We have a bizarre situation where the next Government will be bound – at least to some degree – by major spending decisions taken in the dying days of this one.
Also: Fintan O’Toole’s extraordinary attack on cataract busses.
Politicians have both a political and economic incentive to tell you that everything is fine, until it isn’t. It’s not lying, necessarily – but it might just be unwarranted optimism.
Would we grant that level of benefit of the doubt to some working class white guy from Alabama who tweeted that Barack Obama was a Kenyan?
We are supposed to treat accused people with the presumption of innocence – or in other words the presumption that they have been wrongly accused.
Aren’t we all adults? If somebody is willing to spend €415 on a concert ticket to hear songs that have been on the radio for thirty years, shouldn’t they have that right?
You might argue – might – that €350,000 is an amount of money that should be below the notice of Ministers, but you’d be making an argument that only an idiot should believe.
“A home of your own” amounts to an enormous public works programme in a sector of the economy already boasting full employment.
Our céad míle fáilte is not some uniquely Irish thing that foreigners wouldn’t understand: It’s just the Irish word for Wilkommenskultur. That didn’t help the Germans, and it won’t help us, either.
At every step along the way, Irish Governments over the last decade or more have pursued – consciously and with foreknowledge – a policy of higher energy costs.
Despite all the best efforts of politicians, journalists, authors, and cultural figures to show the world that Ireland has changed, the world refuses to much notice, or care.
The Mayor was happily photographed with a whole series of free willies, while – perhaps subconsciously – keeping his own paws strategically placed to protect his own: