"Ladies and gentlemen! It's the big rematch all Jamaica has been waiting for since March 2006 - the battle for the undisputed leadership of the People's National Party, Round Two! In the St Andrew South West corner wearing yellow, is the defending champion, Portia 'Grass-roots Girl' Simpson Miller! In the St Andrew East Central corner wearing traditional orange, is the number one ranked contender, Peter 'Dr Drumblair Establishment' Phillips! Let's get ready to rrruuummmbbbllleee!"

"There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favours from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure ..." - George Washington Who shows no pity deserves none. Not even the saints shed tears at Saddam Hussein's hanging. He began as an assassin, gained power through blood, and ruled without mercy. Perhaps 100,000 died in his 1987-1989 Anfal anti-Kurdish campaign. In 1988 he used chemical weapons to kill at least 5,000 civilians in Halabja.

We want to be happy, and we are going to die. That is all we really know about the human condition. Everything else is speculation. Some talk as if they have life all figured out. "I wish I were as sure of anything as (Thomas) Macaulay is of everything," someone quipped of the English author. But when contemplating existence, even the most outwardly confident must be filled with the uncertainty Blaise Pascal evoked.

Love is a wonderful thing, when it's going right. Your heart sings, you walk on air. But when it goes wrong, there's nothing more painful. Your inside hurt. A black cloud follows you around. You curse yourself for caring so much when you know you shouldn't.  

If we learned to shut up and get on with the job and not commentate on everything, our productivity would no doubt soar. Yet, the constant chattering may be one reason we are so good at peacefully changing our leaders.

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!".

For all that, and all that,
It is coming yet for all that,
That man to man the world over
Shall brothers be for all that.

Politics can be fascinating, if it concerns your own country. But there’s nothing so tedious as other people’s politics. Affairs of state dominate the intellectual discourse in most countries. But a nation’s campaign obsessions are usually meaningless to outsiders.

From a coldly rational point of view Christmas is as ridiculous a notion as mankind has ever deluded itself with. A man marries a supposed virgin, discovers she's with child, learns from an angel in a dream that she has conceived by the Holy Spirit, and they travel to his hometown where there's no room at the inn so the Lord our Saviour is born in a manger?

A YEAR AGO, P.J. Patterson was sitting pretty. Crime was falling ­ 1139 murders in 2001, 1045 in 2002, 975 in 2003. The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) was in its usual disarray with the ageing Edward Seaga showing no signs of going anywhere. The move to repatriate Jamaica's legal system by doing away with the Privy Council as last court of appeal seemed to be going smoothly. And his planned handover of the People's National Party (PNP) leadership and hence the post of prime minister to Peter Phillips was right on track.