Mr Jones, the undertaker in the little village in which I grew up, was a very friendly person (the last man to let you down) who was on excellent terms with everyone and would religiously visit the sick and dying. 

My Uncle Boysie used to tell the story of the undertaker’s visits to persons on their deathbeds. 

He would lean over and, starting from their ankles, ask, ’Where hurting you? Your ankle? Your leg?’ and so work his way to the tops of their heads, surreptitiously measuring them. 

As soon as Mr Jones heard the loud wailing accompanying a village death he would turn from solicitous to solicitor and reveal, ’Ah done have the coffin ready already.’

A headline in a Trinidad paper made me remember those days. 

It read, ’Funeral homes make killing.’

According to the article that followed, the high murder rate in Trinidad, projected at 600 for the year 2009, was causing the undertaking business to thrive. 

Gangsters are also leaving substantial sums of money to cover their funeral costs, including $35,000 caskets.

Almost all the ’Community Leaders’ who met the Prime Minister of Trinidad in 2006 have been murdered and their funerals were true testaments to their prestige and status.

One funeral home owner said she was handling about five funerals a day. 

The Trinidad situation is ample proof that every cloud (and casket) has a silver lining and in some cases a golden one. 

While we bemoan the high murder rate, there are people who are doing well and we should not begrudge them their windfalls from bad apples. 

According to the articles, the dead gangsters want to be buried in very expensive suits so that one must assume that there are tailors doing really good business. 

If we take the beneficial impacts to small business of the Trinidad crime tsunami (too big to be a mere wave), florists are also doing well. 

Like the big Mafia funerals, the local gangsters are also given a floral tribute prominent among which, I would think, is the Balisier. 

Gravediggers are also doing well as are drivers transporting people to and from funerals, robberies and murders. 

Importers, sellers and renters of guns and ammunition are thriving as are boatmen who bring the contraband cargo into Trinidad and those members of the protective services who facilitate the process of placing them in the hands of the criminals.

Car dealerships which are willing to accept payment in cash and then find creative ways of covering up the purchase are also making a profit as are bank workers who are willing to provide information about clients with lots of money.

This is why I disagree with all this media negativity and those reporters who want to place crime at the top of the news. 

I don’t have time for those letter-writers who whine about the murder rate and how unsafe Trinidad has become.

We don’t need the yankee dollars like Barbados and the other countries. 

We don’t even need oil.

We have all that we need - a murder rate of almost two people a day. 

What the Government must establish as a priority is to get the rate up to three or four and you will see how small business in Trinidad will prosper.