If consumers were bewildered by the reasons behind the threat of an ESB strike, they must be totally befuddled by the latest shenanigans of ESB’s senior management.

The decision by unions at the ESB to lift the disproportionate threat of a Christmas power strike is very welcome for myriad reasons.

A well-educated and committed workforce is at the centre of any successful economy. In an ever changing world, professional demands are incessant and qualifications once thought more than adequate can become irrelevant very quickly.

Had Northern Ireland’s attorney general John Larkin proposed ending Troubles-related prosecutions some weeks after the publication of Justice Peter Smithwick’s shocking report, his suggestion might not have provoked such a visceral, hostile but dispiritingly predictable response.

Down the centuries, each era of human development has shown an extraordinary capacity to produce leaders of great stature. The passing of Nelson Mandela has taken from the South African people, and the world at large, one of the greatest figures of this or any age.

In describing the findings of the Smithwick Tribunal report as “absolutely shocking”, Taoiseach Enda Kenny spoke for the vast majority of the Irish people, north and south.

Despite these balmy autumnal days, the ferocity of winter is never far away. This stark reality makes the plight of people who depend on the Cork Penny Dinners all the more poignant.

This country, like many others, has sometimes had an unfortunate relationship with all-powerful corporations, especially those not always perceived as corporate entities.

If the declaration by Bertie Ahern that he was one of the few socialists in the Dáil provoked a degree of mirthful scepticism, then yesterday’s announcement that former Labour Party chairman Galway East TD Colm Keaveney had joined Fianna Fáil confirmed again that our three main parties are more or less interchangeable, centrist and conservative.

Though they are disappointing, and though they renew the chastening scepticism that makes it hard to believe we will ever achieve the openness and proactive social equity that underpin the kind of society we profess to admire, ongoing revelations about top-ups, under-the-counter sweeteners, off-radar bonuses, or secret second salaries enjoyed by some health service managers are just another instalment in that ongoing Irish saga — that those who can look after themselves do so even if that puts them well beyond essential line-in-the-sand disciplines of the day.