kind, provides such lasting pleasures as cricket. Here the onlooker measures his satisfaction not merely in terms of results, but in the beauty of the spectacle.