C. ROY REYNOLDS wrote a splendid column in The Gleaner of Tuesday, February 2 on crime and capital punishment and expressed quite brilliantly, his frustration at what has been going on concerning hanging.

I join with him in a similar protest. The Government is both weak and vacillating. It is weak because it has neither the courage to abolish hanging, yet has neither the courage nor the will to carry it out.

This folly is aided and abetted by a bunch of bleeding hearts and their legal lackeys. A lawyer is obviously entitled to fight as hard as he can for the acquittal of his client. But I have no admiration for a lawyer who, knowing that his client has been justly convicted of murder, nevertheless, uses every ridiculous appeal to frustrate the legal sentence of death.

I am not surprised that murder is the only growth industry we have in Jamaica at present. It is time that all the nonsense stopped and that our law should not be frustrated. I hope therefore that C. Roy will continue to join me in raising hell until sanity is restored.

Henry Fullerton and daughter

Some families seem to suffer from hereditary defects. Henry Fullerton and his daughter seem to suffer the unfortunate defect of getting themselves arrested. This unhappy couple may be as innocent as new-born babies or they may be a pair of scamps. This is for the Courts to judge and not I.

Nevertheless, I do not know why the Fullertons are being especially picked on. After all, there are many banks and other financial institutions, which have gone bust with greater losses and have been pointedly left unarrested.

Only a very few have been tentatively brought before the Courts. For example, the NCB contrived to have half its loan portfolio turn into bad debts. It seems to me that while such a situation could be the result of sheer irresponsibility, which is not a criminal offence, I find it hard to believe that those responsible for it should not have been seriously called into account. But as jackass said, the world is not level.

If the Fullertons have committed an offence they must, of course, be punished, but I think it is unjust if they have been singled out for this punishment when others who equally deserved it should have been allowed to go free.

In any case, when it comes to making losses for people, it seems to me that FINSAC itself cannot avoid some blame. It is chalking up huge weekly losses to the taxpayers, but is doing sweet Fanny Adams to deal sensibly with such assets as it has.

A short story

Two women are sitting in a doctor's office waiting, as usual, for their doctors to keep their appointments.

So they start to gossip. The first woman, who is a poultry farmer, said that she's been having a hard time because her laying hens' egg production had started to fall off badly.

"I'm glad to say, however, that things have vastly improved since I got myself a new young cock and this has solved my problem". "Well," said the other woman, "I had a problem too. I tried for years to become pregnant but failed, but as you can see I have at last succeeded and I am very happy about it".

"And how," enquired the poultry farmer, "did you solve your problem?"

"In the same way as you did", replied the second lady with a happy smile.

Casino gambling

In the last week or so, two small hotels, one at Negril and one in Portland, were reported to be in difficulties because of low rates of occupancy. These are but two of recent signs that our tourism is not doing as well as it ought to be. The big all-inclusives have good occupancies, but I fancy that this is only because they have been discounting very heavily. I think that it is time that we should take a serious look at permitting the building of a fine casino. I cannot understand why the Government keeps on discouraging casinos.

Apart from horse racing, gambling of all sorts is permitted in Jamaica. Lotto is the most extravagant of them all and one-armed bandits are to be found everywhere.

The churches, for some reason best known to themselves, have always, in the past, opposed casino gambling. But recently the major churches seemed to have given up their opposition. Some of the many minor denominations are still in opposition, but I question whether some of them are really fit to be called religious institutions at all. I call these minor institutions brassiere denominations for they confine themselves mostly to mere uplift.

I feel strongly that the time has come when we should include casinos in a general effort to improve our tourist attractions.