The business of recruiting students into high schools in order to boost the school's chances of winning at sports, especially when these students do not qualify on academic grounds, is an atrocity that can find its way into the system through many routes.

If one could put one's mouth, heart and foot where one's pocket was, one would be some sort of contortionist or gymnast. However, if one puts people first in other places apart from the beginning of a party name, truly, it could be said that one loves the poor. We must think of them first and then plan and not consult them as afterthoughts.

On Sunday, April 15, a column ('Follow Jesus' map') I'd submitted for Easter Sunday was finally published by the Conservative Old Lady of North Street (COLONS). It was intended to be a controversial but thought-provoking analysis of Christ's message.

This series of articles comes out of work done for the Education Cluster of the 50|50 project spearheaded by the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies at UWI (Mona). This project is a reflection on the first 50 years of Independence in the Anglophone Caribbean, and preparation for the next 50 years.

In recent discussions about the backlog of cases in the Circuit Courts, some persons are blaming the preliminary enquiry for the problem and advocating its abolition. The backlog is caused by delay in disposing of cases, and it has taken many years to get to what is now a veritable crisis.

The protests that erupted this spring at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona - in which angry students, excluded for their inability to pay fees, forcefully disrupted final examinations - were not unique to Jamaica. They are part of a wider international pattern of student angst about how to manage their immediate finances in the midst of education cutbacks, while also facing bleak long-term employment and loan-repayment prospects.