Jamaica faces a linguistic paradox. We realize that language is a vital part of our culture, and that Jamaican patois, or patwah, must not be stigmatized as inferior. Yet many students leave school unable to speak standard English, severely compromising their employment opportunities and social mobility. Language, like dress, has to vary with the occasion.

Politics and corruption seem to be inseparable everywhere. In one week in March alone the world witnessed the resignation of the entire European Commission over a damning fraud  report, the conviction of former anti-apartheid activist Allan Boesak for stealing charity donations, the expulsion of six International Olympic Committee members over a votes-for-favours scandal, and the first conviction for electoral fraud of a sitting British Member of Parliament since 1859.

The National Democratic Movement has considerably raised the level of political debate in this country. And having brilliant young minds like Wayne Chen and Stephen Vacianni involved in national affairs must be a good thing for Jamaica. But a political party is a group of persons organized to acquire and exercise political power through election. Until the NDM wins seats in parliament it will remain a glorified think tank.

Over 200 years ago Samuel Johnson remarked that “Men know that women are an over-match for them… If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.” And time has certainly proved that women can do anything men can do. (The converse is of course not true. An old joke has a woman ask a man “What’s the difference between us?”  “I can’t conceive” he answers.)

To some people Jamaica’s political system is the root of our problems, and constitutional reform will be the nation’s salvation. But many successful countries have systems like ours, and Jamaica has never experienced assassination, revolution or civil war. So how can our governmental model be considered a complete disaster?

According to Prime Minister Patterson’s post gas riot speech “The old order - the closed, distant and authoritarian sys­tems of governance - is being forced to give way to a structure which is inclusive, responsive, and accountable… We must change our approach to governance, or we will become part of the problem to be swept aside by the emerging new social order.”

(April 23, Shakespeare’s birthday, was World Book Day. It passed unnoticed in Jamaica.)

A recent poll on the BBC internet site chose Johannes Gutenberg, the creator of the printing press, as the greatest inventor of the millennium. Surely he was the right choice, for no invention of the past thousand years has so changed society. Before the development of  printing in about 1450, the number of manuscripts in Europe could be counted in thousands. Fifty years later there were more than 9,000,000 books. The printing press took knowledge from the province of a privileged few and made it available to all. If knowledge is power, this was the greatest empowerment of the people in history.

After the five love in South Africa and the 51 all out, cricket seemed a doomed sport that time had passed by. But the astonishing turn around by Brian Lara and his men has left the game very much still alive and kicking. The WICB however, can not afford to rest on its laurels. West Indies cricket might no longer be on the verge of dying, but it is by no means in good health. Unless we get young people playing the game again, it can not have a good future.

'I want to know and you tell me true, What the hell the police can do'

So charged a big dancehall hit of yesteryear. And a lot of people agree. They argue that our soaring crime rate is the direct result of a deeply flawed society - endemic poverty, poor education, massive income disparity, a vicious cycle of ghetto violence from parent to child, an 85% illegitimate birth rate and consequent lack of male role models. Until these are remedied, they say, nothing we do can improve matters.

“History is nothing but a record of the crimes and misfortunes of man” wrote Voltaire. A famous Chinese proverb agrees - “Fortunate countries have no history”.

Compared to the often chilling chronicles of our nearest neighbours - Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic - Jamaica’s past makes pretty tame reading. We have no ‘Remember the Maine’ invasions, Citadelle Lafferriere horrors, or Trujillo massacres to contemplate with fascinated dismay. The Sam Sharpe slave uprising, the Morant Bay rebellion and the Frome riots would scarcely rate footnotes in these countries a mere 100 miles away. Jamaica did have to endure the unspeakable brutalities of slavery, but that was an almost universal New World experience. Even then slaves in the English speaking Caribbean were freed by decree a generation earlier than anywhere else, and there were no brutal liberation wars here as in Haiti.