Amidst crisis after crisis, trauma heaped upon trauma, it is indeed cheering that three Irish cities are ranked in the top 20 of the world’s friendliest.

This week’s first indication that Ireland is indeed a different, peculiar place came yesterday when the European Commission reported that Irish mobile phone users pay, on average, five times more for calls than users in the EU country where calls are cheapest.

Another alarm bell, the third in as many weeks, has been rung about how poorly we treat asylum seekers.

Gender quotas and the positive discrimination needed to realise them are fraught subjects.

The 12.75m residents of Zimbabwe edged ever closer to a crisis point yesterday after Robert Mugabe dismissed allegations of fraud in the country’s presidential election.

The dispute at Dublin Bus will inevitably be settled.

Writer William Congreve, who died in 1729, warned us that “heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned”.

On the best of days it can be difficult to reconcile the extremes endured by different individuals, families, communities or societies. On the worst of days it can be a great, character-defining challenge.

Senior Government figures may not have been heartbroken that the final chapter in our €300m planning report was published just after the lights were turned off in Leinster House for the summer recess.

Everything is relative and the corruption charges levelled at Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF by Zimbabwe’s opposition over this week’s elections are far beyond anything possible in a more developed country, though some Russians might disagree.