“I underestimated you” were the first words former Wimbledon winner Bobby Riggs said to Billie Jean King in 1973 after she defeated him in front of 90m TV viewers.

The deal between the AIB, the Irish Mortgage Holders’ Association, and iCare Housing association is a welcome effort to tackle, in a substantial way, the crisis of mortgage arrears.

THE announcement yesterday that University College Cork is to embark on the biggest investment programme in its 182-year history must be welcomed. That €350m declaration reflects worthwhile ambition in many areas. It looks the future in the eye in the most positive way.

It is hardly coincidental that the fall in real pay and circumstances faced by so many private-sector workers runs parallel to the decline in trade-union membership. Unions still hold sway in the public sector but, in the private sector, unions are but shadows of the force they once were.

As living saints go it would be hard to trump naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough.

AN honest list of the things we take for granted would be sobering but it would probably be even more so if it was comprehensive.

THE details of the relationship between the Government and the judiciary may be getting more airtime than our judges might like.

SPORT is political, sometimes deeply so. It is a conduit to our higher ambitions. It gives voice to our better angels and, unless corrupted, can distil principle more powerfully than any policy document drowning in caveats or derogations.

‘If Christopher Columbus had an advisory committee, he would probably still be at the dock.’ US Supreme Court justice, Arthur Goldberg

A number of government departments have combined to cook up a menu of mandatory nutrition standards for meals provided in state schools.