The cold reality of our connected world is that by the time a government, an institution or even the most advanced legitimate users of the internet have identified a threat to the security of personal data, those who wish to look over our shoulder to take advantage — or simply steal — have moved on and are preparing the next generation of online Trojan horses.

The political landscape changed dramatically after last month’s elections, but it is more than likely it will change even more fundamentally after the next general election.

Yesterday’s European Commission progress report, the one based on principles aimed at reaching a point where the public finances — and services — are stabilised and sustainable, leaves little enough wriggle room for a Government that would dearly like to be able to sweeten the 2015 budget when it is announced in a few months.

This week, as we mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day, it is hard to imagine that any of the four deputies who have offered themselves to the membership of the Labour party as prospective deputy leaders epitomise the qualities of leadership and courage that prevailed on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944.

It’s probably as naive to hope that the Corinthian ideals expressed through energy, competitiveness, and integrity that once shaped top-level sport might ever again prevail as it is to imagine that the Tour de France, or any other multimillion euro sport, could be corruption-free.

It is only a matter of a few years since more people lived in rural communities rather than in cities. That this Rubicon has been crossed has all sorts of implications and will probably mean that we will have to live in ever more compact homes and forego the pleasures of gardens and private green spaces in urban settings.

Cultural colonisation takes place in the subtlest and, at the same time, the most forceful way. We are all agents of that never-ending evolution, nearly every decision we make is influenced by the predominant force in popular culture — and today that is America, or at the very least, the English-speaking world.

The very sobering suggestion, if that is all it really was, from IDA chief executive Barry O’Leary yesterday that workers at the Bausch + Lomb plant in Waterford have little option but to carefully consider the take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum put to them this week by the company’s new owners must send another shiver down the spines of the 161,000 workers employed by foreign firms.

As anyone who struggles to control their weight will confirm it is a spectacular challenge and one that never ends.

There has hardly been a moment in the last half century when the lives of ordinary people have not been more influenced by politics, or more correctly, the management of economies and fiscal policies, through politics.