The floods of recent winters, especially as they seem to become more and more severe, have been very difficult for many homeowners and businesses and they have set a by-now annual drama in motion: distraught flood victims berate senior politicians or local authority officials, criticising the fact that they did not act on long-ago warnings that might have saved them from the worst ravages of the deluge.

The European Parliament yesterday endorsed a report calling on the EU to extend legislation that prevents discrimination against people based on sex, disability or ethnicity to cover a person's sexual orientation.

The contribution to the never-ending debate about our dysfunctional relationship with drink by Mr Justice Paul Carney yesterday was as timely as it was chilling.

Irrespective of which theory you subscribe to about what causes the floods that have caused, and are still causing, terrible damage, it is easy to agree that they seem to be more frequent than before and increasingly destructive.

There are few activities that seem as doomed to failure as one generation lecturing another, younger one about its excesses.

Every time a minister visits a country that offends Western sensibilities, they are encouraged to challenge their hosts and suggest that they mend their ways.

An almost audible cheer rolled across the country this week when Finance Minister Michael Noonan was wonderfully direct when asked about bonuses for bankers. “I won’t even discuss them,” he said.

It is incongruous that the debate on Government funding of arts should intensify just as acute hospitals’ budgets are cut — again — by tens of millions.

Some strands of history are inescapable, they live with us forever — and so they should. Just as we can’t choose our family we cannot choose our past, it is our undeniable, irreversible path to our present.

It is hard to argue against the idea that our health services are approaching some sort of day of reckoning, some sort cathartic crisis.