THE SO-CALLED Junior Doctors have been subject to negative reactions for their recent work-to-rule. The crowning penalty was imposed by the Chief Justice himself in a no-nonsense rejection of their belated apology for defying his own injunction against their action.

The issue may well be a landmark development in labour relations, in the sense that workers who break the rules, particularly in the essential services, have been made to pay.

Stephen Vasciannie

IN THE course of his Budget presentation last Wednesday, Prime Minister P.J. Patterson made a fairly brief reference to the issue of hanging.

Based on a tape featured on 'Perkins on Line', I am under the impression that the Prime Minister said that:

A. W. Sangster

I HAD just finished re-reading Morris Cargill's Jamaica Farewell ­ a book written when he decided to leave Jamaica at the end of the 1970s ­ when I heard the news of his passing on April 8. His friends and well-wishers celebrated his life at a remembrance service at the Stella Maris Church 10 days later. It was not a memorial service in the traditional sense ­ certainly not the Catholic sense.

Monsignor Albert was simply dressed ­ no priestly garb and incense ­ and while we waited for the formal part of the function, Darcy Tulloch-Williams and William Adamson beautifully rendered a medley of Jamaican songs including Belafonte's Girl in Kingston Town. A specially made wooden box containing his ashes, and a bowl of white lilies stood on a small table at the front.

Webster Edwards

THE NATION continues to be numb in disbelief at the frequent acts of brutality which we have been experiencing in this country. Despite the best efforts of law enforcement authorities, and the formation of various crime fighting corps, the frequency of homicide persists, as innocent citizens continue to be deprived of their God-given right to life. The incidence of murder has now become a predictable occurrence especially among poor inner-city youths, whose life span declines with each passing year.

The fact is, that we have now become a violent society. The barbarians among us no longer wait for cover of darkness, as the most heinous crimes are very often committed in broad daylight, notwithstanding the presence of eyewitnesses. The schools, which ought to be places where the impressionable young ones are nurtured, are no exception to this scourge of savagery. Violence in schools occurs with regularity as teenagers resort to the use of knives in settling their own day-to-day problems. But for the work of PALS, one wonders what would have been the head-count of those killed or maimed in these institutions.

Desmond Allen

WITHIN SIX days, April 12 to April 18, The Observer lost two big points! Unnecessarily too. Its treatment of the response by the board of the National Investment Bank of Jamaica (NIBJ) to the paper's exclusive on the Claudette Lawrence story, and the press conference hosted by the new Public Defender represented two wicked blows to the solar plexus of journalism.

Colleagues we need to be fair in our news stories, even if we feel like taking sides, in which case we have the opinion columns and the editorials. Much space was given to Ms. Lawrence to give her side of the story of how she lost her job at the NIBJ during the 'fat salary' affair. It is only just that the NIBJ board should have been given equal chance to reply. That's what sets the true journalist apart from the pretender. At the very least, the NIBJ reply (Observer April 12, page one), should have been run in full, especially since it was shorter than the space accorded Ms. Lawrence.