Whatever else he may be, Edward Seaga is unique. He must be the only non-native born white man ever elected prime minister of a predominantly black country. And has anyone else in recent times played such prominent roles in both the cultural and political development of a nation? A pioneer in Jamaican anthropology; a driving force behind the popularization of ska; an originator of Festival; arguably our best finance minister; the prime minister with the second longest term in office; the longest serving parliamentarian ever - no one else has influenced modern Jamaica in so many ways.

“It would be a fine thing indeed if the world was run by those who judge men from books and the world from maps!”. Napoleon’s jibe against ivory tower intellectuals came to mind when I read Marcia Sutherland’s December 5th letter about my article “Thinking in patois”, which accused me of “linguistic bigotry”, advised me to “examine the scientific linguistic evidence”, and chided me for lacking “scholarly expertise”.

AIDS now kills more people worldwide than any other infectious disease and is mankind’s fourth leading cause of death, after heart disease, strokes and respiratory infections. And more people died of AIDS in 1999 than in any previous year.  In many affected countries the improvement in the quality of life that has taken place over the past fifty years is being reversed. In Zimbabwe over 25% of adults are HIV positive - the world’s highest infection rate - and some estimates there show life expectancy falling to 38 years, 17 years shorter that it would have been. “Healthy life expectancy in some African countries is dropping back to levels we haven’t seen in advanced countries since medieval times” says one UN Health Agency director. This is a far worse disaster than anything foreseen when worst-case HIV scenarios were first discussed. US Government analysts now say that a quarter of southern Africa’s population is likely to die of Aids, and the epidemic could follow a similar course in South Asia and the former Soviet Union.

Man is said to be logical. But our opinions often seem determined as much by emotion as by reason. We have all heard the rational pro and con arguments, yet most people’s views on capital punishment remain based on feelings and not facts.

The latest Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Jamaica 50th out of 99 countries, and even sanguine observers must find it worrying that we are seen abroad as more dishonest than notoriously corrupt nations like Brazil and Zimbabwe. It is cold comfort that we are tied with South Korea and above Argentina. Relatively strong economies may be able to support the costs of corruption, but unchecked it can virtually ruin weak ones – look at Indonesia and Nigeria.