Ian on Sunday

In two of the main centres of democracy, America and Europe, democracy is rapidly failing.

When I worked in the sugar industry I remember once discussing a problem with a young colleague.

There are times when even the best sportsmen fail not for want of talent, pride, serious application and commitment.

We often wonder why those around us – very much including those in supreme authority – are making such a mess of things.

 Our lives of such infinite value come and go in a whirl of busyness. 

So many Christmas poems from which to choose. E.U. Fanthrope’s lines:   “And this was the moment When a few farm workers and three Members of an obscure Persian sect   Walked haphazard by starlight straight Into the kingdom of heaven.”

Even in the worst of times – and who can doubt that the times are pretty bad– reading comes to the rescue by revealing other worlds of experience where cruelty and mindlessness and man’s inhumanity to man do not continually have the upper hand.

An old sporting argument – good for many lovely hours of intense discussion and fervent argument – surfaces every now and then: Is winning everything?

My wife and I have just returned from one of the great cities of the world. 

Individual effort is the basis of success in any endeavour.  Yes, I know about teamwork. 

I apologise if this appears to take the form of a health and fitness page in this newspaper.

Let me continue on the theme of reading, the love of reading, the absolute value of reading in a child’s life.

Anyone who writes about life must think about death.  It is not being morbid to do so. 

I remember “Read to Succeed” was once the theme of the activities and exhibitions organised to celebrate the work of library services for the children of Guyana.

Certain words are beloved of bureaucrats; words like monitor, check, regulate, review, classify, and control. 

My younger friends – and at my advanced age virtually everyone is younger – particularly Generation Xers (born 1965-79) and the millennials (born 1980-2000) – complain about being over-scheduled and over-committed.

A very great asset is the ability to write well. Just as the gift of speech first separated man from animal, so has the ability to set speech down in written form gradually raised man up from his first beginnings as brute to the high level of science, art, and social organisation which he now precariously occupies.

It would cost US$700 million a year to immunise 250 million children in poor countries against polio, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus and tuberculosis. 

The debate about what constitutes happiness has been going on for thousands of years. 

In the old Soviet Russia one of the more outrageous features of life was that their greatest creative writers for years were barred from publishing in their own native land.