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.

Suppose Bruce Golding had been shot and killed? This was the first thought that hit me when I read Wednesday's 'Women shot near Golding' headlines. Would Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) extremists have reacted by gunning down a senior People's National Party (PNP) figure in retaliation and initiated a vicious no-holds-barred, tit-for-tat vendetta? Would angry Labourites have torched Gordon House and New Kingston and Sam Sharpe Square? Would JLP mobs have attacked PNP strongholds and sparked off a hundred mini civil wars?

AN OLDER friend once advised the young Samuel Johnson to read as much as he could since he would lose the inclination with age. But Robert Louis Stevenson laughed at this, asserting that youth is for living and leave the books till later. RLS was surely right that books are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. But Dr. Johnson's mentor knew whereof he spoke. Older eyes tire more easily and older minds resist new ideas. If you don't tackle the serious books when young you probably never will.

HAD P.J. Patterson retired two or so years ago his legacy would have been on the whole a positive one. History would have remembered him as a man who had guided his ship of state fairly safely through the shoals of globalization and left a good launching pad for his successor. As it is now he is on track to go down as the second worst Prime Minister in Jamaica's history.

POLITICAL partisanship is a democratic fact of life. Virtually every country that votes its leaders into office is plagued by party tribalism. Perhaps because it has been holding elections longer than anywhere else, Great Britain seems to be reasonably free of this dreaded virus. But even the United States, which likes to boast of being a democratic model to the world, is practically split in two between the Democratic coastal blue states and the Republican interior red states.

First, some clarification is in order. In his December 11 Gleaner column, 'Duppy polls, obfuscation, ignorance and simpletons', Bill Johnson wrote, in reference to my December 4 Gleaner article titled 'Political polls and PM promises': "Let me make it perfectly clear: the 2002 poll prominently cited by Chang in his column as mine was not conducted by me, if, in fact, it was conducted by anybody at all."

The global financial recession is battering incumbents everywhere. In the last two months, the governments of Slovenia, Croatia, St Lucia and Spain have been booted, those in Guyana and Russia lost their 50 per cent majorities, and those in Greece and Italy resigned to avoid electoral humiliation. Only strong commodity-export economies like New Zealand have bucked the trend. Every English-speaking Caribbean election since 2010 has seen a big anti-incumbent swing.

"The most successful politician … says what the people are thinking the most often and in the loudest voice." -Theodore Roosevelt

I’ve never liked the Olympic motto. For man’s glory is his mind, not his body. We will never run faster than cheetahs, jump higher than kangaroos, or lift heavier weights than elephants. Which is why the athletes who impress me are not those who dominate by sheer physical superiority but those who triumph through mental strength.

May 12, 2007 – Greenfield Park, Jamaica. “The West Indies posted a record 400 and then dismissed India for 199 to win the 2007 Cricket World Cup by 201 runs. Chris Gayle and Devon Smith set the tone with a century opening partnership in 15 overs, with Gayle making 88 off 60 balls and Smith 89 off 62. Ram Sarwan made a run ball 70, Dwayne Smith blasted 74 off 48 balls, while Captain Brian Lara’s contributed a comparatively snail-like 56 off 60 balls in his West Indian swansong.