Back in the early 1990s a friend and I had a discussion about kidnapping, which was even then rife in South America though not yet a problem in Trinidad. How was it, we wondered, that murder was so prevalent in Jamaica and yet abduction for ransom was so rare?

WHO WAS Ja's greatest prime minister? This is an unanswerable question, for politics has many facets. Who did more for their country, Gandhi or Lee Kwan Yew? So here is a simpler topic. Which PM did the best job of improving Jamaicans' quantifiable economic and social lot?

WHEN HIV was first discovered in the mid 1980s Caribbean countries reacted in different ways. Haiti lacked the resources to take any preventative measures.

Why, I wondered to a friend last week, do some people place such importance on sports? Isn’t it ridiculous for grown ups to waste so much time and energy worrying about essentially childish pastimes over which they have no control? But he disagreed. Sports, he said, provide emotional training. Thrilling to victories and agonizing over defeats is an excellent preparation for the inevitable ups and downs of life.

JAMAICA IS a marvel. Does any other country so constantly straddle the line between functioning order and disastrous chaos? Even forces of nature beyond our control regularly contrive to balance our fate on a knife edge and then tip the scales in our favour.

THE PNP came to power in early 1989, only a few months after Hurricane Gilbert hit the island. With the PNP conference being held in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, let's try and evaluate our situation then and now.

America is the richest country on earth, but its democracy is an ugly mess. To quote the September 24th Economist - “If democracy means multi-party competition at the grass roots, America is not a full democracy in elections to the House of Representatives”.

'GOD IS dead', wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882. Sigmund Freud agreed - "The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief."

Jamaicans love to revel in bad news, and there’s been a lot of it lately as the dollar falls, the national debt rises, and Gulf War II decimates tourism. Then of course there’s the continuing cynicism and hypocrisy of our politicians.

When Richard ‘Shrimpy’ Clarke fought for the World Flyweight Boxing title in 1990 you could almost feel the nationalistic fervour in the jampacked National Arena. “Lick ‘im down Shrimpy!” the ecstatic crowd screamed deliriously as he skillfully outboxed champion Sot Chitalada for the first 8 rounds - “He’s giving him a boxing lesson!” a man behind me kept shouting. Alas a jolting uppercut knocked out Shrimpy in the 11th round. “Him teach him too good!” a wag commented wryly as we filed out in gloomy disappointment.