Jamaica’s homicide numbers are horrifying. World’s second most murderous country in 2017. Earth’s highest violent death rate for women. Almost ten times as murderous as the world average. 20,642 murders in the 15 years 2014-2018, a rate of 51 per 100,000. Probably no country not officially at war has seen such a high sustained murder rate.

The Jamaican Dollar has recently reached its lowest ever level against its US counterpart, slipping below the $134 mark for the first time ever. Is this a cause for concern?

In 2016 Jamaica had the world’s highest violent death rate for females, and the sixth highest in total. www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/U-Reports/SAS-Report-GVD2017.pdf Our paradise island ranked overall below Syria, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Afghanistan, and above Iraq, Libya, Somalia. But we were easily number one for slaughtering women, and remain so.

Time sure flies. It's hard to believe almost 8 years have passed since our parliamentarians conspired to vote down the State of Emergency renewal and extension to St James and St Catherine requested by the security forces in July 2010. This was my opinion then.