Prof John Spence was a major contributor of ideas on what constitutes good governance to our seemingly benighted country. He has been largely ignored while a soca singer is regarded as a "cultural" icon by the masses. This is a glaring example of the dysfunctionality of our "culture".

Soca music, largely unmelodic and with an emphasis on sexuality and "wining", is a factor that encourages inappropriate behaviour in adolescents and adults. The repetitive playing of simple drum beats excites the raw passions of its often intoxicated listeners, who shout, cavort, and "wine" with abandon. This wild abandonment often results in conflictual behaviour, especially in a country where indifference to the rights of others, hypersensitivity to imagined insults, and "tough guy" reactions are the norm. Soca music has sanctified vulgarity and its followers seem to revel in that.

Everyone is afraid of violent crime and quick to protest it, but when a white Carnival tourist was battered and bloodied by youths no one seemed particularly incensed or brave enough to protest or intervene.

In the United Kingdom, Australia, France, the United States, and many other countries, there would have been direct intervention with outrage expressed on air and in the media. Alas, not in Trinidad!

If soca music represents our "culture", Trinidad and Tobago is doomed to remain a Third World country.

At Christmas some villagers in Kenya, performed the entire Messiah, while wearing their everyday clothes! Now, that is "culture" worth listening to, and what T&T should aspire to.

R Wyndham

London