"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!"

My late grandmother Annie used to regale me with stories about life when she was young. I remember her laughing description of how stunned people were the first time they saw a plane in the sky, especially a next-door neighbour who bawled out 'Lawd a massy! Judgement day come!'

Another thing that stuck in the mind was her puzzled reaction to the increasing murder rates of the 1970s. She just couldn't understand it. When she was young, she recalled, the rare news that someone had been killed was always greeted with amazement that one human being could actually take another human being's life.

Like businesses, countries have their competitive advantages, things for which they have a particular propensity. And what Jamaica excels at, or at least seems to expend most of its energy on, are music, sex and murder.

The last is a matter of record. To quote the January 31 Economist - "Jamaica is the world's most murderous country, followed by El Salvador, Guatemala and Venezuela." And we seem hell-bent on surpassing last year's rate of 59 per 100,000.

It's incredible really. Prime Minister Bruce Golding gets grilled for half an hour on the BBC on a range of critical issues facing Jamaica. And all people here can talk about is one sentence - "Sure they [gays] can be in the Cabinet; not mine."

The Tower Street Correctional Centre, downtown Kingston. More prisons are needed.

"United we stand, divided we fall" goes the old song. And past efforts to reduce our frightening murder rate have, too often, been undermined by public squabbling between entities that, in theory, have the common goal of making Jamaica safer for all.

Hard-core tribalists feel their party can do no wrong, and the other side no right. Criticism of their team or praise of the opponents - no matter how justified by the facts - is unmitigated bias.

But to non-diehards, it's usually no better herring, no better barrel. Wearing orange or green does not make a politician better or worse. The important thing is to swap them every 10 years or so. And honest commendation or blame must be based on actual performance, not party allegiance.

LAWS ARE MADE to serve people, not people to serve laws. So when a piece of legislation that once made sense ceases to do so, the reasonable response is not to keep forcing it on the populace, but to alter it to suit the times.

From 1944 to 1989, Jamaica was a two term land. Each administration was voted back in once, and no more. But the PNP governed for four straight terms from 1989 to 2007. And like many political parties left in charge too long, the Comrades started acting - as a lady once exclaimed angrily to me - "like dem daddy dead and lef dem the country!"

It must be a miserable experience to live in a country with the world's highest homicide rate, and one of the lowest official GDP growth rates over the past 20 years. Or, maybe not. According to the February 24 Sunday Gleaner poll, 59 per cent of those living in statistically broke and murderous Jamaica say they are happy.

'I am a human being, so nothing human is strange to me' wrote the Roman poet Terence. Obsessive homophobia aside, this pretty much sums up dancehall. And no artiste better conveys its raw uncensored immediacy than Marion 'Lady Saw' Hall, the most important female artiste and most celebrated slackness performer in Jamaica's music history.