The Editor, Sir:

Once again, your columnist Ian Boyne, in today's (July 13) Sunday Gleaner, has hit the nail on the head with his insistence that an effective values and attitudes campaign is a necessary precursor to any meaningful improvement in the sick patient (Jamaica).

However, Boyne is like a doctor who correctly diagnoses the ailment, prescribes the correct medicine (very bitter), but is silent as to how to get the sick patient to take it.

The 'proper' values and attitudes that provided for a stable Jamaica 50 years ago were handed down by parents, teachers, the Church, community leaders, etc. These have been seriously eroded. Can Boyne point to a single instance - outside of authoritarian societies such as Cuba and Singapore - where such values and attitudes have been reinstituted by government initiative? And how would he achieve this without co-opting the commanding heights of the 'free' media?

And there's the rub. As a columnist given to rigorous analysis, Boyne needs to explore the implementation aspect of his prescription.

I am, etc.,

ERROL TOWNSHEND

ewat@roghers.com

Toronto, Canada