Germany has spoken and, as ever since 1945, it sends in its election results mixed messages, thanks in part to a constitution designed to prevent one party getting an overall majority in the Bundestag.

There are very few areas where the report-to-inaction ratio is as disappointing as in pension reform. 

The first reaction to the news that odourless gas was pumped into homes in Mayo and Galway must be relief that nobody was injured as a consequence. 

The election of Donald Trump, Brexit, the rise of Marine Le Pen, and, maybe to a lesser degree, the fragmentation of the Dáil, are all a consequence of so many workers believing that the system they had supported all of their working lives has betrayed them.

WE all too easily blame fate for the misfortunes that afflict us. Fate is a convenient catchall that hides behind the fatalism underpinning the Calvinists’ Westminster Confession of Faith which declares that our lives are “freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass”.

THERE seem to be conflicting messages in the Irish Examiner/ICMSA opinion poll on how farming contributes to climate change.

THE latest tranche of census results shows that there has been a drop in the number of non-Irish living here.

SINCE the foundation of the State, we have had a succession of taoisigh with various modus operandi, some prepared to work with those in opposition in a collegiate manner, others preferring to take the confrontational route.

OF all the tributes paid to the sports broadcaster, Jimmy Magee, the most poignant and most memorable came from former president, Mary McAleese.

“DEMOCRACY is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” — a comment attributed to Winston Churchill.