THE duchess of Cambridge may have been topless in those controversial pictures published by the Irish Daily Star on Saturday, but the tabloid editors and publishers, now scrambling for the high moral ground, are the emperors without any clothes.

SAY WHAT you like about Irish politics but at least it isn’t rife with the kind of mawkish folksy smaltz that has become an unwelcome staple of American presidential elections.

ORDINARILY, it’s fun to watch politicians squirm, but when they’re reeling and writhing, in a desperate attempt to evade responsibility for actually doing the bare minimum required as part of their jobs, it gets quite tiresome.

AS A HUGE fan of the immensely important work that Wikileaks has done in recent years, it has been depressing to watch the deranged cult that surrounds its founder sully its brand.

CONTEMPTUOUS remarks from a Republican Senate nominee, in which he stated it was biologically impossible for “legitimate” rape victims to get pregnant during their attack, is just the most extreme example of a pervasive blame culture that believes women are, deep down, begging to be sexually assaulted.

SPARE a thought for the Andrews clan, whose next family get-together is bound to be a frosty affair after one of its disgruntled scions was revealed as the poison pen behind an anonymous Twitter account.

THE debate about whether women can ‘have it all’ has been prompted, again, by the surprise resignation of glamorous Tory MP Louise Mensch after two years in parliament.

THE controversial case in which a Dublin businessman was ordered to pay a victim of sexual assault a sum of €75,000, and had five-and-a-half years of a six-year sentence suspended, suggests that here is one law for the rich, and another for the poor, in this country.

IN 1992, a Fianna Fáil senator and chairman of the Pro-Life Trust, reacting angrily to the X case judgment, thundered: “It is wholly unacceptable, and a deep affront to the people of Ireland, that four judges who are preserved by the Constitution from accountability can radically alter the Constitution and place in peril the most vulnerable section of our society.”

WHEN the dust settled after the festival there had been 90 arrests, including a large number for assault and theft, 308 drug seizures, 28 cases of alleged drug dealing, and multiple teenagers had been stabbed — no, not the Swedish House mafia gig, but last year’s Oxegen festival.