REMEMBER that crowd with the new broom and how they promised sweeping changes? It’s beginning to look like they could teach the old crowd how to suck eggs.

I WAS having a chat with my aunt — 80 years old yesterday — about how women’s place in society has changed. As I’d been arguing that women still had so far to travel, she told me a short story illustrating just how far we’ve come.

IT’S GETTING so it’s difficult to keep up. Since Christmas, we’ve had to work hard to keep abreast of all the unfolding scandals, while simultaneously maintaining our healthy sense of national moral indignation.

WHAT an extraordinary few days it has been. There is a temptation to reach for the term GUBU-esque in relation to what has unfolded with this blockbuster tale of bugging, surveilling, investigating and leaking.