MOST PEOPLE remember two things about the 1966 Commonwealth Games. It remains the biggest international event this country has hosted, and we failed to win a gold medal.

So Jamaica's sweep of the sprints last week in Melbourne brought to mind the phrase "You've come a long way, baby!".

COLUMNISTS KEEP banging on about this Government's corruption and economic mismanagement and its miserable inability to control crime. But the 'Woe is us!' brigade is obviously wasting its time.

So what if Jamaica's murder count went from 414 in 1989 to 1670 in 2005? According to the March 14 Gleaner Bill Johnson poll, '83 per cent of Jamaicans feel safe living in their communities'.

THE JOY of watching babies and little children is that they find everything so new, so interesting. The world for them is an inexhaustible delight of endless novelty.

At times, you feel almost envious and think of Wordsworth's words: 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!'

Of course, at other moments Thomas Gray comes to mind

Yet ah! why should they know their fate?

THIS COUNTRY'S murder rate has nearly doubled over the past two years and may now be the highest in the world. By right, people here should be frightened and angry, afraid to go out at night and mounting mass demonstrations during the day demanding that the Government stop the slaughter.

"JAMAICA IS a failed state". I used to suck my teeth when I heard anyone say that and dismiss the speaker as an ignorant fool. Only a dunce could talk like that about a country with one of the planet's most stable democracies, a combatively free press, and the world's 63rd highest healthy life expectancy.

DISMANTLE THE garrisons! The cry is getting louder from all quarters. Significantly Bruce Golding's request to the Prime Minister for all parties to 'address the question of garrison politics' is the first such call I can remember from a senior politician. It may well represent a watershed event in Jamaican history.

A WEEK ago, like most Jamaicans, I was in a state of despair about the country. Three policemen and two security guards had been killed in less than 24 hours, and the forces of anarchy seemed on the verge of overwhelming the nation. Was there any hope for this island? Was this the kind of country I wanted my children to grow up in?

HOW DO you describe a society that has the highest murder rate in the world and the highest absentee father rate in the world? The word 'dysfunctional' comes to mind.

Our nightly television news must be the bloodiest on earth. Violence-jaded Jamaicans shrug at the usual litany of bloodshed.

CRIME IS Jamaica's biggest problem. How could it be otherwise when we have probably the world's highest murder rate? No wonder everyone has a crime-fighting plan.

At one end of the spectrum are the 'complete transformers'. They argue that to bring crime under control, we need to rebuild our entire society - educate the young, revamp our economy, transform our justice system, re-engineer our security forces and reform our constitution.

LIKE MOST Jamaicans I grew up scorning and laughing derisively at homosexuals as the lowest form of human life - disgusting perverts whose sexual practices were vile abominable acts to be stamped out by any means necessary. But age and experience have changed my outlook on life.